"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

To get the ball rolling here I'll start off with some of my favorite recurring thoughts. Apologies to my friends who have no doubt already heard me speculate over these things before. And thank you for helping me work some of these things out out-loud. Lots of these topics will remind me of you, and I'll give credit where credit is due :)
...that rhymed.


Probably my greatest fear in life is being alone. Single girls and guys, don't get all up and arms here...that isn't the kind of alone that I mean. This is the kind of alone I mean:
You wake up one morning to find your eyeball hanging out of its socket by a thread. Well, not a thread but, you know, something that attaches your eyeball to the rest of your body...I'm drawing a blank here.


Anyways, you obviously panic. The first thing you do is run to your family/friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/roommate or whatever and ask them what the heck is going on and what you should do. Chances are they won't be much help. This is for 2 reasons: they have never experienced their own eyeball dangling from its socket, AND they are not any sort of trained medical professional.


Next (if you are me, at least) you consult Google. Why would you consult Google instead of going to the emergency room you ask?


Ok, no. I changed my mind. I would go to the emergency room immediately. BUT on my way there (since I'm obviously not the one driving with only one eye) I would consult Google on my phone. And what I am looking for is this:


"Yahoo! Forum #35987349657 Eye dangling from socket
soccermom818: One morning my husband awoke to find his eyeball dangling from his socket. We took him to the emergency room."


Instant relief. Is my eye still dangling? You bet it is. But do I feel better knowing that soccermom818's husband once had the same problem? Of course. Why? Because I'm not alone anymore. None of my problems have been resolved, but the fact that, somewhere on the planet, someone else has shared my problem makes me feel that much better.


These posts are a bonus if they end like this:
"After the trip to the emergency room everything was fine. The doctors put his eye back and within 3 days he was back to 20/20 vision!"


But unfortunately they all seem to end like this:
"The doctors in the emergency room told my husband there was nothing we could do to save the eye. The next morning he woke up and the same thing had happened to the other eye as well. Now my husband has no eyes."


And what do I do when the post that I previously trusted to make me feel better and less alone all of the sudden turns against me and tells me to prepare for an eye-less lifestyle by tomorrow morning?


I say to myself, "He must have had some other rare condition. He's probably much older than me. It must run in his family. Everyone in my family has both eyes. I bet soccermom818 isn't even real."


...and then I try WikiAnswers instead.

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"

-C.S. Lewis