hello Desdimona and Pappy
how sad it is to witness sole posts from people who have so much to share, so much experience and undoubtedly so much support to give. and now it seems you are lost to this forum.
what is it about this paralysing anxiety and dread that grips us, that causes the very action of posting anonymously on an online forum to still be shrouded in fear and provide us the opportunity to exercise our self-loathing and irrational thoughts?
one thing that seems to characterise this thing is aloneness and a living, breathing sense of 'apartness' and 'separateness', and here we are provided with an opportunity to release ourselves from the shackles of that aloneness into the company of others whose experiences are similar. it may be a brief release, for just the amount of time it requires to depress the submit button or to read the echoing words of another's post, but it exists on some level.
what is it about this disorder that makes our thinking fraught with anxiety and trepidation about putting our words into the ether for public scrutiny? the terror of posting, the consequent anxieties of what others will think of us and our words, how others might misinterpret our words, how we might say something wrong, how we torture ourselves later for our perceived stupidities in posting, how we feel when we re-read what we've posted or even merely think about what we've posted, the trepidation and fear of opening a reply post and undoubtedly even worse, the wretched, worthless feelings we experience when our posts are left unacknowledged and unreplied, leaving us then to call upon our irrational thoughts to manifest the many reasons why others ignore us and find us too distasteful to even warrant a reply.
but i'll put myself through this again.
and i hope you two return to posting.