Yes. We really did.

In February of 2006 I started writing on/in this thing called a blog on myspace or whatever the hell it is that came attached to my msn IM account. I wasn't doing anything but writing because I needed to. There just seemed like so much to get out. The thought or idea that someone might actually be reading what I wrote was damn near inconceivable. Not like people wouldn't, it just didn't occur to me that I showed up in the world at all. I wrote knowing that a handful of people were reading and I knew these people. I didn't mind. It was less lonely or something like that. Maybe having an audience helped open up all that clogged up mental plumbing.

In January of 2007 I came to Typepad for its editing and posting feature function thingies and I actually had to pay for it! I wasn't bothered too much about that and figured I could always opt out after the free trial period or just not continue. What I didn't count on was actual people showing up and reading. Real people. People I couldn't see and didn't know. Strangers looking into my life. It scared the mutherfking Stuffing out of me. I almost quit the first time somebody read a post and ripped me a new orifice for it. A perfect stranger who knew nothing about me and came uninvited into my um, private journal.

Oops. It's not private, is it? And that was the beginning of Alecto's Great Adventure.

From January 2007 through now I've documented a new career, a budding love affair with eating out of my own back yard, the trauma and financial and emotional damage of picking up the pieces after my fifteen year old stopped speaking to her father, falling through my own ice floe into the deadly waters of mental illness and the god awful shock of my marriage coming to an abrupt halt out of that (in sickness and in health apparently have terms, limitations and deadlines. sigh.).  When my marriage fell off the planet I took most of my writing offline into a locked blog with exactly four readers none of whom are related to me by blood or marriage. They witness. I write. Just like what happens here but out of the public forum. And at the end of my one year of Living Dangerously that blog shuts down and it all has to come back here (not the drama and trauma, just me, ok?).

Backing up a bit, I'm going to guess about halfway through 2006 I discovered blog surfing. You know, where you read a blog and follow the links that follow the links and sometimes you find some really cool stuff. And sometimes you shock the bejesus out of yourself like the time I found the post on labiaplasty. I'm still scarred. Seriously. And sometimes you find the juice. The juice can change your life, your perspective, your belief systems, your choices, everything. If you don't back away from it. Backing away is the easy part. What if you don't back away? What happens next? What's possible?

The photograph at the top of this post is possible.

The only thing I'm bummed about is the fact that I've got that beach dress covering my knees and you all can't see that we're nearly exactly the same color under the very same sun and maybe we aren't so different as we might seem up front.

Once upon a time I found CG (second from the left) through Lewis (he's not in this pic but I bet he sure would have had a good time if he had been!)and from CG I found Cielo (far left) and they'd known each other since 4th grade. I had to make a blog for Florkow because she's an incorrigible unblogger and tagging her was getting difficult (second from the right). I've had Florkow since 1997 with a really God AWFUL hiatus in the middle. We all, strange and wondrous creatures that we are from completely different planets picked up and drove to a campground in North Carolina where we discovered the inexplicible.

Honest and true intimacy. In the company of women we found ourselves.

Out of the blogosphere. Really. No shit. (who knew?)

Love. 

Bon Courage. Really.

Comments

[Meadowlark]

I loved this post.
As a person with very, very few real life friends, it gives me hope.

[alecto]

Dear Meadowlark,

Close your eyes and reach your hand out.

Love.

Alecto

[Amy]

You are all gorgeous. Of course I noticed that!!!! I knew it anyway, but seeing you all together - well, the shine, the glow, the light --- it is powerful.

[Madeline]

That is so cool!

[okjimm]

OK. Story of my life, day late dollar short. blog short.