Some Disassembly Required

Since around the time I restarted this here blog I've started the process of disassembling my internet alter ego and everything attached to it. As I've portrayed that character for near to seven years there are a lot of loose ends to wrap up. Some of them may never be altogether wrapped up, since I don't think I'm going to do any kind of big spectacular reveal and let my secret identity loose to the world, and she's more likely to just disappear into the ether. I've been mulling over exit strategies since pretty early on, but I've never come up with anything too exciting, and for whatever reason I kept on sticking around. Part of that was because until the relaunch of this blog and the fundamental changes in my status quo brought about earlier this spring, I wasn't comfortable being myself. And I don't just mean on the internet.

My alter ego has existed in one form or another since 1996. The character of those early years (1996-2000) was really just the prototype version. When I created Beth in August of 2000 she was fully formed from the get-go, and that version of the character has been running ever since, even though she's undergone a name change or two. She's the character I consider 'me', even though I subsequently developed a supporting cast, and I can also inhabit any one of four other characters without much problem. I've even chatted with the same people as four of them at different times, and each of them are different enough to fool most of the people most of the time.

However, there have been suspicions since a critical early mistake that those girls are .... exactly what I've told you here. There is a small group out there that would love to find out the truth about Bethany, but unless someone comes across this post, chances are they'll never know for sure.

Slipping into the character of Bethany has always been really easy. The others are more of a mental challenge, but Beth is pretty easy to get. She's essentially me in most of the important ways, and what I would like to be, but with the volume turned up to 11. She's smart, funny, charismatic, charming, opinionated, takes no shit from anybody, and is a total badass. Anything I wish I could say to someone, she could say it. Anything I wish I was brave enough to do, she could do it. She was fierce and ferocious while I was a schmuck and a pushover. I used Bethany to escape from my boring, go nowhere life. A lot of the time I was more interested in her life than in my own. Then I met Jen and she turned over the whole applecart and helped reawaken me. A lot of the qualities I enjoyed in Bethany turned out to exist within me after all, and they resurfaced. And I did something that even she could never do: I left the job that was crushing my soul. I did that. And it turns out I didn't really need Bethany anymore.

And the process of disassembly is underway.

We'll discuss this more.