i can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erika(This is how online journals—blogs, how I hate that name—came to be. At least from my perspective.)
Once upon a time, I was a revolutionary.
I was 14, 16, 18 years old. I was angrily, gloriously, openly mentally ill. I was—always— in love.
I was too young to know what I was doing, too young to know better. Too young to understand what it meant to live your life out loud, to welcome all criticism. I was too young to realize how big a risk I was taking, and now. . . now I am too old to learn how to do anything else.
We wrote like town criers, the purpose of our existence to scribble out these self-involved diatribes. Even rants were nothing more than tributaries always streaming, in a torrent, back to our favorite subject: us. We would carelessly disregard all criticism, furthermore, and relentlessly silence all critics by nothing more than pure force of personality.
We wrote in that area of gray that lies before shame but after self-consciousness.
I was angrily, openly, gloriously mentally ill; I had no remorse. The finer, subtler feelings of quiet self-doubt that fells Hamlet or Ophelia had no effect on me—I was too busy fighting demons to have the internal luxury of quiet self-doubt.
I could not take the time to do more than hate myself in the broadest sense, for any subtle rationale for the hatred could have been dealt with and self-hatred was all I believed I had left. The surest route to true self-hatred is always tautology: I am bad, therefore I hate myself, I hate myself, therefore I am bad. And because it was a tautology, it could not stand up to reasoned, measured thinking and so I never did that.
And so therefore I had no remorse, because if you can never spare a moment to doubt your actions—if you are so busy committing crimes, that, much like a Wall Street stockbroker, you never have time to serve for them— then you are never sorry for the wrongs you've committed.
And there in that land, that gray aisle after shame but before remorse, I survived, knife between my teeth and fingers curled as claws.
I was always in love. Whether it was with another or with the pure heady feeling of that love that needs no name: self-love, self-obsession, really, and for which self-hatred is just another side of the same coin.
I had passion—inevitably, inexorably, the black hole of my thoughts. An overwhelming object which consumed my smallest thoughts. All roads lead to Rome, and I needed no proof of the axiom, was the axiom: even the most infinitesmal flittering of my brain revolved around the object of my love/hate.
After remorse, but before forgiveness, I wrote to exorcise my demonic passion.
I wrote about everything—my self-doubt, my self-hatred, my life, my most mundane thoughts—with the myopic eye of a biographer. A detective, searching for clues—why? Why was I this way? I was a frantic housewife, cleaning to scrub up before company, the most pungent self-evaluations shoved under couches, sheafs of paper littered with diatribe raining down when you opened the closet doors.
And then I published it all—all my angry analysis, my arrogant apathy, my abusive autobiography.
Now it's all different. Now, when someone says they met their SO on the internet, you look mildly bored and ask "OKCupid or Jdate?" instead of saying but they could have been an axe murderer!
Now, we are a nation of self-aggrandizing blowhards, whales spouting into the air with the splash gone again 20 seconds later when the next Facebook update appears.
Soundbites have gone from being 45 seconds to 8, and attention spans have gone with them. Nobody reads my archives anymore—besides, they're private now. I said some things that I shouldn't have.
I said a lot of things I shouldn't have.
Once upon a time, I was a revolutionary.
I was 14, 16, 18 years old. I was angrily, gloriously, openly mentally ill. I was—always— in love.
I was too young to know what I was doing, too young to know better. Too young to understand what it meant to live your life out loud, to welcome all criticism. I was too young to realize how big a risk I was taking, and now. . . now I am too old to learn how to do anything else.
We wrote like town criers, the purpose of our existence to scribble out these self-involved diatribes. Even rants were nothing more than tributaries always streaming, in a torrent, back to our favorite subject: us. We would carelessly disregard all criticism, furthermore, and relentlessly silence all critics by nothing more than pure force of personality.
We wrote in that area of gray that lies before shame but after self-consciousness.
