Friendships

This is Race Point. Its elevation allows a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean and the Outer Cape. The sand is soft, the breeze is gentle, and today the sun was spectacular. JB, Liz and I headed here around 2:30, lying in the sun and falling asleep to that uniquely wonderful sound of distant voices nearby.

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Liz has been here since Wednesday. In many ways she is the sister I've never had. We speak honestly, bitch openly, laugh freely. I can count my closest friends on one hand and Liz is among them. I've been thinking about friendship lately. And I've been thinking about my blog friends versus my in-person friends.

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My blog relationships have changed me. Perhaps it's because we get to know one another without physical constraints, without preconceptions, without glaring idiosyncrasies, without judgements, and without demands. Whatever the reason, I find myself cherishing these relationships, and saying "I love you" more often. It's been easy to express genuine affection to my blog friends, and I'm now making the effort to let my other friends know when I feel that way about them.

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I can't even express how much many of my blog friendships mean to me. But I think it's important that I remind myself that they are not a substitution for the other friends I cherish, the friends who drop by for coffee, sit with me when I need company, hold and hug me when I need comfort, are able to look me in the eye with a twinkle grin or a suspicious concern.

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I don't want to make the mistake of believing that friendships lovingly given and accepted through blogging is enough. I need my 'real life' friends too--because there will be times when the special bonds from blogging cannot be enough, no matter how strong and loving and precious they are. My other friends, my family, the people I live among and work with and reach out to in my community matter significantly because there will be times I will want and need them here with me, breathing the same air, holding my hands, steadying my gait, both in moments of crisis and in moments of acclaim, when there will be no substitute for sharing those moments with me, in real time.

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I've been thinking about this for a while. I give myself permission to nurture my blog friendships and I want them to grow, but I also want and need to hold on to my life outside of this 3 pound laptop that connects me with special people and places I only imagined before. If any of you have opinions or ideas about how our friendships form--within and apart from blogland, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Meanwhile, may I show you more of Race Point, located in Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, in the state of Massachusetts, one of the six New England States, in the United States of America?

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It was a beautiful day today. I'm so glad to be sharing it with my friends, some who will sit on the red couch beside me, and others in Australia and England and Canada and New Zealand and Iran and India and Malaysia and the Philippines and, most recently, one very special friend just arrived from California, now close enough now to hug.