In years past I have occasionally participated on songwriting forums because of my love for songwriting. But this was different, this was ambiguous, not limited to a specific subject. It was social; and that made me uncomfortable.
In August 2009, I signed up for a twitter account. I didn't know what twitter was or how I might make use of it. After ten years of PTSD darkness and a year of therapy, I timidly made that tiny step toward an on-line presence in social media. So I signed up, peeked around a little, got an uneasy feeling and just decided to forget about twitter.
Weeks later I got an email. Someone had followed me on twitter. What the heck did that mean? I went to my account and, sure enough, someone had followed me. I had a follower. Whee doggies! I never had a follower before. My follower sent me a tweet. I don't remember what it said but I didn't tweet back.
A few days later my follower unfollowed me. That felt weird. I had a follower and I lost him.
Weeks went by. I got another follower. This time I followed him back. He didn't unfollow me. That felt pretty good. I figure out how to follow other people and followed a few. Some of them followed back. I was developing a following. More “whee doggies.”
I knew I should tweet something. But I was afraid. That may sound strange; it didn't feel strange. Fear has been my companion for all of my adult life. Things that other people took for granted, enjoyed doing, I feared. I knew that kind of fear was not normal so I always made excuses for things I couldn't do. Appearing normal was an all-consuming task. I became an expert at deception, but that expertise came at a heavy price.
But this was different. I didn't have to go anywhere or enter some ominous building. I didn't have to walk into a room with strange people in a social setting. Of the multitude of situations that required an ingenious excuse to avoid, none of those things were happening to me. I just had to post words onto a website. Days and weeks and months went by as I fretted over this tiny thing. My anxiety level got pretty high. That always happened when I obsessed over something, even trivial things.
I didn't tell my V.A. Psychologist. I had gotten pretty comfortable with her over the past year but I still didn't tell her everything. I don't have that level of trust to offer anyone. She knows things about me no one else will ever know, but she doesn’t know everything. I was afraid I might fail at this attempt; I didn't want her to know, if I did. Some sort of on-line presence was critically important to my plans for the future; she didn't know that either.
An inability to be honest about myself had been the focus of many therapy sessions and many hours of troubled thoughts before and after those sessions. I was being a little more open with my family but still too secretive about my inner struggle. And no one outside my immediate family and my therapist knew of my PTSD, my anxiety attacks, my months of depression, my fear-laden life. Twitter could be the vehicle for that revelation. All I had to do was be honest. But that was hard.
I fretted for a few more days.
On March 7, 2010 I posted my first tweet:
“After sixty years on this planet I find myself starting over, trying to understand the past, prepare for the future and live in the present.”
Later that day I tweeted:
“For my first sixty years my destiny was placed in unseen hands until I finally opened my eyes and recognized those hands as my own.”
After those first few tweets it got easier. I began tweeting about political issues along with my tweets about my struggle with mental illness. I started getting retweets and wonderful comments. My name started appearing on twitter lists, hundreds of lists. Then I started getting #mm and #ff mentions, lots of them. I had to ask what they meant. When my question was answered, I sat in front of my computer while tears streamed down my face.
I felt appreciated.
I had forgotten what that felt like.
If you have followed me, listed me, retweeted my words, commented on my tweets, or mentioned me in a #ff, #mm or other hashtag tweet, you have my deepest gratitude.
I love words and I have the soul of a writer …. but words fail me now.
If you could know how important your attention to my tweeted words has been to my recovery then your eyes might be tearing up too, just as I mine are as I write this sentence.
Thank you.