I love the Internet. I can't say, however, that I'm always overly enthused with the results the Internet gives us.

Take, for instance, my family. I have blogged previously on why it is in my own best interests to keep my family at an arm's length; specifically my mental health as regards a family that has always been quite adept at putting me down and helping run my self perception to ridiculously low depths. The more I am away from my family, the more I grow in my own sense of self and self worth.

So why do I feel so lousy? Well, I do a bit of surfing for friends and family from time to time, and came across one such blog. It was well written and it was good to see that yet another in the circle of people with whom I share the accident of common DNA is doing well and prospering in their life. But I couldn't help but feel like the Scrooge looking in with the ghost of Christmas Past upon the happiness and joy that he had known years ago with Fezziwig and the friends he left behind. There is joy in knowing that all is well, but a certain sense of regret that the family I was born into by chance couldn't also contain friends I had grown with by choice.

I am not, as with some, filled with any sense of self righteousness or false self perception of a person done wrong. I am somewhat less than a hero, but somewhat more than a nothing. While I would dearly love to reach out to this person and others, I cannot do so at the risk of the relative security and tranquility I have worked so hard to build.

And so, I must stand at a distance, the forgotten stranger, looking in on a family that was mine. With no regrets for the past and only hope for the future.

(sorry this is cryptic, but it is necessarily so).