My friend Benjamin Whitmer (Pike, Satan is Real) posted this today on his blog, Kick Him, Honey. (if you haven’t read the blog before you can check it out right HERE) The quote below is apparently a status update from someone he’s Facebook friends with:
So, I became concerned about my son’s anger about a week ago. He keeps posting right here on facebook statuses of angered responses, a picture of his bloody hand, and his bad language. These are things I didn’t raise him to do. I call his mother about his issues. I ask her to monitor his online activity and to get him some counseling. By the way, his mother and I have been divorced for ten years. She kind of shuffles it off as no big deal. That night, my son unfriends me just because I love him and am concerned about his mental state. I saw him last weekend briefly and he ignored me! I want to be angry at him but I don’t want to be at the same time. I want to give up my rights to him but I don’t because I only have a year left of paying child support to him and I love him enough to reconcile with him in the future. What he doesn’t know is I wanted to leave his mother before he was born. She had been raped by a black man within days before my son was conceived. I stuck around mainly to see if the child was mine. If he would’ve been black, I could leave. He was white instead. I’ve been grateful ever since. Due to his nearly 1 1/2 years absence and his hatred for my wife and me, I sometimes want to give up on him. I love him dearly. I want him back. But, he causes me too much pain right now.
Like every American writer on the continent, I use social media and have in many ways benefited from its use in promoting myself. But, there’s a certain line that I refuse to cross. Sure, I’ll share what I’m reading, writing, and publishing. I’ll share the occasional snapshot of what my family is doing, of how things are going at the day job, etc. But seriously, this kind of “honesty” makes my skin crawl. Maybe I’m a little outdated in my belief that there’s still such a thing as private behavior, but, shit, if I ever post anything like the quote above on any social media site, I’m giving you permission to beat the shit out of me.
