How fortunate it is to be born in this age. Truly an onlookers’s delight. Anywhere you click you can tunnel through the thoughts of those bold or (potentially) desperate enough to be understood, to at least start something, but I’ve always said that writing online is the bird cage. Or at least the pacifier; our neighborhood arsonist can delete pages instead.
Somewhere in the last few years it became impossible to imagine anything other than perusing around silently. And it’s so strange, because you’d figure any interest in others would be motivated by further interactions.
To read about people in so much pain, or inquisitive about things one could share, but inevitably so convinced that there aren’t any ideas or presence to convey. We’re just the guards until the body flips – we’re just the messengers. Nothing is owned and anyone can take this spot; may as well forget. You can take this nickname if you want. To wait for someone else to beat the arcade high-score, machine is titled whatever you want.
I’m not sure why I get to read misery journals while doing absolutely nothing. Watch it fly around all the other eyes but the silence stays. Believe me, if we were neighbors, maybe it wouldn’t be this way.
Do you think it’s wrong that, as long as you had no direct interaction, you’re safe and excused? I mean that’s how MK-Ultra works; wash your hands while Oswald rampages in his insecurities.
My younger self may be a little uncomfortable with such realities. It was more comforting to think otherwise: that if you write enough words to someone they’d feel something better; where tiptoeing around topics in an attempt to assuage the fragility embedded, did, in fact, work. You could really kid yourself thinking that over-doing the accommodations could make a visit more palpable.
But I learned that silence works just as much. And however much pain or confusion you’re reading, only suffering seems to bestow the wisdom, personally packaged and configured.
I made this forum, and thought to post it on the subreddit, but I keep creating and deleting the post because I click through the users and they’re all people I probably would never talk to or have anything else in common with. I mean the whole concept is something from four years ago; I guess you could kid yourself buying things changes things, but oh well. Got stuck with a domain for another year.
I guess it all traces back to the cred: “go do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t bother me”. And if you keep the more distasteful reality silent – that while someone is in the depths of despair and you’re just watching – then all is permitted. It’s real nasty to state the reality of the situation. Far more comfortable to keep in line that, well, I have nothing to do with it so what else is there to do?
But I just think my younger self would say I lost my humanity. And I can’t really argue anything back about that. Beyond whispering that it’s hard to tell who’s friend and enemy, or that it’s not my place, or that I can’t see the words to solve this situation.