Stepping Back....

Beep...Beep...Beep...Move away from the blog.

I don't know what is right anymore. I can't get anything right anymore.

It isn't that I'm not trying. I have been desperately trying to create some kind of community since I had children. I know there are obstacles. I just can't seem to make it work. I'll think that something is developing, and it disappears. People are busy, they live far away, they don't eat what we eat (or we don't eat what they eat), the guys don't have anything in common...yada, yada, yada (somehow that Seinfeld phrase seems so appropriate here).

I want to leave California. I don't think this is the place to be in light of peak oil and climate change. Leaving however, takes us away from our families. We may not see them all the time, but we see them often. The family community is really all we have. No one is going to pick up and leave with us. We'll be alone.

Of course, we're not leaving tomorrow. There are preparations to make and we have to decide where to go, how to pay for it, and what kind of work we'll do.

I feel so alone most of the time. So different. I struggle more than other people I know. I think I understand better when J-Baby tells me that talking about someone cutting their arm makes him feel like his arm has been cut, because I feel that way too. This deep empathy is a gift, and a curse. I can't shut off the feelings when I think about factory farming or even killing humanely raised animals. It extends to deep sadness at the plight of migrant workers, to the animals killed in the harvesting of crops, to animals in shelters...I am a mess, and I can't fix anything.

To live, for me to be alive, means that animals and even other humans die. Even when I do my very best to not cause that, I do. I couldn't reconcile that very well 18 years ago, and now that I am no longer numbed into not caring, I'm still not handling it very well.

So I'm lost. I worry incessantly about the environment, and animals, and people less fortunate than I am. I cry over abused children, starving children, dying babies. I cry because children in my own country grow up in home that are bastions of abuse, alcoholism, and drug addiction. I cry for everyone who lives in poverty, and for every child that is ever struck, and for the children like my son who have such a hard time fitting in.

I don't know what is right anymore. I don't know what to do.

I do know that spilling it out to an unseen audience isn't the answer. Especially since it is a monologue 99% of the time. I might as well just write a book.

I know that sharing ideas, joys, and fears with an online community, no matter how long I have been there, isn't real. Some of the people are beyond kind. I treasure that. It just isn't real! No one there can really be part of my life. It's an imaginary game we play.

I say that, because most everyone I know here, in the real world, falls short when it comes to being part of my life. I am sure that I fall short too. We wrap ourselves in armor and we don't let people in. Too busy, too tired, too complicated....

I'm trying. I'm really trying. I am continually tested by fire. I emerge from the ashes changed...and it happens again and again and again. It's so painful, and yet I know it is good.

It's time...time to step away from the blog. Time to stop posting on forums. I've already my reduced my participation; taking breaks from the blog from time to time, and also from AW. I hardly participate on email lists at all anymore. It's good...it grounds me to pull away from the screen and seek out what I have right here with me. I'm closer to my husband, my children, some of my friends. I'm happier with myself. I'm ready to make it real, to create a life with what I have.

You know, there may come a time when we don't have computers anymore anyway....

(I'm leaving the blogs up for now. I'll hard copy my writings and get them on disk before I take the blogs down.)