"I hate that you don't have a blog," said a woman about to undergo heart surgery, as she gazed sincerely up at her boyfriend, "I hate that I don't know what you're thinking."

Mark and I burst into raucous laughter and had to pause the episode of House that we were watching to wipe away our tears of glee and catch our breath.  Seriously?  "I hate that you don't have a blog?" Really?  Yep.  That's what we personal (and dare I say it, female?) bloggers are all supposed to be like.  So divorced from real life connections, so caught up in deluding ourselves about these supposed "friendships" we have online, so obsessed with our hit count, so eager for an audience, so narcissistic, that we can't even talk to our partners or parent our children, at least not unless there's a screen between us.

The comments on the recent Motherlode post on "mommy blogging" back up this perception. There are lots of women there talking about the community and connections they've made and about the therapeutic release of writing.  And there are plenty of others saying those connections aren't real and that the children of these deluded, self-obsessed women are being sorely neglected.

And it makes me wonder, why do people think bloggers and other social networkers are so crazy and scary and dangerous and delusional?  Why is an online presence portrayed as something that precludes, rather than enhances or supplements, other relationships?  What makes friendships "real?"  Why do we believe that people don't know what "real" relationships look like?  Why does it matter so much how people (particularly women) spend their free time?  What makes us believe that online time is not, in fact, free time, but time that is being taken away from more important things?  For that matter, why do we always have to be doing something "important?"  What makes something "important" in the first place? (From what I read "important" is anything from things I'd count as truly important -- like spending time with loved ones -- to things I consider not at all important -- like making sure the house is tidy and/or we're making more money.)  What makes it ok for a published author of personal essays or a memoir to write in detail about herself, her life, her children, her friends, her family, but not ok for bloggers to do the same?

If there are any universal answers to those questions, I don't know them.  What I do know is that there are hundreds of people who have passed in and out of my life and have all seen a sliver of me, both online and offline: sitting next to me in a movie theater, driving me a few miles in a taxi, clicking on a link to my blog and clicking right back out again.  I know that there have been dozens to hundreds of lurkers in my life, both online and offline, who have seen bits and pieces of me (and not always the nice bits, nor for that matter, always the nasty ones): the neighbors who (assuredly) heard Mark and me arguing or laughing or having sex through the thin walls of our old apartment just the way we heard them, the folks at the next table in the restaurant listening to our conversations, the people silently reading my blog.

I know that I have hundreds of people I've talked to and spent time with each day over the years, who've shared a workplace or the classroom or the social space, both online and offline: coworkers, high school and college buddies, neighbors, moms at my kids' schools, folks in online discussion groups, blog readers, fellow bloggers.  Some I know well, have fun with and consider good friends.  Others are acquaintances whom I don't know, and still others I don't really like at all (and vice versa, I'm sure).

Then I know that there are people in my life, both online and offline, who are my soulmates: the ones who are family or like family, the ones who would know my voice (spoken or written) anywhere, the ones I call first when I have joys or sorrows to share, the ones who can come into my house and help themselves to a drink or a snack, the ones I laugh and cry and eat ice cream with, the ones who see me -- as me, all of me -- and get me, and are there for me, as I am for them.

Some of those soulmates are people like Jay (whom I've known for almost a decade now) and JW (who is my son Austen's absolute favorite person in the world to talk to long-distance (just don't tell his grandparents)); people I met online.  I didn't know what they looked like or what their voices sounded like or get to see or touch them in the flesh for years.  And some of those soulmates are people like my husband Mark or my friend Kelly; people I happened to meet "in real life."

I also know that I am fortunate enough to have six hours a day free when my kids are in school and my husband is at work.  I know that I spend the vast majority of that time on housework, household administration and errands that are unseen by the and unacknowledged by people both in and out of the blogosphere.  And I know that I take some of those six hours, as a gift to myself and a support to others, to write.  I know there are people who don't respect that or see it as useless and "a waste of time" because I either don't get paid (or don't get paid much) for that.  I also know that I love my life and the way I spend my days, and that although what I contribute to the world (whether in doing the dishes or feeding my kids or blogging) may seem small, it's important: just as, in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's life and work in his small town was as valuable as anything he ever could have done if he'd gone out and built those bridges and skyscrapers he dreamed of.

