Not Exactly

I’m tempted to remove my blog from yesterday. The one where I called myself a Hoor. And why would I take it down? Well, a hoor is a bit harsh for my internet activity. I don’t visit adult sites. I don’t send dirty emails. I don’t behave unseemingly. I just like reaching out to and hanging out with my friends in cyberspace. Its fun. It fills the hours when I’m bored or lonely. And it makes the world feel smaller. More accessible.

However, the internet is bad when one (i.e. me) uses it as a substitute for seeing real life friends. It’s bad when posting comments on people’s pages is considered socializing.

What I’ve realized in the last week is that I don’t get out enough to be with people. People in the flesh. I don’t hug real people enough and I don’t sit with them for coffee or lunch enough. I don’t go on walks or listen to their bad days–in person–enough. My contact is email, net, and as a last choice, phone, as I’m not really a phone person (my boyfriend would disagree but that’s because I can’t put a web cam on him…yet).

I don’t know if its being a mom, a woman, or just being my age but I need to spend more quality time with the people I love and stop chasing after what’s not real. I need to be more in my body and less in my head. Because I live in my head a lot. I make up stories, I write them down, and I sit by myself for hours and listen to my thoughts. I guess that’s fine because I get checks in the mail for these isolating behaviors but every now and then I want the real thing.

I want to see my friends faces when they smile. I want to tell my friend in person that I’m sorry she’s moving back to California. I want to go sit near my friend’s bed as she recovers from hardcore surgery. I want to have coffee with my friend as she tells me life is crap and it’s all downhill from here and I want to be there because I know what the life-is-crap day feels like. I’ve had those days. We’ve all had them. And they’re so much better when we’re not alone with our thoughts. They’re so much better when we’ve got someone in person caring.

This weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, I’m staying home, traveling no where other than to my friends houses and hopefully they will also travel here, to mine.

I’m taking time to be there in person. I’m climbing out of my head, away from my desk, apart my stories. I’m not going crazy because I’ve a book out in the Fall. I’m going crazy because it’s so hard for me to admit that I need people.

So to all my people. I need you. And I love you.

Even if I don’t pick up the phone and resort to email.