I am sitting here alone. I just read a post by a friend who writes a wonderful blog, and this time she wrote about having community and friends. She talked about the supportiveness and the importance of participating in those friendships. I've lived in this city for 28 years. I haven't created a deep community like she has. I'm not sure I know how. My previous post referred to how I found that I have friends who love me - and I do have them, I know I do. But they are disparate and few. I should count myself lucky to have them, and I do, I do. They are special to me. But in the end, I am alone. I want so much to look for support, but I dare not. I know what they will say and it's not what I want to hear. I can't even bring myself to write here, where I am almost anonymous, about the thing that is bringing me pain. It feels disloyal, and I am fearful of advice or counsel I would get were I to reveal it. So I am sitting alone and sad. Seeing no end to the sadness. I don't like myself when I am like this. I am not proud of myself. If I were to offer myself advice, I would tell myself to do what I don't want to do. What I won't do. So there is no help for it. I just have to endure. People I work with and know casually think I am upbeat and happy. Sometimes I am. And I do a good job of pretending, I always have. Then I get in my car and the tears come on the drive home. And then I rattle around my home, finding things to do, to try to make the time pass.

Come Friday, my circumstances will change, and I think, I hope, I trust, I will start to do better. Then the circumstances will change back, and I will be alone again.

Sometimes I think I am a complete idiot. But other times I am more compassionate to myself. The softening I wrote about in my earlier post has vanished, and I am hurting again.