No doubt there are people out there who become so obsessed with some aspect of their life or group of friends that they ignore other relationships.  No doubt there are people who can't tell the difference between a genuine friendship and the high of a falsely instant connection (I'm married to someone in recovery for just that, remember?).  No doubt someone, somewhere in the world, has to conduct a poll of everyone she knows before making major life choices.  No doubt there is a mom out there somewhere who is ignoring her kids while she does something else.  But all of that is hardly new to the Internet, just as "real" friends in my life haven't been confined strictly to people happen to have met in person.

And that's why Mark and I laughed as we listened to that fictional blogger on House.  We laughed knowing that I blog (about intimate details of our lives) and he doesn't.  We laughed knowing that we were snuggling on the sofa watching House after talking for over two hours -- about everything from mundane topics, like scheduling the kids' doctors appointments, to quite serious matters about our marriage -- during which I never once wistfully opined that it would go better with a keyboard in hand.  We laughed because Mark knows me better than anyone, online or off.  And we laughed because we both knew exactly what bits and pieces of those few hours spent talking and watching TV would go on the blog and what never would.

My 12 Step group had some difficulty recently around a reading that listed some of the behaviors partners of sex addicts might have in common.  Many of the women in the group found it triggering, because they felt the list of characteristics implied there was something wrong with them, that they were "sick" for reacting to an insane situation in a way they felt was normal and understandable, or that they were being told they must have reacted in some way that they hadn't simply because they were part of Club Partner-of-a-Sex-Addict. I knew that feeling. I had had it myself around the reading The S-Anon Problem. Many of us, myself included, worried that if the reading triggered this same feeling in so many of us, it could be off-putting to newcomers, the very people we wanted to reach out to most.

So, we discussed the reading in our business meetings. Those of us who felt triggered by the reading discussed the problem with those of us who didn't. People sought feedback from sponsors, therapists and other mentors. We talked as a group about taking what we needed, and what applied, and leaving the rest. And then one night, after a discussion, we read the offending piece aloud in our meeting. "Being numb to my own sexual needs and wants," read the secretary, and one woman tentatively half raised her hand, followed by several others.

"Making excuses not to be sexual." A different set of hands shot up.

"Feeling sex is the only way to be intimate." More hands went up, while others went down.

Sometimes I joined in and raised my hand (and at least once shot it straight up with heartfelt recognition). Sometimes items didn't apply and I kept it down. No one raised her hand for every item, but every woman raised her hand at least once, and most of us more. And no one raised her hand alone.

It was a powerful moment. Suddenly this reading wasn't about us being sick fuck-ups anymore. It was about us having things in common. And in raising our hands when we identified with each item, we could see we weren't alone.

If there is one thing I know about making changes in my life, it's that I can't do it alone.  Those of you who have been clicking over to the Second Road know that I've instituted a day of spirituality and rest (a sort of personal Sabbath) one day a week, and for those of you who don't (and I don't blame you, it drives me crazy to click the links out to other sites), well, now you know.  But it occurred to me that while not being part of any organized religion is freeing (Sabbath on Wednesdays, baby!), it can also be isolating.  But then I saw a solution!  What if some of us are independent together?

We can each spend one day changing one thing about our lives.  It doesn't have to be as big as adding a whole set of Sabbath rules.  I'm sure there's something that each and every one of you wants to change.  Maybe you want to eat more vegetables or exercise more or cut down on TV.  Maybe you want to pray more or flip people off on the freeway less.  Why not do it for just one day a week?  Just see how it feels and where it leads.  And then share it.

