![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So here's the thing about LJ: it changes things.
I can say without hesitation that LiveJournal has, in a very, very short time, proven to be one of the most corruptive influences I have ever encountered in this scattershot life of mine. Honestly, in corruption and influence, only Lauren and Kristi/Abbey/Nik rank higher, and they did so in the long term. LiveJournal has had me for only 16 months, the first six of which barely registered. And it has changed my life.
I have met dozens upon dozens of people, chatted, laughed, shared, flirted, gossiped, carried on. I have weathered hard times, helped others do the same, been talked through more than one breakdown, developed more crushes than I can even count any more. I have made grand plans, made a fool of myself, found redemption and courage. I have rethought every notion I ever had about friendship, sex, relationships, healing. In the space of only a month or two, I have had sex by phone line and bitstream, nearly had a breakdown over a friend's entry, had that near-breakdown unfold into a series of epiphanies that are still unfolding, and said "I love you" to someone a thousand miles away whom I've never met face-to-face, and meant it.
My whole world has been turned upside down.
And yet, I still wake up in the same house. I still go to the same job. I still don't have many people locally whom I can go to a movie with. I have all you dear, dear friends, but by and large, I've never met you, hugged you, broken bread with you. Most of you I know only through the words on the screen, and the occasional photo.
So I look around me, and I see my computer. I see my unmade bed, the clean laundry I haven't put away, the papers to be filed, the cup I drank my milk from this morning. But I close my eyes, and I can feel the dome of the sky spinning overhead, maelstroms pouring through me, tremors that sometimes threaten to split me in two. And sometimes, I can mesh within and without in my mind. And sometimes, I can't.
It's just a diary, really. That's all. But it changes things. And things aren't even done changing.
I can say without hesitation that LiveJournal has, in a very, very short time, proven to be one of the most corruptive influences I have ever encountered in this scattershot life of mine. Honestly, in corruption and influence, only Lauren and Kristi/Abbey/Nik rank higher, and they did so in the long term. LiveJournal has had me for only 16 months, the first six of which barely registered. And it has changed my life.
I have met dozens upon dozens of people, chatted, laughed, shared, flirted, gossiped, carried on. I have weathered hard times, helped others do the same, been talked through more than one breakdown, developed more crushes than I can even count any more. I have made grand plans, made a fool of myself, found redemption and courage. I have rethought every notion I ever had about friendship, sex, relationships, healing. In the space of only a month or two, I have had sex by phone line and bitstream, nearly had a breakdown over a friend's entry, had that near-breakdown unfold into a series of epiphanies that are still unfolding, and said "I love you" to someone a thousand miles away whom I've never met face-to-face, and meant it.
My whole world has been turned upside down.
And yet, I still wake up in the same house. I still go to the same job. I still don't have many people locally whom I can go to a movie with. I have all you dear, dear friends, but by and large, I've never met you, hugged you, broken bread with you. Most of you I know only through the words on the screen, and the occasional photo.
So I look around me, and I see my computer. I see my unmade bed, the clean laundry I haven't put away, the papers to be filed, the cup I drank my milk from this morning. But I close my eyes, and I can feel the dome of the sky spinning overhead, maelstroms pouring through me, tremors that sometimes threaten to split me in two. And sometimes, I can mesh within and without in my mind. And sometimes, I can't.
It's just a diary, really. That's all. But it changes things. And things aren't even done changing.
