Everyone has their own reasons for blogging. I was lonely, pretending to be married when there was nothing in my relationship with my husband that resembled loving interaction, sure that I had tried in every way I possibly could to make it work, including many years of counseling. I was also exhaused after standing beside him through a long, bitter, bloody patent fight. I was silently screaming and needed to talk about what was really going on inside of me.
I envy the people who are comfortable posting their pictures and their real names right up front, on their blogs or in the Face Book, Craig's List or Orkut. Now, I know full well that it's possible to encounter enemies online, but since 1998 I've had real enemies in my real life, real people who, until recently, knew where we lived and aimed to do us harm. They caused us great hardship, which continues to this day, so the anonymity of the internet seemed like safe haven to me, by comparison.
Through last summer I blogged away, really ranting, as I so clearly initially intended, without readers, until sometime early last fall, when Mr. Bob stumbled onto my blog and left a comment. Now, it just so happened that during this time, I was ranting about politics, passionately and often, and Mr. Bob came and commented every time. Before I knew it, other folks followed, and I think it is likely that most of those other folks were also bloggers Mr. Bob found, on whose blogs he also commented, and we became a community of sorts. Then, in November, my world, which had been hanging in a precarious balance for a long time, fell apart, and I landed, stunned, outside of my marriage, exhausted, terrified and free, and I stopped blogging, but Mr. Bob (among others) never stopped coming to my quiet corner of the blogsphere and asking after my welfare, reminding me that this community was here and waiting. I tried to make sure I acknowleged comments on my blog board or in the comment sections of my most recent post, which sometimes was more than a month old, so that those readers who were checking in even when I wasn't writing, knew that I was out there, safe and would be back. I am grateful to each one of you for your kind patience and your support.
I like the notion that the things I have already written can continue online, at least for a time, should something terrible happen, whether to me or to one I love, which might render me unable or unwilling to post, so I want to say this now, to the people in my "real life" who come here and read this (that means you, Sister M, Texasgirl, PR, KJ, CW & CM): You are charged with coming to my blog and posting the sad truth, whatever it may be, on the blog board in my gutter, if something terrible happens to me and I can't.
Our Mr. Bob was gone from posting or commenting for a while this month, and we were all worried about him. As it turns out, he was in the hospital, which some of us assumed, because we knew, short of that, he would be checking in. I'm just happy to report, which many of you already know, that he's recovering at home and plans to continue among us, writing and commenting, when his strength returns. While he was gone, I took some time to check out the other blogs linked in his gutter, his listed friends, and thought of what would happen should one of us quietly vanish, so, even in his absence, he made me think about how I will carry this forward and placed me in interaction with others.
Now, I'm not so sure of the proper protocol of this business of adding links to our gutters, but have tended to just slap them up there on a whim, when I really like someone's blog. During this time of worrying about Mr. Bob, I've added two: Laurie and Lilly. I reckon I will add some more, so if, by chance, I put a link to your blog in my gutter, and you don't want it there, just let me know and I'll remove it without a fuss. I don't expect anything in return, 'cause I had no expectations of readership coming into this thing, but instead found all these interesting folks, many, if not most of them, hovered around Mr. Bob.
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