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I have changed in the eight years I've been here. How much of that change is due to the Cellar and how much due to getting older I couldn't say for sure, but there are some changes I know are a result of coming here.
I feel I have gained a much better understanding of people with conservative, and even in some cases what I would consider right wing views. Likewise people with strongly religious views. Other than through my work as a local politician such people didn't feature very heavily in my day to day life. And very rarely in the context of friendly and relaxed conversation. There has rarely been a need in my life to have to set aside political or religious differences and still be able to muddle along together and even get to like one another.
Except for Dad, obviously :p but that's a different thing altogether.
Most of all the cellar has been a tremendous source of strength I think. I'd not so long since moved into my own place, after living at Mum's for two years post-split and started a new volunteer job after a period of depression and unemployment punctuated by spells working for my brother and ex-partner in their design business. I think I was bordering a little on ptsd when I joined here. The last couple of years of my relationship with J were so fraught. I really, really thought I was going a little mad. All that stuff we talked about in that other thread, about questioning the fundamentals of self and loss of any certainty about anything. All that, and itself on the back of several years of desparately trying to get the business running healthy, arguments, and money worries, arguments over the dog, arguments over anything. Then two years in mum's backbedroom. Feeling like I'd never get where I wanted to be. Not really knowing where I wanted to be, except in dreamlike terms of a house for me and Pilau.
I still get a kick out of living alone.
By the time I found the Cellar I was on my way back up, but I was still very fragile. And I still didn't really know what to do with myself. I think the cellar has been a stabilising factor in my life. I've made some excellent friends. And during some of my more self-destructive and self-pitying moments knowing the cellar is here and that if I am suddenly and painfully aware of my age, my aloneness and my aging dog (less so on the last one now ;P) I can type something into a little box and friends will see it, has been a real lifeline. And, I think it has played its part in my having the confidence to go the postgrad path.
Along with the volunteer job and the subsequent paid work, the Cellar helped me regain a good measure of my confidence and self-respect.
On a lighter note, it's a rarely dull, often entertaining and sometimes inspiring place to come for a visit.
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