I was angrily, openly, gloriously mentally ill; I had no remorse. The finer, subtler feelings of quiet self-doubt that fells Hamlet or Ophelia had no effect on me—I was too busy fighting demons to have the internal luxury of quiet self-doubt.
I could not take the time to do more than hate myself in the broadest sense, for any subtle rationale for the hatred could have been dealt with and self-hatred was all I believed I had left. The surest route to true self-hatred is always tautology: I am bad, therefore I hate myself, I hate myself, therefore I am bad. And because it was a tautology, it could not stand up to reasoned, measured thinking and so I never did that.
And so therefore I had no remorse, because if you can never spare a moment to doubt your actions—if you are so busy committing crimes, that, much like a Wall Street stockbroker, you never have time to serve for them— then you are never sorry for the wrongs you've committed.
And there in that land, that gray aisle after shame but before remorse, I survived, knife between my teeth and fingers curled as claws.
I was always in love. Whether it was with another or with the pure heady feeling of that love that needs no name: self-love, self-obsession, really, and for which self-hatred is just another side of the same coin.
I had passion—inevitably, inexorably, the black hole of my thoughts. An overwhelming object which consumed my smallest thoughts. All roads lead to Rome, and I needed no proof of the axiom, was the axiom: even the most infinitesmal flittering of my brain revolved around the object of my love/hate.
After remorse, but before forgiveness, I wrote to exorcise my demonic passion.
I wrote about everything—my self-doubt, my self-hatred, my life, my most mundane thoughts—with the myopic eye of a biographer. A detective, searching for clues—why? Why was I this way? I was a frantic housewife, cleaning to scrub up before company, the most pungent self-evaluations shoved under couches, sheafs of paper littered with diatribe raining down when you opened the closet doors.
And then I published it all—all my angry analysis, my arrogant apathy, my abusive autobiography.
Now it's all different. Now, when someone says they met their SO on the internet, you look mildly bored and ask "OKCupid or Jdate?" instead of saying but they could have been an axe murderer!
Now, we are a nation of self-aggrandizing blowhards, whales spouting into the air with the splash gone again 20 seconds later when the next Facebook update appears.
Soundbites have gone from being 45 seconds to 8, and attention spans have gone with them. Nobody reads my archives anymore—besides, they're private now. I said some things that I shouldn't have.
I said a lot of things I shouldn't have.
But, once upon a time, I was a revolutionary.
Once upon a time, I was a writer.
Once upon a time, I was a writer.
no subject
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 06:56 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing this <3
no subject
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 08:30 pm (UTC)To a writer:
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 07:17 pm (UTC)I, too, marvel (and I know at least one other who might) at how this electron landscape has changed since I first came to its confessional box a whole lotta years ago. Signal-to-noise ratio; ten thousand folks yelling in my ear to dance when no one is looking (and I laugh a little bit at it, not at those dear hearts because they do mean well, but it ain't exactly no one looking when you've heard it from twenty-seven).
In the end, I celebrate it. We owned this voice for a while, and we've got the pride of ownership that comes with it. Now we watch as it passes on to others, that's the way of the thing, and with that passing, we have to withstand their growing pains.
Thank you for reminding me of my own Once Upon a Time.
Re: To a writer:
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 07:18 pm (UTC)It is amazing to me how much things have changed since I first came online and first started "blogging."
no subject
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 08:04 pm (UTC)I don't think that's true of everyone, I think there's still a vibrant blogging community, but it's rough and hard to find sometimes.
no subject
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 11:29 pm (UTC)You can peruse the best of tag to see most of the entries I think are decently written, like this one. I guess it's been a few years since I've gone through my archives & added new entries to that tag, though.
no subject
on Thursday, June 16th, 2011 04:03 am (UTC)And I gotta say I do hate the trend to "micro-blog."
no subject
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 08:05 pm (UTC)Beautifully written
on Friday, June 17th, 2011 12:53 pm (UTC)Re: Beautifully written
on Sunday, June 19th, 2011 08:05 pm (UTC)