Thus wrote I
I suppose it’s presumptuous to assume that my posts are of any interest to anyone, let alone worthy of a few minutes of attention to be read. But that assumes I’m writing this because I desire or crave attention. Honestly, I do not.
But I am compelled, for reasons I myself do not entirely understand, to share my thoughts and opinions here on things that probably should not be shared.
Does writing this go against my better judgment? That depends. What constitutes ‘better’ judgment? Is it the act, the process, the substance, or the consequence of such writings? Writings that would certainly be labeled as strange at least, insane at most. Or, worse perhaps, as I have a limited imagination.
As a writer, I’m a mere amateur. This means I have something to say but lack the language to make it truly compelling and memorable. But after five decades on this earth, the prose I offer here is likely the fullest and best version of my written capabilities.
But that doesn’t really answer the question of why I’m doing this. And after much soul-searching and back-and-forth in my mind, the best answer I can offer is this: Because to keep what burns inside me has begun to devour me from within.
Speaking my truth to the world is better than letting my inner world consume me whole.
I recognize the risks.
Our world has tidy boxes for what it considers untidy things, no matter how wrong the world’s boxes may be.
Human societies and civilizations have a long history of misunderstanding, preservation bias, and erasure when it comes to the weird, anomalous, or uncanny — the atopic. The system is efficient and expedient with its assigning of labels: episode, delusions, possession, psychosis, blasphemy, mania, hallucination. Pick your favorite. The thesaurus has plenty more. And modern medicine has an endless array of chemicals they’re happy to pump into you at cost, while religion has an endless array of dogmatic corrections they’re happy to also pump into you at cost.
To both I say, “I’d rather not.”
I suppose it's safer and easier to stay silent. After all, there’s no real benefit for me here other than some hope of processing, integration, and, if I’m lucky, a bit of solace. I thought I’d say peace of mind, but that seems impossible at this point. At least, not in this lifetime. Silence would certainly keep me out of the vile filing systems of this world. But.
Silence also corrodes.
If left unmanaged, some unspoken words and thoughts become toxic. They rush the mind, body, and soul like a firestorm, leaving nothing but ash and cinder in their wake.
And there’s a naive part of me that clings to the old-fashioned notion that the sort of thing that happens to one person and is never shared has no resistance against the onslaught of preservation bias and erasure the world never seems to get enough of.
No.
It folds inward. It becomes indistinguishable from reverie, invention, and madness. Writing it down, even into the void of the internet where no one listens, and no one cares, gives it the one thing silence can’t: continued existence outside the tiny vessel of the mind that now contains it.
This is all I have to offer the world.