Surfing the Internet is becoming a dangerous activity for me.
The day after I wrote my post, “Is It a Relapse?,” about how very scared I was of returning to the Black Hole (or the “dark holes” as Mother Teresa said), I wrote a reader to thank her for her comment on the post. She wrote back and mentioned her blog, so I checked it out. (Because I like to help support fellow bloggers …. So if you have a blog, please mention it to me and I’ll try to find a way to incorporate it into a post.)
Her post that day was a celebration of my relapse, “so little miss perfect DOESN’T do everything right.”
I came away hurt, of course, feeling exactly like I did when in fourth grade my best friends gave me a letter of constructive criticism, which detailed each of my qualities that they found annoying (Close to thirty years and tons of therapy later, and I can’t forget the bloody letter).
But whatever. I need to embrace this (mean) chick because she suffers from depression too, and so she is a soul sister of mine (as are all women who suffer from a mood disorder—the men are brothers of course).

Then last week, I was looking around at other mental-health blogs because it seems that you, Beyond Blue readers, appreciate when I can send you to another useful source, like I’ve been doing with James over at Finding Optimisim.
I’ve visited “The Splintered Mind” by Douglas Cootey before, and I like his style, because he has a good sense of humor (and in my mind, you can’t write about this stuff without a funny bone, or else you are going to depress people even more.
But the blog post I read was about whining, specifically my whining, and how he really didn’t want to sound like me so he was going to try to keep it positive.
I felt the punch in the gut again. Then I did the responsible thing: sent his post to a few of my good friends to get their take (and to ask them “Do I whine? Is it annoying? Do you like me? Does anyone like me? Will anyone show up at my funeral?”). And they didn’t think it was a slam on me at all. They actually thought Douglas was complimenting me, in an indirect sort of humorous way (all of a sudden wit lost its appeal).
So I read it again, and I wasn’t as offended. I even sent him an e-mail telling him I liked his site very much and I was going to make a concerted effort to link to his stuff more often.
I think I’ll wait a little bit before reading another blog, though. All this not getting your feelings hurt is rather exhausting.