I've really been up since like 10 AM.
Even though as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it was almost 1 PM when I got up.
Why the dissonance?
Because I woke up to the sounds of my family talking.
And quite a bit of their talking was...
...About me.
I heard lots of things which they think I can't hear not only because I was supposedly asleep but also because of my room being isolated.
And to be fair.
Both apply.
I only picked up fragments of the conversations.
But across the times.
I heard references to various things which were unambiguously referring to me.
And in...contexts which concerned me.
"Maybe they're not doing well at school" was one of the lighter ones, but a far more concerning one was my mom at one point I believe going to the effect of, "they're young and it might just be a form of expression", and things like "at least it's not as bad as when they were on that mafia" and the like.
Like I said.
I couldn't hear much.
But I got scared.
I wanted to stay in bed because I was afraid of coming out and facing a confrontation.
I worked up the courage to try at 12:45.
And by then whatever it was they were discussing about me had apparently blown over.
But I wasn't dreaming.
I know what I heard was real.
They were talking about me in ways which are incredibly worrying because it almost sounded like things they'd be talking about if they were prying into my life--
...And it'd be absolutely, utterly, ridiculously easy for my secret to be found out if so.
Because I make basically zero effort at hiding anything.
Heck.
Even if I were to try to--that'd probably make things worse because if you're audacious enough to appear as if you have no secret then it makes people think you have none whereas if you start being secretive then suddenly they become suspicious. So if I started, it'd be too little, too late.
And I do mean.
There's basically zero way I could hide it if anyone looked.
Literally everything I have is so openly exposed at this point.
I don't log out of my blog.
I don't log out of my gmail.
I don't log out of my yahoo.
I don't log out of Disqus.
I don't make any efforts to hide pieces of papers which contain words which would give me away.
There's literally an open book to be read on me, were anyone to make that invasion of privacy.
The only thing protecting it is that unspoken word, that unwritten rule, that contract of "my life, my business". And while in some ways the whole thing being blown over by the time I did "get up" is good (that means whatever it was, it wasn't so bad as to get me disowned/kicked out of the house), what it does mean is that if someone other than my mom scratched the surface...
...That they started latching onto something. If swept under the rug, that's good. But if it's not, then...well, not.
The worst part is not knowing.
I literally have no clue what it is they saw, what it is they did. It could be something absolutely and completely and entirely harmless: I could be fretting, I could be paranoid, over literally nothing. It could be they caught something I can very easily justify and explain, and thus, put their fears to rest, put the issue to bed. It could also be something I'd have to tell a bold-faced lie about, for instance, them seeing something which is unambiguously from me and yet unambiguously female and me going "It's part of an online roleplay". (I mean from a certain point of view, that could technically speaking be true. But that's not an idea I really like especially since it'd reinforce a bad stereotype.)
It could be any range of those. From absolutely completely totally entirely not a big deal to something which my mom desperately had to save face for me in my stead. And I don't know which, and I have literally no way of knowing. And it's something which...
Well is honestly scary.
I literally just made a promise that I wouldn't lose someone because of my family.
I literally just made that promise yesterday.
Yet I honestly don't know what that was.
And to some extent, all I can really do is...nothing at all.
If I change my behavior, it'll incur suspicion.
If it was harmless, then I've got nothing to worry about.
If it wasn't harmless, then I've got nothing I can do within my power to change that.
So all I can really do know is hope and pray that everything is still okay.