“I don’t phone you as often as I would if I didn’t know exactly what you were up to anyway. It’s not good to be so open, Penny. You really should try and keep something to yourself,” she said.

One of my oldest friends is also my biggest critic and she doesn’t let me get away with anything. She won’t give opinions when I beg her for them and gives me a lot of lip when I don’t. But each time she knocks me down with her lack of compassion or judges me for things that don’t fit her profile of reality, normality and common sense, I have to remind myself of the theory that each friend we have is a reflection of a part of ourselves and I use it to learn from her, something about myself.

So I’ve kept quiet for a while, I’ve bunkered down and the blogosphere has been calm for a couple of weeks. She still hasn’t called though.

When my car broke down and the old Beetle I was driving broke down too, I was rescued by another friend of mine; someone who, with a tremendous amount of compassion, discusses life in ways that make broken down cars seem like clever subliminal ways to be rescued by friends who have messages for you they might otherwise not have given. Hers was given with trepidation considering her knowledge of my tender heart. “I don’t mean this as a criticism,” she ventured, “but what you will probably discover one day is that when you are ready to let all of your stuff bounce around in your head more and feel less inclined to put it all out there, using your blog as a venting tool to push it away from you, that’s when you will be emotionally well.” You know when the joke sounds different but the punch line is the same …!?

I totally get it though. And I totally get that the same applies to emails and text messages that I push out there as though I can intellectualise my feelings and shun responsibility for my words. It’s my purge … my emotional bulimia.

What’s good for me is not necessarily good for my blog, and vice versa. So perhaps it’s when I’m blogging profusely that I most need that call to check up on what is really happening in my life … because when you are reading something here, I am ensconced in crisis and when I am quiet, the world is just a better place.