“Don’t believe everything you see.”

Or hear.
Or read.

We’re, as a whole, a trusting society, with virtual naivete spewing out of our ears. Easily brainwashed, our culture (at least the culture that I know) is all too eager to accept what we hear on the news or television as fact. After all, they wouldn’t be able to say it if it wasn’t true, you know.

And along came the bloggers. Yes, I’d probably say that I fall into this group, with my frequently-updated little site of whatnot, providing frequent TMI and every little detail that you could possibly think of that you likely didn’t necessarily want nor need to know about me. There’s a community of sorts — the ‘regulars’ read each others’ blogs daily, checking back to see if heather or helenjane or sarah or sarah or jason or kerry have put forth yet another entry of pure genius, a perfect distraction in our imperfect world of 9-to-5-ish (closer to 7ish, for me, these days) drudgery that provides us with the means (cash) to forget our imperfect 9-to-5ish existances in the 6-3am-ish hours.

We trust these people — we read about their lives and their jobs and their husbands and their new computers and their cross-country trips and their new, fabulous houses in places far more temperate than the lately-weather-unsavory Atlanta. We know that they’re trying for babies. We know that they are single again. We know that they’re excited to go to grad school, to move to Atlanta, to get married. When they’re sad, we send them stupid little comments to cheer them up. When they’re (I’m) discussing assholes and Tucker Max, we (y’all) send them (me) dissuading comments to help clear my head and lead me down the ‘proper’ road to wedded bliss and savory relationships.

Above all, we trust them.

But — and I’m saying this hypothetically — it was all a big farce? What if these people that we think we know are truly making up their own alter egos and they’re NOT getting married and they don’t REALLY live in California and that dog? Their cute little adorable dog? What if it wasn’t ever really THEIR dog at all?

It’s completely possible. Me included.

I had a conversation last night with a friend who I hadn’t talked to in a while, and as I was telling him things that had happened in the 6-ish months that we were out of touch, he kept saying “I know. I know.” Apparently, in the absence, he was able to keep up with me through my website.

This provoked mixed feelings. Yes, my life is basically an open book. Yes, I love that y’all read about my happenings and goings-ons and relationship foibles and that you know I’m a helpless romantic and you know that I sometimes over-glorify the past and you know that I’m doing nothing with my genetics degree and you know that I just bought a fantastic new car and you know that I love Australia and would move there in a heartbeat. But what if this wasn’t really me, but the me that I wish I was, the me that I’m simply portraying to you all? What would happen then?

Again, it’s possible. I could possibly not really live in Atlanta. I could possibly have never even gone to grad school. I could possibly really never have fallen in love when I was 15 to a boy who is getting married in less than 2 months. I could be lying when I say I bought a great new car, could be simply leading you to believe that I have this infatuation with Matthew McConaughey and eat random food when I’m drunk, and you know that trip I took to Chicago to visit Tucker Max? Yeah. With a little help from Photoshop, that could be a lie, too.

It could even be more than just the little things — the lies could extend to widespread, underlying assumptions that you all use when reading this site. For instance, I could be a man. A 40-year-old man who has all the time to update this site because I’m in jail for tax evasion. Or I could be a sixteen-year-old West Virginian who spends study hall learning HTML and passing notes about Homecoming. I mean, do you ever really know?

Aaah, the anonymity of the internet, both a blessing and a disguise. Through this often faceless medium, we’re able to craft our experiences into readable entries, based on the sole assumption that you believe what we write. And though, at times, I’d love to have a more exciting existence, one with glitz, glamour, and glasses of champagne (Cristal, of course) poppin’ in our Stretch Navigators, in the meantime, you’re gonna just have to settle for the me that I am now, which is, for better or worse, the truth.