So, if you want to join me, pick a day and pick a change.  Floss your teeth one day a week.  Go vegan one day a week.  Take a long, hot bath one day a week.  Just one.  It's not a lifetime commitment.  It's just one little day between now and next Tuesday.  You can even define "day" for yourself (daylight hours, 24 hours, whatever you want).  If you have a blog, blog about it.  Then next Tuesday, I'll let you know what I did, and provide a place for you to link back to your post (or comment and share if you don't have a blog), so that we can all share.  So who's up for it?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

Of course, I'd love a link back here, so that other people can join.  You can use the image above if you want to, but it must include credit to the photographer.  Here is the code if you need it:

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<table border="0" width="150" align="right"> <tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://aroomofmamasown.com/2009/11/introducing-the-just-for-today-challenge/" mce_href="http://aroomofmamasown.com/2009/11/introducing-the-just-for-today-challenge/"><img src="http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/ae23/mamampj/JustForToday.jpg" mce_src="http://i954.photobucket.com/albums/ae23/mamampj/JustForToday.jpg" border="0" alt="Just For Today Challenge, Hosted by http://aroomofmamasown.com, Image by http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdancing/ licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/" width="150" height="150"></a></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right"><span style="font-size:78%;" mce_style="font-size:78%;">Image by: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdancing/" mce_href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/catdancing/">catdancing</a> on Flickr<br><br /> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/" mce_href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0</a><br /> </span></td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

I went to a great 12 Step meeting this week. A lovely group of women, some of whom I'd never met, sat together and shared the kind of things we usually share as partners of sex addicts. We share about things like incest, physically and verbally abusive relationships, using sexual relationships to escape from or buffer ourselves against painful realities, using food and alcohol to help dull emotional pain, and contracting sexually transmitted diseases from our partners.

We share about how it feels to have your life fall apart and to realize you never had that life in the first place. We share about our sex lives. We share about how we've wanted to feel beautiful and to feel loved and how we've looked to other people to make us feel that way because we didn't feel quite beautiful or lovable as we were. We share the secrets that we'd hidden from others for years, the secrets we'd hidden from ourselves. We share the kinds of incredibly intimate details most people never share with anyone, and we share them with total strangers or with people whose last names we didn't even know.

When my meeting ended, we stood around chatting. We talked about some of the same thing, but we also shared little details like how far from the meeting we lived and how we'd found it. We talked about the kinds of work we did during the day and whether or not we had kids and how old they are.

It struck me that we did things in a way that was nearly the complete opposite of the way I'm used to getting to know people, the way I get to know other moms at the park or new neighbors or new coworkers on the job. Sure, we start off with "hi, my name is..." in meetings as well as out, but inside that church meeting room, we followed that right up, not with "I'm a teacher" or "I live up the street" or "I just started in accounting" or "I have three kids," but with our deepest vulnerabilities and fears and shame, the kinds of things we're supposed to keep locked safely away from the world. We cut past the details that define us, but don't say who we really are, and we filled those parts of the picture in later.

And I realized that that's one of the things I find most refreshing about situations like 12 Step meetings; I can take down the defenses I carry around to protect most of my vulnerabilities, because they are out there and understood already. When I walk into a meeting. I'm not Austen and Janie's mother or a writer or a stay-at-home mom. I'm me. Imperfect, improving me. And that feels good.

This past weekend, I had the privilege to attend a daylong class on Buddhism and recovery led by Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps. At one point during the day, we broke off into pairs to do an exercise in which we shared around our spiritual journey. I sat down across from my partner, who said, "Hi, I'm Amanda, and I'm an alcoholic." "Hi, I'm Mary," I said, "and I'm... codependent." And I thought, "Oh, that sounds so lame. She really belongs here. She has really struggled. She has real problems and real pain. I'm just a codie."

That feeling came up again as I listened to Kevin Griffin, himself a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, talk about how he wasn't just talking from theory: he'd been there and he got it. What on earth did I get? I've never had more than three glasses of alcohol in the course of a day: never enough to get sick, never enough to black out, never enough to get hung over. I've never taken a single puff of a cigarette. I've never done any illegal drugs: never even tried pot, although I've lived with roommates who smoked it regularly. I once had prescription pain medication after surgery and it made me vomit, so on occasions when medications have been prescribed to me since, I've been too scared of the side effects to take them and have gotten by without.

