The internet is a numbing agent

Feelings not allowed!

save.your.tears foranotherday

Hi there,

I wasn’t going to write to you today. Instead, I was going to send you email to delete— genius that can only come from pure laziness— hoping it would suffice. Then it came to me last night learning to clean lift for the first time in my life that I must tell you about how choosing to express my rage (lifting heavy things) instead of suppression through addiction (scrolling) changed my life forever. This is the most important, maybe the only important thing you should take away from my weekly ramblings: Please. You must express whatever you are trying to suppress using the apps, avatars, and other drugs. It will not end well for you otherwise.

Five things to share:

1. When we both said we’re done and the judge signed off on the papers, they said I should anticipate seven stages of grief: Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. “In no particular order,” they emphasized. It was supposed to make one feel better: You will feel like shit, no doubt, but don’t worry if it’s in no particular order. But I knew there would only be six stages for me regardless of the order. “I think I’m depressed,” I say to her—This is years before; there are no judges, just a woman with a yellow notepad I’m hoping will see my tears and prescribes me the cure— “chemically imbalanced,” I add for emphasize referencing my Psych 101 notes between sobs. “Trust me you’re not depressed,” she says and adds I just need to do some internal housecleaning, that there’s a little girl in there (she points to her heart) trapped with all the debris. When time’s up, I leave. I never go back. And this time around when they say I should anticipate seven stages of grief, I know I will skip one naturally: Depression. I never get depressed, I rage. Google defines rage as a “violent and uncontrolled anger,” and if you search what causes anger, Google says “intense emotions like fear, frustration, or pain… feelings of helplessness.” I don't get angry either, I rummage through the debris and I weep; tears are the feminine expression of rage.

2. You ever think how lucky you are to not have all the things that you don’t want?

3. A quote I want to share with you:

   “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

   —Friedrich Nietzsche

   I don’t mind being a bit eccentric, a bit bat-shit crazy even, for moving most of my life offline. It adds flavour, a certain excitement I require to trudge through this thing called life. And since I won’t make it out alive anyway, why not enjoy this little experiment of mine? I’m not the crazy one here anyway.

4. There is an Ethiopian saying that directly translates to the inside for the priest, and may I add the outside for social media. It’s false reality, social media, because it shows only a tiny fraction of life as we all know it; the excruciatingly imperfect moments each day endures, each of us must endure never gets revealed. It’s distorted reality, a misrepresentation of what life actually entails. Even knowing this, it’s still tempting to believe what gets posted is the full version of reality, and that everyone is happy, at all times, except you of course. Sometimes you can only win by not playing, and social media might be one such case.

5. A question for you: What do you not have that you don’t want?

   For me, chronic illness, social media, foes.

That’s all for this week! (I can’t believe I actually got this out to you so last minute!)

Thank you for reading, and share with anyone you think may benefit.

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Until next time,

Mehret