Yeah, this was the right call

it feels really fucking good to write again, to feel the heaviness in my chest that comes from having feelings and getting them out of my body.

I'm an external processor. I can't just think about things, I have to say them. It never feels satisfying to just say them to myself, or even to say them in prayer. Even the illusion that another human being might be listening is an important component of making my brain do the thoughts thing.

I wish it weren't like that. I wish that I could ruminate on things and process them quietly, internally, and shape my own narrative without having to splatter it onto the universe with sound or ink.

I think maybe I wish that because I fear being seen.

Being seen means being judged. There's a lot of cruel or stupid people in the world who will never see the story of my life the way I want--they will always see me as an idiot or a villain or a lost soul who gave up on everything important in their life. I know, because I've been the cruel and stupid person reducing other humans to that before. I know, because existing on the internet means being constantly confronted with this reality.

A lot can be said, both positively and negatively, about the internet and its ability to empower every single person to have a platform. Maybe it's arrogant to think that anybody else would give a single flying shit about the maelstrom of thoughts that have to be splayed out murderboard-style into the cosmos for me to arrange them into something that makes sense for myself. Maybe it's unsafe for me to pour out the contents of my soul where other people can pick it apart. Maybe it's just inadvisable because someone with eleventy bazillion dollars is going to shovel it into an LLM engine and absorb some simulacrum of myself into the many-faced abomination that calls itself generative AI. Maybe it's stupid because the internet is real life and actions have consequences and giving others access to a livestream of how I actually think and feel is giving others the ability to harm me in my everyday goings on.

Maybe, though, it's worth it for the moment I hit "enter" and feel that pressure in my chest, and know that I actually am thinking the thoughts instead of just letting them swirl by unexamined.