Tonight has been full of internet wanderings.
It started with a walk down memory lane, re-reading old messages between my french pen pal and myself. It's been, gosh, two years-ish since we last messaged each other anything of consequence. As I went further and further back I was amazed at the frequency and intimacy of our messages over the years. I had forgotten what a huge part of my life this person across the world was for awhile. What a tangible dream he had seemed to be. I couldn't help but playing the "what if" game as I continued reading further and further back. "What if" I had gone to visit him? "What if" I had invited him here, helped pay for tickets even? But eventually I stopped, and was able to stop "what iffing" and instead think "how lucky" I was, to have had him for awhile. Our messages were most frequent during some of the hardest transitions in my life. I had a distant friend caring for me, cheering me on, giving me something to look forward to every time I logged onto my computer. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
My musings somehow led me to a new friend's blog. Y'know how that happens, you click on one thing which leads you to another and another and then suddenly you're reading a blog you most surely were never meant to see. This friend has been going through a tough break up and I most definitely found his outlet for venting his anger, directed toward his ex and meant to be swallowed into the abysmal void that is the blog world. Lost in a sea of white noise, young adults getting things "out" that no one really wants or needs to hear, but will fester if not released in some way. But sometimes, these things are found. Not by some anonymous blog-reader, but by a friend who cares and who reads each pained word with sympathy and care, wanting to understand how better to be there for you. In the end is a realization that there is no "better" way. I'll do my best and still, that blog is there. There will be moments when that blog is all the friend you need. The outlet that won't return sympathy, judgement, caring, anger. Just the silence of your own words staring back at you, a chance to say the things you can't say to the person you want. Never knowing if they will or won't see them, but feeling like they've been said.
Which led me here. To re-read my own words that at some point, were worth saying. Few and far between, cryptic to most, they hold such value. Because they represent my heart at it's various stages of life thus far, bursting at times and needing a place to be "heard." Sometimes out of joy, other times confusion, even now and then from pain. I cringe at some things, but there is even value in the cringe-worthy. To see where I've been and what I've felt, knowing where I've come, wondering where I'm going. Here is a place, of very little consequence to most people, where I get to leave it all.
My little bit of white noise.
