The Word Cloud

Hi all. Don't think I did a very good job of that last blog. It ended up as a sort of stream of conciousness really instead of a well constructed article. A blog should read like a columists entry in a paper I guess but I'm learning.

I think in order to write the article more accurately I need to let you know a bit more info really. You see, I turned to social networking sites like Facebook because  I suffer with chronic agoraphobia and can't get out to see people. No one on there apart from my closest friends know about it though. I've been wondering whether to talk about it on here just yet as it seems too much information to divulge too soon. But then I thought "Sod It". The more people know about this condition the less stigmatised it will eventually become. 

Now I won't go into explaining agoraphobia on this particular blog but I will on a future one. I'm going to call it "Inside Out-The Diary of an Agoraphobic" and I will give more information about the condition on there (and take a humourous look at it too!) for anyone who is interested. Where is the spell checker on here BTW?

Right so I turned to Facebook to help me feel less lonely because by gum as us Northerners say it sure gets lonely being stuck in a house all day with just two moggies for company. (And yes I am aware that I fulfill the "mad" stereotype/criteria for a female cat lover!) . Anyway Facebook has had quite the opposite effect. Instead of making me feel connected to humankind it has made me feel even more lonely. (Ahh! cue the sad violin again). But I'm not on here to gain sympathy. I just wanted to get people thinking about friendship and social networking sites  and maybe even re-evaluate their own relationships. 

I guess being on Facebook has made me take a long hard look at myself. Remember that famous quote from the film "It's Wonderful Life "? It goes "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends". And that is so true. 

To be frank, Facebook has made me feel like a social outcast at times. I used to go on there nearly every day and respond to people's status or "like" something they said or did, comment on their photos etc. But rarely (in comparison) did I get people responding to my site. I felt like I was putting in all the effort! I've also had (which I mentioned in the last blog) rude emails and people ignoring my "friend" requests. Now the latter has only come from friends of my ex partner who have blatently decided to take sides but it hurts none the less. Maybe I was a tad naive to contact them but I thought the split from my ex was was amicable and mutual. 

So the bad things I've got out of Facebook is complacency and sometimes rudeness and being shunned.  So if Facebook is a true reflection of my popularity and the sum total of the friendships I have collected in life then I could get very depressed about it and think nobody loves me -boo hoo. But I won't.

The complacent people who don't bother on Facebook are usually the ones I don't know very well anyway and so they don't know me very well. The thought provoking thing is there seems to be a lot of them. They are usually people that I have worked with in the past. Now this is where my agoraphobia comes in. I've been stuggling with this on and off for years and it's very hard to get to know people if you won't go out for a drink with them and generally "do stuff" with them. Maybe if I had these people would not be so complacent. They probably see ME as the complacent one. And if I do look at this group a little more closely I have to be honest with myself and say there are a couple maybe that I let down in the past at some point and I neglected them too. Friendship works both ways.

So lesson one - (Well a reminder really as I already knew this). Tackle the agoraphobia, do stuff with people and when you make friends make them feel appreciated  and valued!

As for the friends of my last ex I shouldn't take this to heart. When you suffer with a condition like mine it's very easy to look like "the baddie" in the relationship and people will take sides. I remember one occasion with my ex when we were together. We drove all the way from Sheffield to Bradford to meet up with friends for a curry but the minute we got there I had a panic attack and we had to come home. Needless to say that made me quite unpopular. However, just recently I discovered another funnier reason for their apparant dislike of me. My rather domineering and controlling Irish Catholic Mother (sorry Mum I love you but it is true) recently confessed to calling my ex some time ago and giving him a piece of her mind! She told him exactly what she thought of him and never to contact me again! Now I hadn't asked her to do that. I had been on speaking terms with my ex so now it's no surprise that he and his friends are ignoring me. How she got his number I will never know.

Lesson two- Keep Mother away from phones. Also, try to worry less about what others think of you, cherish your true friends and .....tackle the agoraphobia!

This leads me on to another group of people I keep in touch with on Facebook-the ex boyfriends spanning over 20 years. Now why on earth I keep in touch with these guys I really don't know. I am in a very happy loving relationship now so why? I guess it's becasue I've always got on with blokes better than women so when I lose a boyfriend I feel like I've lost a friend too. If I really analyse this though I discover that I really don't get anything out of these communications  (and I'm sure they don't either). Aside from the agoraphobia it would be inappropriate for me to meet up with married ex's as i'm sure their partners and my partner wouldn't like it. So I think it's time to cut loose. 

Lesson Three - Concentrate on making new fulfilling friendships, ditch the ex's and....tackle the agoraphobia! 

Another group on Facebook is the old school/uni mates. Now somone made a very valid point here on Cloud about only maintaining these friendships if you can think of things to talk to them about in more than one email. You are so right and I will take this on board.

Lesson Four - Maintain School/Uni friendships if you feel you have enough in common.

That leaves the friends on Facebook that I currently see. The ones who accept me for who I am and the ones that know about my agoraphobia. These are the people that really matter though they are pretty low in number but I can work on that.

Lesson Five- Tackle the agoraphobia! Make new friends but cherish your true friends. Make them feel valued and appreciated and they will make YOU feel valued and appreciated. Plus -I'm the sort of person who isn't into having loads of "mates" anyway and would rather have just a small group of very good true friends. So what the hell am I doing on Facebook in the first place?

You may be thinking "If you already have true friends why on earth are you bothering about the others". The answer is I guess I'm  a  little bit  insecure and want everyone to like me. But thanks to Facebook actually I've learnt that I don't need everyone to like me. I need to like myself. A corny "reach-for-the-vomit bucket"  truth but a truth none the less. 

Sorry if this has been a bit self -indulgent. That wasn't my intention. If I may use an American therapy yukky word here- by "sharing" this I hope others can gain from it too  . I think it helps us all to do a "friend audit" from time to time. Some friendships can be quite destructive to our spirit, others very neutral and others very fulfilling and I think it does us all good sometimes to access whether we're being a good friend to others as well as they to us.