There *is* something wrong with you
All addiction is escapism
Hi there,
There is something wrong with you, that’s the bad news. The good news is you can do something about it; but only you can do something about it, that’s the bad/good news depending on how you look at it.
Five things to share:
A potent childhood memory of mine is being left alone. The adults were around but they wouldn’t get near me. She says she suffers from the same infliction: “I remember being left alone for hours,” she tells me of her childhood memories over Mall fries, “nobody came to check on me.” Can you believe it? I do, I believe her, I don’t remember her at all— Although we lived under the same roof her entire life and most of mine. That’s one of my coping mechanisms: If you forget, it is as if it didn’t happen. I can forget at whim. “You remember in high school?” What!? Except you don’t get to choose what you forget and what you remember— nothing bad happened, thank god, but nothing good either. Another one: The adults wouldn’t get near me because there is something wrong with me. They were repulsed by me. “Where did you learn that?” she asks. I think about it for a moment. I have never thought about where these things come from; where I learned to deem myself repulsive and unworthy. “I came up with it,” I tell her. The adults wouldn’t get near me because there’s something wrong with me. There is something wrong with me. Nobody ever bothered to correct me, they were too busy with their own misery. In my desperation to feel better than feeling inherently defective, I ran. The internet just exploited that: Here, ignore yourself, there is something wrong with you.
Last Thursday, after a long day at work and desperate for escape, and because it was available, I stayed up until 2:00am scrolling through /r/Torontology. It was a grand ol’ time remembering and reminiscing. I never found the whole Canada-hockey-eh jokes that funny— unrelatable— but when I discovered /r/Torontology— years later, years after reality flipped upside down and I found myself right smack in the middle, away from the margins— I was delighted to hear the jokes, banter, and commentary that marked my adolescence. I laughed until I teared up. And although in our reality the margins were razor thin and many couldn’t make it out alive, and many of us ran every which way desperate to save ourselves, I was in glee to find a corner of the internet that held pieces of what used to be. And I remembered them, and I remembered where I learned to joke, banter; where I got my wit that kept me alive all these years. And to laugh raucously so the gods wouldn’t forget about me. The next day, forgetting all, I am at the yoga studio twisting my body into uncomfortable poses to pass my lunchtime blues, and soaking up the sunshine in an unusually warm December day on my walk back home. She’s in my ears keeping me company: “Let’s have a sleepover, it will be cute!” she says and I shriek with delight. The sun beams at me as if to congratulate me.
I say all that to say, once in a while, if it’s available and I am desperate to escape, I still spend time scrolling Reddit until 2am. This happens once every few months, a few times a year. I can count on one hand. I used to scroll, scrounge the internet for escape, past 2am every day for years. Perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate.
A quote I want to share with you:
To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
— Confucious
I received similar advice from a stranger I wouldn’t stop talking to: Maybe I’m the crazy one here.
Personal Panopticons: A key product of ubiquitous surveillance is people who are comfortable with it
In the late 1960s, researcher Alan Weston divided the population into three groups according to their attitudes toward privacy: fundamentalists, who are generally reluctant to share personal information; the unconcerned, who are untroubled and unreflective about privacy; and pragmatists, who report some concern about privacy but are also willing to weigh the benefits they might receive in exchange for disclosing personal information. He found then that the majority of Americans were privacy pragmatists.
A question for you: What is wrong with you? A challenge for you: What are you going to do about it?
P.s. Name a worse feeling than getting a gift you neither want nor need…
With that said, the best gift you can give anyone during this season of giving is your full presence and undivided attention. Everyone is dying to be seen, heard, understood. <3
Wishing you the happiest holiday season, the merriest Christmas!
I’ll send another, another, another round up of a year (mostly) spent offline for the last Tuesday of 2023. It’s been three years of surrendering to reality and I cannot say enough of all the miracles I have experienced. Reality is infinitely better, there’s no debate. Don’t believe me? Get offline and experience it for yourself. Best part, it’s free!!!
That’s all for this week!
Thank you for reading, and share with anyone you think may benefit.
time spent offline is now a monthly analog publication you can get delivered straight to your mailbox with 20 ideas every month.
Until next time,
Mehret