Prayers

Once again: thank you all so much for the cards, the good thoughts, the messages during my crap week. It helped tremendously to know that people "had my back," at least emotionally speaking.

One thing that kind of sucks about being single is that there's no one else at home so when you've had a crap day, you either have to figure out some way of forgetting it, or you wind up dwelling on it, because there's no one else there that you can tell it to, who will say, "Well, yeah, that's stupid that they did that" and who will make you a cup of hot chocolate or tell you a pirate joke or something to make you feel better.

(And yes, I realize I'm idealizing here, but lots of the folks I know who are married have someone who is like that).

One of the things that I have come to realize is a blind spot of some coupled people - this happened when all the Youth Group stuff hit the fan back in August, after the grape-fight and after I had the "double secret probation meeting" that I wasn't warned about in advance - I was sitting there at the table sobbing, feeling like a complete and total waste of flesh, and the minister looked at me and said, "I just realized that you have no one to go home and talk this out with."

And fortunately I was sobbing hard at that point or I would have snarled "YA THINK?!?!?" at him...because I was kind of angry at him at that point. (I've long since forgiven him and just chalked the whole bad-communication mess up to blind spots piling up on blind spots).

Anyway. To make an overlong comment shorter: it helped a whole lot, what you all did, so thanks.

And now I see that there are two folks out among the bloggers I read who need prayers and good thoughts, both for similar reasons - Tracey and Joel.

You guys are in my prayers. I hope it works out for you. I hope you can have some peace and not too many sleepless nights during this process.

I'm thinking of you, for what it's worth.

It's funny, how a lot of pundits talk about how "isolating" the Internet is, how it leads people to be ruder and less caring than they would otherwise be, how it allows isolated people to persist in the "pathology" of being isolated. (As a lone-wolf type, I dislike the pathologization of those who prefer to go it alone most of the time. We're not all serial killers in the making, I promise).

At any rate - one thing I've found at least in the tiny corners of blogland I inhabit (here, and the little circle of blogs I visit here, and also the craft blogs where I hang out) there's an awful lot of caring and support. Someone has something really bad happen, and people are there offering prayers (even folks you would not expect to offer prayers). Offering good thoughts. Offering, in some cases, real concrete help. When people have something tremendously good happen (as in Wunderkraut's "gotcha day" for Mei), people are there ready to celebrate. Even when people are having problems that really aren't problems in the wider cosmic scheme of things (like my little meltdown of last week which really WASN'T that big a deal except I was in a place where it was hard to see my way out of the pile of things...kind of like being in a room full of manure, shoveling like heck, but still seeing no sign of that pony), people will offer support and caring instead of an "Oh, get over yourself already." (Although perhaps in some cases, with my "stuff," a firm "Ricki, get over yourself" might be what I actually need to hear).

But anyway...I don't know where I'm really going with this and I don't have any punchy way to wrap it up in a neat package, but I have to say I'm glad the Internet exists. And not just because I can order yarn and books and fabric and tea and have them delivered to my door, and not just because I can look up information on any movie I might have seen on tv and been asking "who was that guy and was he also in that other movie?" I'm glad the internet exists because there are a lot of caring people out there who are on it and who share the goodness of their hearts, and their humor, and their expertise and advice with other people WHOM THEY HAVE NEVER MET.

It's kind of a mindboggling thing when you think of it.