Serendipity (ser•en•dip•ity) n - the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for while looking for something else

I drafted a certain post last weekend that actually published before I was done with it.  I hadn’t realized it posted until Sunday… and there were already 10 well thought out and supportive comments on it.  So I left it.  I suppose it is actually a good illustration as to how I generally write my posts… I have a beginning and an end… and then I connect them.  It is also a great example of how, while drafting a post is a miracle of modern blog platforms, if you don’t set your time far enough ahead… it’ll post without you.

When I first started my blog… it was being used as a replacement to a hard paper journal simply out of the convenience of having it easily accessible when the need struck me to write.  I was looking for a way for me to work through a severe case of writers block.  It did get me writing everyday, which was the ultimate goal although it wasn’t writing what I had wanted to be writing on.  It also gave me a place to rant, rave, pour out my soul, and in an odd way self therapize myself to a new point of high function ability I hadn’t been able to attain in quite some time.  Still… the most unexpected thing it did through writing and interacting with other bloggers… was dispel the sensation of loneliness I had been feeling since the day my wife had left me.

So there in that moment when Beaner admitted having feelings almost identical to my own… I almost did it again.  I actually almost told her about what blogging had done for me.  I almost told her that we, as clinical depressionists (sounds really artsy when I say it that way, right?) are not alone.  In fact, we are not the only ones who feel the way we do, although our bouts happen more frequently.  I almost told her about my discovery of a community while I was looking for something to break the wall of writer’s block down.  If that is not serendipitous, then I don’t know what is.

I didn’t though.  I withheld all of this from Beaner.  It would have possibly been the same misstep that has taken me time and time down the same road with The Steff that has led me to the point of avoiding her, the person I consider my best friend.  It would have been an attempt to share a fix that I found for my own problems with someone else… who probably would not understand nor benefit from it the same way I have.  As a blogger who generally prides himself on being honest… I found myself once again withholding the truth in real life.  It saddens me that I have to be that way sometimes, but I know to a certain degree it is a necessity to maintain myself a sanctuary away from it all.

While being physically alone in the real world is a common occurrence for me, the abstract sensation of loneliness only haunts me on my darkest days… and usually the days where I forgot to pay the cable bill the month before.  Like an odd umbilical cord, the blogosphere accompanies me every day as I walk either alone or with someone… but rarely lonely.  Still, it saddens me that there are others like us out there, but without us.  Those who have no idea of this type of place exists.  Those who sit there alone… feeling lonely… when there may not be a need.  Like Beaner.

Sure, I still have my lonely moments… but that’s really what they are… brief moments because I know that there is something there for me that others cannot see.  Dave said it best with this line from his post about my original draft that was posted: But, then again, I’ll always have you.