It's just easier to play it safe on that one!
i love this topic (is it jc or njc?)!
I came to the list July 97. My very first pc, my first time on line and I found the JMDL. i'll not foreget that day. The pc was connected up about 10am. I got on it, having never used on bfore, and started to play and search the net. A little later i was annoyed to be disturbed by the door bell. I picked up the intercom to hear John's voice. I thought 'shit waht is wrong, why aren't you at work?' He said, i ahev been at work all day,it's 8pm'. Oh!
Anyway, I found the JMDL and thought, this is great, hundreds of people I can annoy without too much effort. I was in a manic phase of my disease at the time. So of course I didn't really come here to annoy anyone. i only found out I pissed you all off most of the time when I came down. I have learned to love that, what choice is there?
My first post, more or elss, was an inncoent enough one: I asked if the Whitman some of you were discussing was the gay poet Walt Whitman. all hell broke loose. i was hauled over the coals for bad grammar and also for bringing up the gay word and then it became, you guessed it, a gay bashing/gay defending thread that ladsted a while. Well,manic or not, I was really very upset by it. And because I was manic, i didn't sleep and just sat at my pc all night and day. I wrote loads of posts and was seduced by the screen with words on it. I spewed and spewed and then i spewed some more. I wrote some very personal things, made myself very vulnerable(tho id idn't know it at the time-that was still when I thought people all were good, and it was only me who wasn't ) and pissed people off. I gave people ammunition to fire at me. they did too. Some people are really not very nice. It is used to dimiss my views as the rantings of a nutter or my views are not valid because of my past. As if the people who say this are not the products of their pasts!
HOWEVER, i have also met some of the most wonderful people thru this list. I have had lovely posts from total strangers that i never hear from again, but they write and say nice things. I have discovered some things about myslef I didn't know. I discovered I was a good person. I discovered I was intelligent and not the thick worhtless shit i had been brought to believe.
I discovered that other peopl baheved appallingly and thought nothing of it. I discvoered that people could be really kind and accepting. I dsicopvred that other people could be stupid. And funny. And perverse and dogged and lovely and comapssionate, and hypocriatacal and stoic and humble and proud and ...human. I also discovered Iw as human.
Did the JMDL cure me? NO! I have had two breakdowns, long downs, a coupk,e of ups in these last 6 years. But I am far moree togtehr and confident person now than I was befoe the JMDL. And YES it is the jmdl I credit for this and so does my partner. I know people don;t believe me when i say, but before theJMDL I had no opinions! really. I didn't know i could think, that I was allowed to have an opinion. And yes, sometiems I get carried away with this new knowledge.
I am transparent, i guess, to some and my mood swings show in my posts or in the rate of them or thelack of them. tuff. I amke no excuse for myself anymore. i am as I am and amazingly am loved for it. since being myself, I am disliked by as many people and loved my more than when iwas trying to be whateverr people wanted. I prefer to go unmedicated. People on the list have even objected to that, not understanding the problems medication can cause. It is possible for me that the chikcen are now coming home to roost. i have to go into hosptial for heart tests and a possible angiogram.drugs i have taken in the past have affected my heart then. one of them, i wa stold at 19. could have cause perment damage.(having laready ahd sevre liver disease due to drugs) Maybe I am about to find out it has.
also, I have grown a thicker skin. whilst I often dreaded opening my posts when a heated thing was going on, i don't any more, it all rolls off me. the last time i allowed anyone to really hurt me or upset me was when last year someone suggested i neeed therapy because they didn;t like what I wrote. That was the last time I gave my power away. Since then i ahev learned to enjoy seeing people losing their arguments and flingin insults my way in defence of themselves,.
Despite the vulnerability, I ahve no regrets abotut he JMDL. The positive afr outweighs the negative for me. I hope the JMDL remains as it always has been, filled with good people, interesting epople. I will be veyr sad to lose it.
sorry this is long. tho on second thougths I am not. If you got this far, the apologyy is not needed. if you didn't then it is not needed.
