My childhood was fairly isolated. I had no social life to speak of and only a couple of friends because my mother was terribly overprotective. I was even isolated from extended family. My dad wasn’t fond of my mom’s side of the family, so my brothers and I were effectively cut off from cousins and aunts and uncles. We’d go years without speaking to them. It was pretty pathetic.
I grew up, but outside of my wild college days (when I made up for lost time), my life continued to be isolated, especially a few years after getting married. Not by choice, mind you, but there was work, family, and more work, expectations, and mistakes that took precedence over a social life.
I fell into a rut. Working at home made the isolation even worse. I could go days without leaving the house. I never had a chance to make new friends.
And even though my father wasn’t around to forbid me from calling my cousins, I didn’t try to rekindle those relationships (please forgive me Toria and Maria!). I figured since they all lived so far from me, how could I develop a relationship over the phone or through email? It just wasn’t the same as seeing them in person. I avoided reaching out because, if I wasn’t going to do it right, I wasn’t going to do it at all.
That was before July 2011. After July 2011? A totally different story.
So what changed for me?
This week I’m blog-sitting for Elena Aitken (one of my cyber sistas) while she’s on vacay. I’m headed over to her blog right now to finish this discussion and I’d love for you all to follow me over there because I want to tell you all about how I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of having cyber friends…
