It’s a funny thing, when I was insane, I thought I was sane, , and now that people tell me I’m sane, I’m not so sure.

The world looks different to me now than it did. People who have mental illness eventually come to understand that they will never be completely “normal,” there are always issues and ghosts and traumas that bubble up.

Some of the most interesting messages I get are from people who have been reading the blog from the beginning. Their perceptions of me teach me a lot about myself.

There is a difference between observations that are cruel and those that are honest.

I loved the hand-written letter I got this morning from Karen in way upstate New York, many miles from me. She has been reading my blog for a long time but takes breaks when she can’t stand it any longer. She likes it now.

“I broke away,” she wrote, “when you got into rants about health insurance, self-hating, spirit healers, insurance, self-hating, at least that’s what I read.”

Recently, Karen returned to reading my blog and was startled. “You are different,” she said, “and now you sound so sane in this time of craziness.”

Karen has dreamed of getting a yellow Lab like Zinnia, but it’s never going to happen, she says. “Too old, 78, too much arthritis. Bless you, for the work with the refugee children in Albany, and the old people in your community. Keep up the photos of your lovely wife and your lovely socks and walks in the woods They bring peace into our homes.”

She sent $200 for the Army Of Good.

This letter touched me in many ways. One of the first things I did when I started going mad was start my blog, and people who read it often have a better sense of my life than I do, I am too close to it. The blog is my living memoir, my story is all there, I held little or nothing back.

I certainly feel saner than I did. I am no longer in therapy (which I was in for 30 years,) and while I would never claim to be sane, I accept the idea that I am saner. I’m beginning to manage my life well.

These days the line between the sane and insane is getting harder to see. Three things brought me back to life then. My blog was the first, then my photography, then Maria.

And I shouldn’t forget my therapy.

On the blog, I learned to face the hard parts of me and accept them. The blog was my guide, my Mother. When I was falling apart, I wrote about it and through my writing, saw the path back.

Karen is right on both counts, I was crazy then and saner now, but perhaps not yet quite sane. It’s like a spiritual life. You are never done, you never really get there, the point is that you keep going, you don’t quit.

Everything is relative. The world seemed saner a decade ago, and more and more, I feel much of the craziness is outside of me.

The point for me is not to get sane, I’m not going to live that long. Crazy people contribute to the world in so many ways. I’m not sure I want to be sane.

The point is to get saner, and Karen made me feel good about that. Thanks.