Talk Thursday - The Network

For most, there are people you go through you life with; your parents, siblings, spouse(s yes, plural if you’re me,) and your children if you don’t piss them off during those formative years. People who have shared specific journeys with you, draw on those same memories, and remember. Friends and acquaintances, on the other hand, come and go. The boulders and flotsam in our lives that we flow against and around get caught upon in our (and their) trials and tribulations of life. But inside all of this is a group of friends who become the other half of you, a sisterhood of like minded souls.

Mine is a diverse group who during their own journeys, have traversed the level five rapids of life. Survivors of the same traumas and disasters that have shaped us, molded us, ground us into who we are today. Each offers their own battle stories, insights, possible solutions, and identify with me and my circumstance through something that is reflected in their own past. They are my positive reinforcements, offering their tears, support, and a listening ear. They can also smack me upside the head with truth when need be. They are the support systems of my life.

My network isn’t made up entire of females, I can count a guy or two among the rank and file of my sisterhood. They include my husband, sister, my mother, my daughter, and all the rest are people I have never laid eyes on. People dear to me, while I am terrified to me them face to face. Although one or two of them I have met over the phone for an intervention, or two, of art rendering dialogue.

None of them watch the same TV shows I do, read the same books and authors, listen to the same music, or even dance to the same piper. But they all are mirrors of me. They reside physically across the universe and metaphorically right inside my computer. Their IM’s flash joy on dark evenings, sunshine on rainy morns, and devote silliness seven days a week, when levity needs to over throw the oppression of my work a day world.

Some are Catholic; some ex-Mormon. Others are Wiccan, pagan, or confused. Some just don’t believe period. I love them all. Some are republican (okay very few, but she gave birth to me and I love her.) Some are Democratic, while others are just politically apathetic. Some are vehement in their stance and some are adept at change when faced with great logic. But they are all giving of themselves.

Their words paint worlds in my mind’s eye. Their abstract colours sing to my depths. Their poetry creates vistas for my imagination. And their prose resounds in my soul. They are my network; they are the other half of me.

Sith,
Cele