Forum:
"Show yourself, show yourself,
I want to see everything you are made of
Tear it down and rip it out
Shed your skin and float it down the river" (1)
Dear friends,
Do you ever wonder what got you to use this web page in the first place? To follow links you found in the wild, discover this new piece of digital land on the internet, and sign up?
Was it pure curiosity for something new? Nostalgia for something old? Or even a deeper drive, something you might not be able to describe in the first place? Something that reveals itself bit by bit over the time you read forum entries, blog posts and direct messages you share with new friends?
If the last point is right, what were you seeking in the first place? I can imagine that you were looking to distract yourself from the complications of the real world, or find kinship among strangers. Reading through all of your messages, I see a great flow of warmth and understanding flowing, a desire to create and share, and to be unabashedly curious about the innermost going-ons of a person you have never seen before and most likely will never see in your life. But, share our thoughts and our feelings we do, often more so than we woul ever dare to in real life.
I guess that is what got me on this web page in the first place. I needed a space where I could unbind my own thoughts and throw them into the void with reckless abandon. But also, I needed a place where I could be something else than, well, myself.
For those who might have encountered my scribbles beforehand: perceptive you! I am not that active in the first place. But I know that I have a very particular style in which I write. One, which is vastly different from my language habitus in the real world. But this is how I decide to present myself. Because here, I am someone else. And here, you perceive me as someone else than you would in the flesh. Nearly nothing you see on your screen is truly me: the letters are digital symbols on your screen half a world removed. You cannot know how I look or what I sound or move like. Even the readers' voice in your mind is of someone else. (2)
Isn't that fascinating? That we all are presenting ourselves here, in this medium, and yet only show sides of ours which we really want to be seen? Everything else we can hide from the world and choose not to to be that which we deeply despise in ourselves. Things we find ugly and hideous, or things which hurt us - either because they are of our own making or of someone else, pressed into our minds and flesh like a giant branding iron.
But then again, this forum is full of people who actively embrace these parts. Who speek about deeply shameful things and make themselves vulnerable to the very core. They do it in the form of cries for help, in offers of support to others suffering the same or - my favourite form - poetry. We open our hearts and relieve it of this terrible, soul-splitting pain we feel every day. We yell into the void. And sometimes, we are heard. And more often than not, we are understood.
How wild! How absolutely different from what we expect in the real world! There, we beat ourself up for our failures or expect shame and ridicule, if anybody ever hears of it. We hide our vulnerable parts in fear of being hurt even further. Here, we embrace it, knowing that the worst which can happen is silence. But more than expected, we band together and share our pain.
On the flip side, we also allow ourselves to be whatever we truly want to be. We share our spleens, our art, our weird niche hobbies and interests. We present ourselves as shining beings, full of life and love. We gush forth our joys and fixations, trying to connect with others over these. We fill pages and pages with poetry, art and ways of expressing ourselves through music and fashion. And it works! Like strange birds, we band together and bathe in our shared joys and hyperfixations, as if they were fresh puddles left by the rain. (3)
How truly fascinating! Here, in this anonymous corner of the web, we not only reimagine ourselves as the beings we want to be. No, we recreate ourselves. We give us new shapes, fill them with what we want to be and change our public faces to what we wish our opposite to see. We enthusiastically step into the eternal dance of creation and take pleasure in it, using our blogs and forum entries as the canvas. And, for the first time in a long time, some of us feel free to be who we are, not who we would like to be or who we are expected to be.
I will come to the end now. But to answer my own question from the beginning: just know, that I myself have a hard time accepting many things about myself. From my body to my mind to my soul, I feel like I am tainted or not build well. Right now, I cannot be the person who I want to be, and yet I
struggle to be that person. Seeking heaven through violence (as I tend to finish my scribblings with) is not just a phrase for me: it symbolizes my urge to change, to break and rework myself into something I might be able to accept. And since change is always violent, this seems to be my way. Maybe, my scribbles here will help me to work myself through that transformation. Maybe you too, dear friend, are looking for a way as well. If yes: feel free to write to me. Let's talk and see how we can help each other. Until then:
Seek heaven through violence.
(1) Mastodon: "Show yourself" (2017)
(2) Unless your way to think is different than mine, which would not be so strange. Mine is an constant spoken monolouge, a great discussion with myself. If I read a text, I hear it as a voice in my minds' ear.
(3) If you have never seen that, you should go out after a fresh summer rain and see if you can find some doing so. It is exceedingly cute.
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