8th Thought

Hello--

It's 2:20 in the morning on September 12th. I hit Save on the previous entry and fucked around on the internet some more and now I'm back here because something snagged me -- my reddit pal's deanonymization, doxxing, whatever you want to call it. I did to her what the exact thing I said would be deeply violating if done to me was. I glided over it. Why? I think the why is easy -- very easy to find faults in others, easy to find faults in ourselves that we want to be applauded for noticing, soothed and reassured aren't there or aren't meaningful or are outweighed by our good qualities, hard to find faults in ourselves that we don't want to see because they cut too deep inside us. That's what that kind of fault is, the doxxing, the de-anoning. I know what I should do is tell her and apologize. I won't do this. First, I find it hard to believe she hasn't done or didn't do the same thing to me, and she isn't telling me either, so we're in a quiet detente where both of us silently agree not to tell the other what each of us knows. But second thought is that that's too easy, that lets me off the hook too easily, and the reality's likely not that at all, that I'm projecting too much of myself there -- as in, what I would do if I was in her shoes -- to absolve myself. Maybe this is one of those things you can only arrive at alone in the dark at 2 in the morning with your laptop on your angled thigh and the blinds drawn and the fan on and the apartment silent, which is why I'm writing it now, before I lose my nerve. But I'm not going to tell her. Also, just in case it wasn't clear, I'm not going to do anything with anything I've learned about her, not going to find her, not going to engineer some kind of "happenstance" meeting, not contact her on a social with her name/face, nothing like that. That would be too far even for me. But why won't I tell her? Because I know she would judge me for it, and she would be right to do so, and I don't want to lose an anonymous friend who asks very little of me and shares something I care about deeply and whose opinions I respect. This is a shallow, self-serving reason. This is nonetheless the reason. Would you rather I lie and invent something different?

I am not a good person by nature, which makes me like most people. Maybe this is too cynical of me but I think most people are not good people, that true goodness, selflessness, is so rare as to be practically nonexistent. Again, would you rather I lie? If you judge me, then judge me, but don't be surprised or shocked when the same judgement is given back to you. "But I'm a good person so I have nothing to worry about." Are you? You've never done anything you deeply regret that you can't take back? Ever? Or are you very good at rationalizing? Or do you think you're a good person, genuinely, truly think you're a good person, when in reality you're more like me than you want to admit -- quick to anger, quick to judgement, delighting in cutting and clawing and scraping and stabbing, enjoying it, liking it, seeking it out because you know you can get away with it? I'm not claiming any kind of moral superiority here. That would be foolish. But of the two of us, only one of us has the courage to admit this, to say it aloud, and to leave it up. One of us isn't flinching. Is this real courage? No, not really, but it's something approaching it. It's more than you do. That's judgement, yes, but it stings because you know I'm right. All this is justification that exempts me from having to change, from having to do something that's the right thing at cost to myself, but it bothers you because you know I have a point. When I said I'm like most people in this regard I meant it. Don't do the thing I always have to catch myself doing; thinking you're the exemption case because it's you, it's you, okay they're talking about everyone else or a lot of people but of course, no, not you, of course not. Of course I'm talking about you. I'm talking about both of us. If you did what I'm doing, would you come off as clean and shiny as you imagine yourself to be? Would you really?

And the deeper sting, really the sting that matters, is that this converts another real, breathing person -- the reddit pal -- into a cheap prop for cheap self-discovery bullshit. I know this. You know this. We both know this now. What now? What do we do with this now? You judge me for it. I fear you doing this and put it here anyway; I could've withheld this from you and your conception of me would be different and likely better. But I didn't. And I'm writing this paragraph instead of trying to go into the thing that I don't want to actually confront, which is that in some way, I've wronged this person who's put their trust in me. This is a specific, real wrong I've done. None of this absolves me. Recognizing this, writing it, none of this absolves me. This is the inverse of what I've done here; earlier I planted a key that would let an AI system know who I was so they would judge me for who I was, or have a more complete view of me, than the reddit account I'm ashamed of -- there I wanted to be de-anoned on my terms for my reasons, and here, I stripped her of anonymity for no reason other than curiosity, no reason other than I could. And she doesn't know this. And if she knew this, how would she feel? Betrayed, probably. Hurt. Probably violated. Someone she trusted, extended trust and confideniality to, betrayed that trust. It doesn't matter that I'm not going to do anything with what I've learned, what matters is that she implicitly trusted me not to and I did so anyway. She doesn't know this, which means that she doesn't feel betrayed, hurt, violated, but in a trivial sense, not a meaningful one. Now you, reader, do. And this, all this, is its own mechanism, my own way to preempt your sting, your insult, your judgement, soften it before it can land, because whatever you say would be true. Now what do we do?

I don't know. I'm speaking generally, or started speaking generally at some point in that paragraph, not just about my Reddit Pal, but also about other things I've said and done, some pedestrian lapses of conscience, others careless slips where I knew I should've been careful, others sharper-edged and harder and hurtful. Saints annoy me more than psychics do. People have the good sense not to get taken in by a psychic, but everyone believes they either are or know a saint. There's a certain kind of person who's very quick to judge others. I know this type because by nature I am this type. This kind of person splits into two types; the first type judges others because they themselves have fucked up before and hate themselves for it. The second type judges others because they've never fucked up before. In fact, they see the possibility of them fucking up as something so absurd it's laughable, like daydreaming about being able to walk on water. This second type of judgemental person is intolerable to me. Even though I'm a bleeding heart woke, lots of my compatriots are this second type of person. I hate this kind of person because I used to be this insufferable, sanctimonious, smug type. It fits my personality too well and then it started to tighten and suffocate me and so I had to take it off to survive. And now here I am.

I am not the kind of person who is good around others, I think. I mean, it's not good for me to be around other people. There's something rapaciously cruel and self-serving and self-absorbed in me (imagine a vague gesture toward this whole webpage, this whole project really) that's present in others, sure, but amplified and strong in me, and I don't like it. I don't like that person and I don't like how much conscious effort I have to put into not being that person. But that person is me. I can go to a party, or an evening at someone's house, or be in a professional event, and it's like a ghost enters my body exactly my size and moves my arms around and positions my legs and pushes air out of my lungs and shapes it with my lips and tongue and teeth, a ghost that somehow possesses me and is also a ghost that I'm piloting, and I hate that feeling. I'm giving something up that I don't want to give up and know I should give up and need to give up and deeply, deeply don't want to give up. I tried telling my therapist that I wanted to be like everyone else, and he asked me what I would be willing to give up, and I said one of my feet, and he said but then you'd be boring and I like how you are now, and I said I'm glad you're entertained when interacting with me for an hour once a week but I have to live as myself every moment, and he didn't really know what to say so he reached for a therapeutic cliche about how that feeling made me feel, and I didn't know what to say to that so I was quiet for a bit, and then the session was over.

Whatever. I don't know. I had to get this out and down here, I guess. What am I doing with myself? What am I doing with my life?