Null and Void
2003-04-29 � 5:47 a.m.

Firstly, let me get this out of the way: horsies!

Now onto the real show, in which I take off my skin and dance in my bones.

Yay bones! So...bony.

I am, I have decided, essentially a being ruled by fear. Yes, yes — I have said similar things before. That doesn't make this declaration or decision or realization or what-have-you any more or less important than the last time I made it.

(Have you noticed at all that I write things down here a lot less lately? Yeah, it's true. I have one of those 'livejournal' things now...it's weird. That on top of the several diaries I have here at D-Land [though mostly those exist for when I want to say things I don't think I can say here] leaves me feeling pretty spread out as far as things to kvetch about. Sorry.)

This fear...usually it is baseless. Or, rather, things in which I have no basis cause me to be afraid; i.e., the unknown. The things that I should be afraid of I am usually not. I should be afraid of myself and the things I am capable of doing (or not doing, as is more likely) to myself. But instead I waste time worrying about what others might do, people who don't have any reason to cause me damage and whom, sitting at a flat zero score as they do, have a better track record than even myself.

(I'm in the process of trying to decide if I should reveal a secret about myself here. It's not anything big...but it might be considered mildly hurtful. It did involve lying, something I do almost instinctually. It wasn't meant to hurt [how often has that been used as an excuse?], and I stopped doing it when it became clear that it was getting out of hand. But...it's good to have secrets, isn't it? It involves Diaryland, by the way. Does that make a difference?)

Things, in no particular order, that I am afraid of...enough to make the listing of them painful in that oh-so-special way: being alone, being close to someone, being emotionally open, being thought stupid and/or ignorant, dying, living much longer, sex, my body, children, my anger, my inability to interact with people on any significant level, the possibility of alien pod-babies hatching in my throat.

(These relationships we form here at Diaryland, or at least those that I have formed, trouble me. They trouble me because they are both easier and more difficult by several orders of magnitude than those we form away from the screen. It is easy to get carried away, it is difficult to be something other than a pared-down, ultra-realized version of yourself. Not perfect, obviously, but less fully formed. Being words on a screen used to delight me, and I am not entirely sure what changed, but now it scares me. Doesn't it scare you? Maybe it should.)

One of the big things that I am afraid of is that I am not really a human being. Not like physically...or only sort of. I worry that, even though I may have been born with all the potential to become fully human, somewhere along the way I missed the mark and I am so far off into left field now that it isn't even remotely possible. I look around me at all these other people, I read the words they write, I look at how they act with each other and all I can feel is so completely and utterly different. These other things, they are not me. I see them looking at me out of the corner of their eyes, and I can see the knowledge there too — I do not belong. I am past broken and on into the junkyard. This human being has been declared 'totaled' by the insurance adjuster. And of course that just makes me feel more alone and afraid, makes me feel like I have nothing to offer and that it is presumptuous to even feel alone and afraid. I don't deserve to.

Nothing. The word doesn't even begin to describe the bleak void that is the world. How can other people not see it? Maybe it's here for me.

My void.

Currently Aurally Inducing: Orbital, Meltdown
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: n/a

[ last ] [ next ]

�	Int4rw3b Personals

�	Gene Wolfe

�

Image Fix

�	Again, I Return. (Gonna have to knock this off...)

�	A Return of Sorts