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Hi! My name is Ryan, I'm fifteen, and I've been thinking about sharing this story for quite a while already.
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In a few weeks ago it took a turn that no one expected…
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The story is about me and my mom.
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Her name is Diane and I am her only child—this is important to the story.
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She studied to become an architect, but lost interest really fast, so she never actually worked as an architect.
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When she married my dad at 23, she was right at the point where she didn't really know what she wanted to do.
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Then pretty soon after, my mom got pregnant and that eventually helped her to decide.
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She started a blog.
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A mom blog, or a baby blog, whatever you want to call it.
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As parents have told me, blogs were kinda blooming at that time and a lot of people were starting their own.
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So this blog started as a kind of online diary for friends and family.
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My mom would write posts about her pregnancy and expectations, and share tips and pictures—anything, really.
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As the weeks went by, the blog gathered more and more readers, and a lot of them were strangers.
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The internet itself was growing quickly at this time.
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After I was born my mom just got more enthusiastic.
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Now she had a lot more things to tell her readers about.
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Of course this is stuff I can't remember, since the blog is older than me.
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But as I have grown up, I scrolled all the way down the blog feed to 2005.
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And there was everything—pictures of me as a newborn baby, then as a toddler and on and on… we'll get to that a little later.
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And it was not just about the pictures, of course.
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Almost every day she would write about what happened during that day, with the most intimate details.
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And I guess I learned a lot of stuff most kids are not supposed know: like the fact that I was not planned.
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I mean… I'm totally fine with that, and all of these early posts are no problem in general.
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Things just got awkward as I was growing up.
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You don't have many secrets when you are a toddler, but as you get closer to your teenage years, you start to experience stuff you'd rather keep private.
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The problem was: my Mom didn't seem to understand that.
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I think I was around twelve when I started to have problems with what she was posting.
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Because, you know, I grew up with the blog, and for a really long time I didn't think it could be any other way.
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And the thing that still amazes me is that my mom did not lose interest over all these years.
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Of course, she doesn't post every day anymore, but she still does it at least two or three times a week.
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And the content changed—it was now about being a mom of a teenager.
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And that was the problem.
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Let me give you an example.
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When I was thirteen I told my mom I liked a girl from my school.
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You see, I'm not that close with any of my friends and I feel awkward sharing stuff like that with my dad.
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So I told my mom about my feelings and we had a nice talk, or so I thought at the time.
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And I felt terrible when I found out that the whole story got posted online.
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What made things even worse is the fact that the girl's mom was one of the blog's active readers.
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And even though my mom didn't mention the girl's name, it wasn't that hard to guess.
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That girl and I never brought this up, but I'm pretty sure she found out.
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That was the first time that my mom and I had a serious fight about the blog.
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I was trying to tell her that this stuff was private and the last thing I wanted was for everybody to know.
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But she just didn't seem to understand.
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She said that these are things every child is going through and there is nothing to be embarrassed about.
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I wasn't embarrassed, I just didn't want to be exposed like that!
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Several months after this, things got even worse.
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One of my classmates came across my mom's blog online somehow.
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Of course he was fast to tell the rest of the guys, and all of them found the time to scroll down her feed.
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Long story short, the next few weeks weren't easy for me.
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There were so many things my classmates were not supposed to know, including things I had said about them.
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And, of course, every post had something that they could make fun of.
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I was deeply hurt.
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And I tried talking to my mom again, but she still refused to see the problem, so I just made the only decision possible.
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I stopped telling her anything about my life.
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And as the months passed, our relationship just got worse.
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Once she tried to talk to me about the problem and I even thought we understood each other.
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But the next day she wrote a post about me being offended about the blog.
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I saw this post when we were having breakfast, I stood up, and I left in tears.
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I was desperate.
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I guess that was the point when my mom realized what she had done.
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That same night she came to my room and said she was sorry.
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She finally realized that there was a problem.
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And imagine my surprise when she told me that she DELETED the blog.
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I remember saying, totally shocked: “ You… didn't have to do this.”
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But deep inside I also knew that was the only way.
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And I know it wasn't easy for her to do, at all.
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After all the blog was a part of her life for fifteen years.
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I guess there are hundreds and hundreds of moms worldwide that she helped over all this time.
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Now we are building our trust up all over again.
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Do your parents post stuff about you online?
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Share your thoughts and stories in the comments!
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