Hello..
I think I need to apologize for some of the undertones of my last post. It meant a lot to me that so many people wrote to me offering their support and understanding.
but I feel sort of badly because I think I did a really bad job of explaning how I was feeling, and how I was thinking of handling things. Along the way, I think I gave the impression that my “on-line” friends didn’t mean a lot to me-and that I was just going to drop those friendships. NOTHING could be farther from the truth.
I am so thankful for every person that comes into my life.. What I meant when I said I was going to do some “life-cleaning” was that I needed to re-orientate my goals, hopes and wishes for my life.
People are really important to me, without them in my life everything feels empty and meaningless. And one of the things that has been happening over the last several years, is that I now spend more time online, than I do actually being with people in person. And I think that needs to be reversed. And because that needs to be reversed, I know that it is probably inevitable that I will seem to drift away from those online relationships. It isn’t that those relationships are any less important, or somehow secondary to my other friendships..It’s just that there are only so many hours in each day, and I need more of the interactions between friends that can only happen face to face.
The people that I removed from my buddy list, were people that I haven’t talked to in months and months or longer, most definitely not those of you who are my friends.
I just really want to apologize if I hurt anyones feelings by my withdrawing a bit. To be honest, I have been struggling with depression for quite sometime and I felt that it was time I square up my shoulders and face what was causing it. And for me-probably the biggest cause was the loss of those face to face close friendships..so that’s what I am focusing on rebuildingJ
I suppose behind my chipper outlook on life is a deep melancholy that perhaps is just a part of my nature. I don’t look at the glass as being half full-I just tend to worry that someday the glass will be empty-and that I will be sitting there alone staring at it. But even if that does end up being the case, I know that the memories of my life fill me with such a profound joy-such a profound sense of thankfulness that they do make me smile. I never forget a friendship, and I never forget a kindness done to me. They mean more to me than anything.
I received an email from my brother who is serving overseas. Here is an excerpt from his last email to me:
"I got to travel a bit earlier this week, as I was up in Baghdad for a week. We stayed in one of Saddam's palace complexes--very interesting (of course I stayed in a trailer, not in the palace). I got some good photos of me in front of the palace and sitting on Saddam's throne. I'll try to send them out in the near future to everybody. Quite an interesting trip, as we flew up in a C-130 cargo plane. We heard some firefights on the perimeter of the post while we were there, but the installation is huge, probably the size of Easton, OSU, and Port Columbus combined. I've run into quite a few people I worked with in Germany and Texas, proving that the Army is a very small place."
I love how my brother is so nonchalant about flying into a war zone.... He sent me some pictures as well, and I hope to share them sometime soon.