At one point, the issue of compulsive eating was raised. I could have said, "Ah ha! I struggle with that! There's something that qualifies me to be here." But instead I thought, "I'm not working an active recovery program around that. People here are in recovery. I am working on codependency, but that's lame and doesn't count. That's not a real problem. Addiction is a real problem, and the addictive issues I have, I'm not focusing on. I shouldn't be here. I don't fit in. I'm a poser."

Then I realized, I've had the same feelings before, "Oh, I don't have a right to be here, to be hurt, because... His life has been harder than mine. She's lost more through her actions. My childhood wasn't that bad. My parents didn't beat me. I wasn't raped. I don't have it that hard. I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I'm crazy." It was that same old soundtrack was playing again this weekend.

It's my own twist on "I'm not good enough": I'm not good enough because things aren't bad enough! Oy!

I took myself out to lunch today. Nothing fancy, just a fast food place. I was appropriately decked out for the occasion in my classy mom gear: a battered old college sweatshirt. The man waiting on me looked, I thought, older than I am. He had thin sharp features and bright eyes, but his hair was grey and his face lined. His movements were quick and nervous.

"Did you go to school there?" he asked, pointing to my sweatshirt.

"Yes," I answered.

"I went to college near there," he said, naming a very well respected school, "I majored in History and I remember that, back in the 80's, your school and mine had two of the top history programs in the region. Our department was trying to court away a professor at your school."

"Yes, I was there in the 80's," I said, naming the year I graduated, "But I wasn't very familiar with the History department."

"Ah, I graduated the year before that," he said, then gestured apologetically at his uniform and the setting, "But then life... Things..." His voice trailed off awkwardly and he looked down.

"I know — believe me — I really do know."

I thanked him for my order, and he thanked me for listening, and I walked away with my food. I don't know what happened to that man, but like that little party game that the Junky's Wife plays, I filled in his story with what I knew: with addiction or mental illness, with a hard crash to bottom and a shaky attempt to stand again. Whatever it was, it wasn't (according to the lies he once told himself or the lies I once told myself) supposed to happen. He had a college degree from a good school. And that apologetic gesture around the fast food restaurant told me that kind of thing was supposed to have protected him from whatever catastrophe had made him fall so hard that he ended up working there, prematurely aged at forty.

As I ate my lunch, I started thinking about a friend of mine who went out drinking the night before a big event. I remember saying goodbye before I headed off to bed to rest up for the next day. My friend held up a bottle of water in a parting gesture: a talisman of hydration to ward off excessive drinking and hangovers. It didn't work, that talisman. It didn't ward off the vomiting or the blackout or the face bruised by a fall or the splitting headache the next day.

The fast food worker's college degree, like my friend's water bottle, was a false talisman. And my own life has been full of false talismans too, things I thought were going to keep me safe from pain and hardship, from addiction and codependency: my love for my husband and his for me, my intelligence and my own good college degree, my external successes, my husband's refusal to touch alcohol or drugs, my own abstinence from drugs and lack of interest in alcohol. In the end, none of those talismans worked because none of them could work. Things happened, life happened, addiction happened in spite of all that. Realizing that those things couldn't save me was part of my own crash down to bottom in my codependency. I couldn't prevent that fall, but I could get up and go to work: cleaning tables, filling the napkin racks, checking the drink dispenser, starting over.

Back in the early days of my husband's recovery from sex addiction, the recovery world seemed to break down into two types of people: addicts and the rest of us who had been hurt by them. (And by the way, you couldn't call any of those hurt by them "codependent" or "enablers." I mean, you want to tell me I have a problem or that I'm part of the problem? Damn! Blame the victim, why don't you?)

The addicts, my husband and his ilk, were messed up. They were sick people. They did bad things. They were not normal. They sat at their own lunch table in the high school cafeteria of life, and believe me, that's where you wanted them. If you let them sit at your table, they'll steal your lunch, give it to the lunchroom dealer or pimp and tell you that they totally didn't and that you must be crazy because they watched you eat that lunch yourself already. Then they'd rip your heart out and eat that for lunch.

