The past creates shadows on today

I am breaking a lot of self-imposed rules, ironically while reading others who write about online friendships.

I am writing on the iPhone (makes it hard to cite URLs) but last night as I reviewed another day of firsts, I started thinking about some posts that have caught my brain. There was Louis Gray, who reminded how sometimes we can help our virtual friends in the real world with a gesture as simple as using PayPal to pay a bill for someone in need. Kate Carruthers wrote about this need we have to know who are friend and who are foe.

I remember jumping yesterday, sharing everything about my server in the hopes a problem could be solved while I shivered my way through a night of badly needed sleep. I could hear my grandfather shouting, reminding me not to trust anyone, not even my own mother. Yet, I gave everything - more then was needed - because I was so tired of wrestling with permissions, passwords, scripts, etc.

I just surrender. My favorite books, notes and even techies are nine hours away. I am too fragile today to open my email, to check the server, to see if what was promised was done and that all is right in the world.

I want to believe .... at least for awhile longer. Friend or foe? Why can't I believe what I know from the eyes and the heart?

My grandmother probably turned over in her grave, too, as she watched me create a fake Alfredo sauce from cream cheese and other surprises. I cry later over the dinner too. I am finally cooking - but not in the place I so much want to be right now. I cry because I can't cuddle. I cry because I am cold.

I just cry. That makes me mad because big girls don't cry. Mothers don't cry. I don't cry.

I jokingly say I hope a recommended book has a chapter on how to stop all the crying. The emailed reply explains "The tears were there, crying releases them."

I carry the thought today as I visit Big Lots for the first time, demand (nicely) a printed newspaper and tell my credit card company that it is me making these out of character purchases in multiple states and yes, online, too

My daughter and I look for a college course, try on marked-down Halloween wigs, make plans for the years down the road, and ...

And I wait until I close the door on the game room turned bedroom to cry once more, wanting to believe I trusted, trust the right people, the right things, the right doctors, the right words, the right everything.

The fears are there; crying sometimes releases them.

The past is here with the people who preached and the choices I made. The new movements release the unnecessary to allow survival.

And I cry.

Updated 5/13/09 with links and fixes like . verb tenses and spelling.