07-20-01 @ 4:14 am EDT

I wonder why it's become so difficult for me merely to reply to people? There are at least three or four people waiting to hear from me on another site. People I ENJOY writing to, because there are very few people who will bother writing to me regularly. It seems no matter how much we write, I never feel I have anything to say. And then when they write back it takes me days to find the courage to open up their messages, if at all.

I have a bunch of mail here at Stories.com to read--including about four or five comments on an article of mine that has received eight high ratings. Eight! For me that's...a ton! :) I'm certain they have only nice things to say. But I haven't opened them yet because I'm too afraid to--as soon as I open them, I then have to come up with a decent reply--and I can NEVER think of a decent reply!

Perhaps that's the problem, other than shyness? The responsibility of having to come up with a "decent" reply? Who knows what constitutes decent? For some merely a "Hello" is good enough. Not for me. It seems everything I write has to be some kind of event else it's not good enough to send.

*sigh*

I wasn't always like this, I liked writing to people--even looked for penpals--when I first came online...but the Net is just like real life in this regard, once you find out what's out there, good and bad, you just start the cycle of retreating even further all over again. It seems all I can do with ease now is communicate in public forums where half of the responsibility isn't on me.

And now even THAT is becoming more and more difficult for me to do...I posted a question in a BPD forum a few days ago and have yet to go read the responses. People probably think I'm a snot.

I often wish I WERE borderline just so my messed-up ways made sense.

Oh well.

(If you can tell me what is wrong with this or how it may be improved--that poor rating bugs the snot out of me--The H. P. Lovecraft Word Search!--please let me know!)