There was a sad, yet oddly fascinating subject header in an online Borderline Personality Disorder support which I am subscribed to. It read simply, "Friends Without Faces". I thought about the poignancy and tragedy of individuals in a great deal of emotinal pain reaching out via their computers and, instead of coming up-close and personal with someone, there are merely words typed on a monitor.

Now this really got me thinking about how isolated so many of us are in our private little worlds of pain, reaching out and hoping that someone hears, or should I say, reads, that desperate cry for help. It's a great deal like sending a message off to sea in a bottle. Someone said that to me at one time and it sunk in, for that is largely what the Internet is: A vast explanse of ocean in which are bobbing about millions of sad bottles with messages of pain, loss, wanting to self-injure, or, more often, some lonely soul just reaching out for company of any kind.

I am not a social person by any stretch of the imagination. I live with my mother and cyberspace is my entire universe. Oh, I go out for appointments and, when I don't have a sprained ankle, as I do now, I go downtown, racewalk a lot and visit my grandmother in her nursing home.

But that is pretty much it. As I seem to have made a twenty-year career of going in and out of psychiatric facilities, I haven't made many friends outside of fellow patients, many of whom, I hate to say, do more harm than good. One woman used to phone me regularly at all hours of the day and night, saying that she was going to kill herself. After calling 911 several times and enduring her ferocious verbal abuse, I had to get an unlisted phone number for reasons of self-preservation.

That's one of the things about being borderline: Our obsessive need for attention and affection. If we cannot get it in our "real lives", we often seek it on the Internet.

Before joining my BPD support list, I would often act out in my writing listserve, which is extremely inappropriate. Those people are there to share their writing, critique poetry and prose and talk about current matters of general interest---not having to track me down twice because I had threatened suicide online. Yes, "friends without faces".

There are a lot of you out there. I read about you in the support group and just wish I could reach into my monitor and give you a REAL hug, not some "virtual" one which usually leaves one cold. After all, we need the human touch, as Bruce Springsteen sings and we don't get that in cyberspace.

In the background of this article I have several photographs of College Avenue in Athens, Georgia, where the members of R.E.M. attended and got together back in 1978. I have used it because many of my close online friends are people I have met via R.E.M. newsgroups and listserves. What saddens me is that, with the whirlwind life I have been leading on a high and getting ready for my book to come out, I have neglected these special, kind-hearted and compassionate folk who reached out to me in rec.music.rem two and a half years ago when I posted a letter about my illness and how the song, "Everybody Hurts" literally saved me from suicide.

The response I got from that article was staggering---I could not believe how R.E.M. fans, in particular, are so quick and kind to reach out to someone in a great deal of pain.

Had I to do it over again, I would not have exposed all my skeletons and scars publiclly, because I am sure that many found it all very upsetting, but the friends I made due to that post are some of the nicest people I have met on and off the Internet. People like Val Hill (Hi, Val!), MJ Fine, Mark, Anne,Heather, Laura and Lin Wright, have been so good and kind to me. There were many in the past as well but these kind souls have stuck by me when I broke down after writing my book for two years and hung in there, seeming to know that I needed them to keep in touch.

Ihope they are reading this page because it is dedicated to them. I have been extremely self-absorbed these past months of my high, as I generally am when slighly psychotic. But these people are in my thoughts and in my hearts. Lin even lives in Athens and so that's another reason I chose this background.

Yes, perhaps you are merely "friends without faces", but it's the heart that holds the love, respect, the compassion and the kindness. Words can say a great deal, and, unlike the phone, we have time to think about what we want to have come across to the other person. I have been guilty, numerous times, of posting before thinking carefully and it has cost me. But it is all a learning experience.

So how many of you out there with some form of mental illness are basically doing all of your socializing online? I am willing to bet that it is a goodly number of you. Is this the trend of the future? Are we going to have less and less face-to-face contact and more Internet interaction? Is that the theme song of the next milleneum?

I hope not, because even with my dear online friends, I cannot go out to the movies with any of them or just to the coffee house for a mug of cappuccino. Instead, we sit in our isolated rooms or apartments while the rest of the world buzzes away outside.

I deeply treasure and respect my online friends, all of whom I hope are reading this so you know my absence has not been due to lack of caring or thinking about you. But "friends without faces" sure beats the un-interactive television, so I suppose one could conclude that it is better to have cybernaut friends rather than none at all, as I did before coming online in early February of 1995.

I think if we all work together, we can overcome the worst parts of our illnesses; not by dwelling on our symptoms or by ranting about how badly off we are, but more a sharing of coping techniques and encouraging pep talks when people need them.

I avoid reading some of the posts in my borderline support group, not because I am deliberately being mean or spiteful, but because they hit far too close to home. I regret that I am not as strong as some of the members, but things are getting better.

In conclusion, we may spend a great deal of our waking time with our "friends without faces" on the Internet, but if you consider the alternative: Lying in bed like a vegetable and half- watching A&E mysery reruns every weekday afternoon (yes, I have been there, and not so long ago), then these "computer companions" are worth their weight in gold. The Internet has not only made me a better writer, but more independent and considerate of others. I just need to get my prioriies straightened out very shortly and get back on track with my dear online friends before they desert me.

The Writers group has been a lifeline as well as the R.E.M. groups. I have met and gotten to know scores of fellow authors who communicate and enjoy each others' company. Maybe they don't have faces, but their souls come shining through all the cables, wires and hardware. And that is something for which a lot of us can be very grateful.