Affirmation

There are times in your life when you need a little affirmation that you’re not quite as alone in this world as you thought. It’s silly, I know, but sometimes you get to that point, generally when you haven’t really spoken to anyone to any great extent in a while, when you wonder whether you’re important in anyone’s world. You briefly touch base and sometimes there’s just one line in a conversation that makes you realise that you’re not as far apart from people as you thought.

I was talking to one of my online friends earlier today and we were talking about a variety of things, and one thing that came up was one of our regular haunts that, in recent weeks, I have drifted away from. Firstly because the conversation generally revolves around Jon Bon Jovi, and as much as I am thankful to the man for envisioning and bringing to fruition, that wonderment that is known as “Bon Jovi”, he doesn’t really do it for me and I don’t particularly need to hear about how tight his pants are, or how smooth his chest is, and secondly, I tend to feel isolated when I’m there, even moreso since my li’l sis there has been AWOL. I told my friend that sometimes it feels like the commonality began and ended with Jovi, and even then not so much because of the ratio of Jon girls to the rest of us, and the inherent focus that brings; and how the topic eventually turns to husbands and kids and I end up sat there thinking “Shit, I am so out of my depth right now”.

She said one thing to me, and it’s something I never really thought about before. It kinda got burned in there …. “I feel a 'mom' connection with you since you are so close in age to my own daughter. That .... and we are shoe whores!” She then went on to factor in single-dom, work, music and the internet. And that kind of nailed it.

Out of all the things that go on in that community, I kind of overlooked those things. I was so focussed on the ‘normal’ day to day conversation that goes on in that community that I missed it. Probably more than a little to do with neither of us having spent that much time there recently; her due to the demands of her job, and me because life has been a real kick in the teeth lately and not left me with the energy to really participate in anything in that much depth. The fact that, in the grand scheme of things, in this small corner of the internet, me and this friend do have so much in common …. and we wouldn’t fight each other for the same guy.

So apart from the fact that me and 3 of my friends are actually the same person – having very similar problems and things going on with us, there’s this other connection. Another person who I didn’t realise I had so much in common with.

And internet friendships score another point in the ‘plus’ column ….