Sunday, March 12, 2006

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 blasĂ© 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.

13 comments:

  1. Lisa ~ I like to read other peoples journals ~ you can learn alot about this world and what is going on all over it  ~ like you I like to think no one would just disappear out of my life ~ without first saying goodbye ~ I worry when I don't see a journal I normally read ~ I wonder if the journal writer is ill ~ and wish I could find out ~ but have learnt you can't ~ you just have to accept they have gone ~ and get on with life ~ and make new friends ~ Ally

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  2. I know that I make different kinds of connections online.  Now that I think of it, I have 3 basic groups.  I post at one place just because I enjoy some of the discussions.  Many of the people there feel a strong bond of community, but I don't, and I'm not looking for that there.  Then I have a group at the other extreme, a group of women I "met" online years ago which eventually broke off from our original website to form what has become a very close group.  And then there was the aol community.  I guess I think of that in terms of Katrina.  There was a hurricane and a lot of people left and, much as they'd like to maintain their former conenctions, it's hard.  Starting over is hard, too -- or at least different.  I can go back and look at an aol entry and see 20 or so comments, and I can slave away at blogger and post something I think is great, and I see that 30 people have visited but maybe only 1 or 2 has said anything.  I'm rethinking the whole enterprise, actually, but I haven't got any fully formed take on it yet.
    http://searchthesea.blogspot.com/

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  3. Robin sent me the link to your previous entry after I wrote a somewhat related, but nowhere near as eloquently stated entry,  in my own journal. I've found these two entries simply awesome. I'll need to revisit them to make sure I got all out of them that you've put into them but my first impression is simply...wow. Most of what you've said is what I'd have said if I'd  had the words. I, too, am a bit of a loner. lol who am I kidding I'm just about as much of a loner as you can be without being a hermit. The circumstances dictated that it would be best if I became Mr.  Mom when we adopted my son at birth. That pretty much meant that I was destined to have few friends but in reality I've never been one to make that many anyway. The ones I do make are usually very good ones though. When I discovered the online community, way before JLand, a decade ago I thought I'd found what I needed. Indeed maybe I had. It brought me so much joy over  the years. It also brought me a lot of pain. Mostly it brought me growth. I met a lot of people along the way I every one of them taught me something about life or about myself or both. I don't regret knowing a one of them, really not even the ones who caused more pain than joy.

    I could go on forever on the subject but I'll stop here.  Down the line maybe I'll take a shot at similar entries myself. Right now I'm too close to a bit of a nasty situation that I want to let die down. Thank you again for so wonderfully eloquently writing these entries about the online  community.

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  4. Me too. Maybe I've been naive in thinking the friends you have should stay in your life? It seems they come and go more often as you get older.

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  5. That must have been a different Robin - not me.

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  6. Part of this reminded me that there's still that 8th grade story....
    *debbi*

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  7. ships that pass on a foggy night ... the mournful wail of distant horns ... then silence and empty dark sea.

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  8. I have read both of these entries twice.  Your words are so perfect.  I am going through something of a dispirited time myself.  I don't know if it has to do with the events that have been happening in our lives, or whether I am feeling a bit lonely myself.  One thing I always hang on to is the fact that you are here and I know that I can come here and feel warm.  Thank you for the thought you put into these.  Pennie

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  9. Well, I am still here, although I don't recall meeting you before. Come on over to the Cafe, dahling. I have put you on the list.

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  10. As I was growing up I lived in a house in a neighborhood where everyone else had lived for years before I was born(including my parents) I did not make many friends because there were not many my age there. The few friends I made growing up, I can count on 1 hand. Then my father died and high school started. Life changed.
    Today I still can count my physical friends on one hand.

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  11. I too was a loner and veyr differint growing up and I just did an entry about bing different and growing up different. I mean for me I was a misfit in the land of misfits like rudolf.

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  12. I've read both of your entries on this subject twice now.  Mulling.  I am a 'muller'.  Feeling much the way you do -- I know that a change in atmosphere occurred with the 'ad debacle' back in November and I wonder if some of us aren't just a little more reticent, shy, protective of ourselves since then.  I also think that some of the folks who left were also a good dose of glue, keeping us together and gently guiding us to other journals and friends.  A personal situation at the same time as the 'ads' had me running for cover and making my journal private.  I know I've lost readers because of that but fortunately many old pals hung on and continue to visit.  

    This is a subject that we all relate to in one way or another.  Thanks for posting a well thought through entry.

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  13. It bothers me a lot, too.  Sometimes I get hurt by J-land, and there have been three times that I have gone private to hide for awhile, but I come back. I am not a loner, I have too much social life, but lately I have begun to think about what I have considered friends are really more like companions that I am around...I tend to think they care more about me and my family than they do...and then of course, the ultimate betrayal in real life was when my "best friend" molested my oldest daughter last fall...I have been licking lots of wounds lately. My journal has become much more impersonal.

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