The non-addicts and I weren't like them. We were normal. We were nice (too nice). We were trusting (too trusting). We did good things. Well, ok, it was a little more complicated than that. The addicts were still (obviously) messed up, but some of their family members and partners were really messed up in their own right. They were just messed up in a way that was more likely to spy on you and passive-aggressively criticize you than to steal your lunch. (But not me, of course. Nope. I was normal and good.)

It took a while to let go of the idea that there is a normal and more time still to see that I was messed up in my own way too. I hadn't expressed it in the same way that my husband had, but my own problems had brought me to the place I was as surely as his problems had. I hadn't done anything to cause his actions. I hadn't deserved or brought on the treatment I'd received. But I'd seen the world in a warped way that led me not to recognize dysfunction. And the way I viewed the world and lived my life had caused me a huge amount of pain.

Last week, for the first time in over a year, I went to a 12 Step meeting for "men and women whose lives have been affected by another person's compulsive sexual behavior." A meeting for the non-addicts. It was held in a room where the addicts used to meet, so one of the addicts ended up in our room briefly at the beginning of the meeting and then left. She came back after the meeting to apologize for having alarmed anyone, and we got to talking. She's been in the program long enough to know my husband well. We had a nice chat and shared a big hug. Then my husband and I chatted with a few other folks and shared pictures of our kids. Although we were meeting in different rooms, it didn't feel like us vs. them to me anymore; it felt like we were all part of the recovery family, all working through our own issues, separately and together.

This week a woman I knew in high school shared snapshots of her family at Halloween; she and her husband and a few other couples had gathered to take the kids out trick-or-treating. The adults were all smiling, dressed in matching thematic costumes, and the children were adorably wide-eyed, grinning with the manic excitement of impending candy. They posed together inside tastefully decorated McMansions and on wide, green manicured lawns. Like the taste and scent of Proust's chamomile tea and a Madeleine cookie that evokes a vivid memory of Aunt Léonie's house on a Sunday morning, these pictures sent me reeling to some half-remembered place.

At one point, this woman and I had a crush on the same guy, and I spent a good deal of time in my teen years mentally comparing myself to her: putting both our attributes in neat little stacks and seeing who won. I liked to tell myself I was winning. Or even if I wasn't winning in some areas right then, I would be someday: some future day when I was that wildly successful adult I was certainly destined to be, when I would blossom like those nerdy girls in the after school specials always did, when I would somehow magically morph from Velma into Daphne. And also I would be driving a Ferrari. And it would be red.

So, yesterday, when snapshots of her family at Halloween hit my inbox, I found myself among those neat little stacks that somehow ended (in my girlish imagination) with her living out some normal life, while I rode off into the sunset, hair flying, in a red Ferrari with our old high school crush. And I found myself comparing our lives as they had played out, rather than how I thought they would.

Of course, the high school crush rode off into the sunset long ago without either of us, and neither of us ended up (as far as I know) in a red Ferrari (those don't tend to be great for transporting kids), but what struck me about looking at her was how orderly and well, normal, her life really did seem. And how that didn't seem like such a bad thing, because, by comparison, my life looked strange and isolated and insane: with my secret blog and my debts and my disorganized house and my surprising new expertise on things ranging from addiction recovery to occupational therapy. I felt this huge, oddly familiar gulf between me and the rest of the world. It's one that opens up its gaping maw most often when I drop my daughter off at school and am surrounded by all those typical looking parents. I feel like I'm a space alien who has taken on human form: among others, yet disconnected.

But then I remembered that the last time I got that feeling, I end up smiling secretly. Because who knows what people see when they look at me. Maybe one of you is standing right next to me with your secret blog and your crazy life and thinking, "Damn. I bet she'd never understand where I am right now." After all, I don't know what most of you look like, and most of you don't know me. And if I look at pictures of myself, I'm smiling with my family and friends in a house that (as far as the narrow scope of the camera lens goes) looks cozy and neat. Most of us look normal on the outside, but it seems to be largely because we present to the world the pictures we want them to see.