Thread by @utotranslucence

I open Twitter. And I scroll. Maybe I’m hoping there will be something I find that starts thinking itself into my head, but my head is not really thought-y and it thinks all thoughts are wrong

I watch people I know in real life and people whose voices are just made up sounds in my head whose first names I’ve never heard squawk joyously and frustratedly and parade sex and triumph and pride all over the timeline

And I feel...not that? Not that any of it is bad, but I’m not there. I’m quiet, soft, internal—even the elderly Buddhists in my meditation book club zoom seem to be speaking too loud.

And yet there’s a reason to start posting because the mute scrolling, the same as the party wallflowering, brings its own momentum. Muteness begets muteness. It is true, I have nothing to say

And yet this is a game where the only rule is that you must have something to say. In order to invite another you start speaking. So how can I play without having a take? How can I play without needing to become a prideful, hilariously partial opinion?

Maybe just to become more opinions. Sex is the only thing worth doing. Most tech people are lying to themselves. Most people are lying to themselves, but pointing it out is terribly unkind and doesn’t help and only makes you more isolated...

(Oh yes, this is definitely it)

So how do you live with this view, once you can see that everyone is lying to themselves? How do I live with it? I think I’ve begun to accept it in others, but it grosses me out to watch it in myself...

Watching it in others feels like watching a child try to speak a foreign language. They’re getting everything wrong all the time, but there’s no malice in it—they just have no sense of what ‘right’ might be. And if I don’t speak that language I can’t tell what ‘right’ looks like

But I know what right looks like in me because I feel it inside me—I’m acutely aware of my own subjective reality. Watching myself nod and hide my face mutely when I want to yell or flirt or point out something that the other person can’t see...

The more I see myself lying, and of course the more I course towards integrity, and try and shape up my own outsides to at least line up a bit with my insides, the more gentle I feel with others when I see them try to pull off some ridiculous con job on themselves or others

(Of course this person never knows they’re doing it! Some of my dear friends know when they’re doing it themselves, and I adore them and they seem superhuman)

But I can’t do the same con jobs myself now. I can’t push it out. Words are so goddamn fake. I can yield only in open, and loving spaces, and I leave the publics to the wolves.

I’d like not to. I’d like to have such firm grounding in my own home, my own ‘private life’ family social reality that I could play the big game with audacious vulnerability. But I can’t. I freeze.

The way I sing in front of people never puts my soul on the tip of my tongue the way it does when I’m alone. The way I open up to a lover is never mirrored by the way I show up to a group. I cannot be myself in open space.

And yet that private me -is- me, it’s the thing I think of when I think of me, & masks merely convenient shapes to be in as I scramble inwardly to work out how to take them off. I hope others r trying too, but I can’t really know, bc I can’t see what they would show if they could

But still all that trying and all that practice gives me a sensitivity to lying, especially the kind where people don’t know they’re tricking themselves. The most heartbreaking kind

I wish there was a public word for this that many people believed in (‘authenticity’ has been drugged and co-opted, and we collectively believe ‘honesty’ is something else). It makes me feel more mute to believe there isn’t a word I can use to talk about it

And at the same time, the worst thing would be for such a word to turn into a dagger, to become a weapon to accuse and shame people. Because being honest, or authentic, or real or vulnerable or whatever is excruciatingly difficult..

And our society gets gifted with rare individuals who can do this for many people and we call them gifted artists or charismatic leaders or men or women of integrity. But they aren’t the norm, and that’s to be expected! This kind of thing is very, very hard

These are the practice scales that run continuously through my mind right now, or continuously try to. It makes it hard to use Twitter. It makes casual conversation either comical or agonising. I’d be less fun at parties if we had those anymore

But I’m imagining this is maybe a stage, and later it gets easier to be a publicly open self, without shaming those who can’t or the parts of you that can’t yet.

Or that’s what I’m hoping.