hello, internet.
it's been a couple months. i'd say i was sorry ... but i'm pretty sure nobody expects anything else of this blog lately. :P
part of the reason it's hard for me to write is because most of the ideas that come to me seem really ... heavy. (astonishing, i know. the depressive's ideas seem heavy. what gives.) believe it or not, i'm highly invested in the idea of spreading positivity on the internet and making the world a better place, and it's difficult to wrap my mind around sharing my personal thoughts and experiences when my voice is too worn out to represent with anything but periods and lowercase letters.
on the other hand, my values also prioritize other people's attempts to demystify their own greyspace and personal traumas on the internet and elsewhere as some of the most important work going on in all of the media, which basically means I'm a hypocrite. i publicly applaud the courage of others in laying themselves bare for all to see while my foot is covertly nudging the rug to cover back up my own unseemly parts, lest, heaven forbid, somebody SEE them and NO LONGER LIKE ME.
(oh, look, there are the capital letters)
part of it, i think, is that communicating takes so much work. the puzzle of deciding what to put in and what to leave out, how to generate intimacy without oversharing ... there's simply too much material to put it all in. how do you balance between the good and the bad? how do you edit a story to make it seem complete?
lots of questions without time for answers. right now I'm at the point where this post is already starting to seem long and I'm wondering if it's time to call it quits -- but I haven't actually said anything. and this is the struggle, always. lingering outside your roommate's door, wondering if you should knock and say hi, wondering if you've already bothered her enough. sitting beside your friends in the institute classroom, knowing they care about you but questioning why, wondering what any of them would say if they knew how badly you just wanted to be held.
the greatest irony of human existence is that we all feel so incredibly alone, and we all think that we're the only one. it takes bravery to reach out. it takes guts to stand up and say, hey, friends, I have an eating disorder. it's so hard to find the nerve to confess that you are not okay, not happy alone, that any of these people who love you could wrap their arms around you and hold you tight and it would literally never be too much ... except that when they do, you hug them for the requisite four seconds and if you're really brave then you hold on for fifteen and then you pull back because heaven forbid if anyone you loved ever knew how much you need them. we'd rather die than admit that it's killing us to sleep alone.
and then there are the other things we aren't saying: that we think someone is so beautiful, we could watch them walk down the street all day. we admire someone so much we're petrified to talk to them. we wish our body looked like hers, and she wishes her body looked like ours, and NONE of us EVER SAYS ANYTHING. most of us are sitting around in our rooms, dying alone in a crowd, and holding ourselves back from engaging with the people we really want to because we are 100% certain that they have LOADS of friends, all of whom are better than me. he is so handsome, she is so smart, nobody like that would ever waste their time on me.
well, i'm calling bulls#^%. you is funny, you is smart, you is half the reason somebody else is hiding in a closet and crying out to God for the guts to reach outside. probably also you is a coward like me. it's very easily to hypothetically believe you are worth something. it's a damn sight harder to show that something to another human being in all of its naked, unedited glory.
vulnerability is so much riskier than dying alone.
live dangerously.
(and if you need someone to hug you for about an hour, by all the glory of the western sunset you come and find me. i am always game.)
Sarah
