Journal Reality, Part Deux

In a comment on my last post, Celeste likened the journal community to an apartment building…where people come and go, with or without notice. I like that analogy; it explains a lot. Many other commenters displayed a kind of blasé attitude about the impermanence of journal relationships. I really believe they are speaking from their own hearts and experiences. And I wish that my life had unfolded in such a way that I could have that same (healthy?) attitude toward the comings and goings of other people in it.

Unfortunately, I’ve always been a loner. I live a lot of my life inside my own head.. I don’t know where that came from. I was a smart kid. Often, the teacher’s pet. But never one of the "in" crowd. Partly because I could never follow the sheep, and pick on the kids that everyone picked on. I stood up for them. I treated them kindly. Which, oddly enough, gained me a unique position in the grammar school social stratum. I was nobody’s enemy, but nobody’s friend. Too respectable to be bullied by the hip kids, too smart for the outcasts to befriend. Limbo. I got used to living in Limbo.

It’s not like I never had any friends. There were special people who were welcomed into my limbo and stayed awhile. They were generally very special people, and they usually stayed quite awhile. My best friend in grade school was my best friend until we had each passed our tenth wedding anniversary. So this concept of people coming and going in my life, like a constantly evolving ensemble cast, is not really within my frame of reference.

And an apartment complex? Hubs and I bought our first house two years after we were married. We lived in exactly three apartments, and two of those were parts of old homes. The one gigantic "apartment complex" we lived in was so close to the nearby airport that we were jolted awake every weekday morning by the sound of the rich commuters’ private jets revving up for their early morning departures. In the apartment we moved to in order to get away from that, our upstairs neighbor sniffed gasoline to get high, and our downstairs neighbor was the landlord’s son, who thought it was perfectly within his rights to blast his "tunes" at top volume, preferably anytime after 2 am. Needless to say, we never really got into the "neighbor" dynamic of apartment living. So I missed out on that little life lesson as well.

So, perhaps I am a little more sensitive than your average person would be to the transience of journal relationships. I’m used to a very few, very close, very long-term friends. When I "let someone in" to my life, I expect them to stay for years. I have a really hard time with connections that don’t go far enough below the surface to grow roots. The problem with these internet friendships, especially the ones formed in the journal community, is that they start out looking like a fast track to the kind of deep, lasting bonds I’m drawn to. People write about intimate things, serious things. There, right before your eyes, is a veritable garden of people who feel the things you’ve felt but have never been able to articulate; who know the things you know, but never thought another person in the world knew. Instant soul mates!

But, then, it turns out that they’re really….not. That they’re not looking for the same thing out of these connections that I am. Or that they’re not looking for anything at all other than a place to vent. To work it all out. Or to just…write. Getting a kick, as we all do, out of the fact that there is someone out there reading their little missives. But not really looking for it to go beyond the writer/reader relationship. And when they don’t feel the need to write anymore, they disappear. To them, I’m sure, that’s the advantage of the internet. The anonymity. That freedom to slip in or out at will.

I admit, I have made as cunning use of that anonymity as anyone. But it is a double-edged sword. If you would keep yourself from being known, then you cannot know—anybody else. We explode into each others’ lives and then we…just cut and run. It’s all very confusing; after more than two years out here in journal land, I still haven’t got to the point where I can play the game without getting hurt. And yet, I don’t seem to be able to say, "To hell with it!" and just walk away either. There’s the rub…

So, here’s another post. Undoubtedly to be followed by another, and another. Because I can’t walk away. I can’t even define what magic this place still holds for me. And yet, I am held. For another day…another month…another year. As long as my acrylic-nail-challenged, arthritic fingers can make some kind of sense or feeling spring from this keyboard and makeit to at least one other person’s eyes. And heart.