Echoes

In order to get back to where I want to be, I have made a commitment. I must do a little each day. It is a tough thing to do because without my reviews is hard finding something to write about. It is almost like therapy or weight loss in a way, where you must force yourself to stick to a regiment and a schedule of writing even if there’s nothing to do. This is also like music and learning how to play an instrument, you need to make a commitment to learn and put time into it so you can get through the basics and move on to the more advanced (and fun) stuff.

The reason I’m not ready to review is that I need to be able to feel. I need to have empathy for the writer for my reviews to be heartfelt and honest. I fear that I may gloss over the little things that I normally pick up upon because I’m a very empathetic person. I don’t want to short people that rely on me for not necessarily a service but as a voice, as a second opinion they can trust. I need to be able to feel again in order to feel what is being communicated in a story.

Death does that to you. It numbs your ability to feel because suddenly, the world comes crashing down and you don’t understand much anymore. The person that was there is now gone. Those feelings are now gone. They are replaced with the world full of hollowness and emptiness where if you think of your life like a book, character deaths only happen that the end, right? That is the end of the book when a major character dies. And then you realize you were the major character, and your story must find purpose and meaning in order to continue to the end of the book. The book that is yours now, for better or for worse.

If this were fiction everything would work out in the end, but this is in fiction and life is what you make of it. Imagine a story where someone is left to survive a tragedy, and the entire second half of the book is them wallowing in depression and despair. Nothing happens. There is no story past the middle of the book. You could’ve stopped reading there and it would’ve made any difference in the world.

That was me for a year.

Now I tried coming back here and there, sputtering telling myself that everything was okay. I tried to get back on that horse again and again, trying to tell myself that this one was the time that I would roar back in be there for everybody, that things would take off and I would find inspiration to do the things I want to do and live my dreams. Yet each one of those times I realized that those feelings were more a desire to go back then a real acceptance of moving forward. I just wanted to go back to those days and that feeling that I used to have that I do anything, and he would be there. And that boundless and limitless energy would bubble forth in everything would be great, and even if the project didn’t take off that the energy would sustain it and make it succeed just off the excitement alone. You know how those projects are where the creator is so excited that you get excited too.

And every time I tried to come back I failed, and I regressed back into that feeling that this wasn’t the time. That somehow I had lied to myself again and believed that my feelings alone and may desire not to be this way would somehow heal those wounds. And I was wrong. I was wrong time and time again. I had just been hearing echoes of the past, again and again trying to capture those with a hand to my ear listening as each future echo became more and more faint.

Sooner or later I couldn’t hear the echoes of the past anymore and I was left in a place alone.

This is a deeply lonely feeling, but it is also a deeply free feeling. When you cease to hear the past, you cease to idolize it. Your feelings no longer try and re-create it, and in a way, you become free from the chains of lying to yourself again. That somehow everything will be as it was again. You do not hear those echoes anymore, and you start listening to yourself.

It comes out and whispers at first. You can never hear them, but you can feel them. You start speaking to yourself and discovering a new part. I don’t know if anybody will understand this feeling at all, maybe if you lost someone that was very special close to that you may understand it. It takes time though to get over those memories and those echoes, and that desire to walk back into the past live how you used to live. But after a while you start to hear yourself. You start to see things differently, like how you view the world entirely changes.

You tend to see people who lie, for good reasons or bad reasons, in a whole new light. Because in a way you have been living a lie, trying to return to the past and salve over those feelings by telling yourself things can be the same when they’re not. I have a lot less tolerance for people who try to manipulate me these days, because essentially, I’ve been trying to manipulate myself through this entire healing process and it is only held me back.

I’ve stopped watching the news, and even commenting on anything political where the stupid crap that goes on social media that is all worthless shouting. I feel empty for having bought into the circus, on either side, or even telling people that participating is pointless. It is all just a sham, engineered to take your attention away, which in some ways monetized by online advertisers that are making our lives worse. And one of the worst parts of this situation is, we don’t even know who these online advertisers are. This invisible money flows around and feeds hate and discord through click bait and rage articles written just to get attention. We don’t know how it works, there’s no one to complain to, and there’s no way to stop it because there is a system in place that rewards anger and there is no way as consumers that we can boycott or even speak to who the hell is doing all this.

I suppose ultimately in the end social media is responsible. They are the ones feeding anger these days and making everything worse. And they censor shamelessly, and it gets even worse. I must point at the people signing the checks and passing the links around. I don’t have anyone else to blame other than the people providing a vehicle to the forces tearing us apart.

I remember the days when social media was relatively innocent. That I could start a discussion group on a topic I love and have everyone join it, and there would be no politics in it, and you could advertise there your own little books and sell and get fans. If you wrote mature content you wouldn’t be censored or confined to an adult dungeon, your links wouldn’t be automatically censored, you wouldn’t be removed from advertiser programs, and you could do your own thing and have your own little place that was happy.

Those days are gone forever.

And I have ceased hearing the echoes of those days as well. And I have begun hearing myself, again, in regard to social media and how I want to interact with that place. The whispers of voices of who I want to be and what I want to do are becoming a little clearer now. Because in a way I never really accepted the death of social media either, at least my view of how social media is important to me has passed away. For the longest time I wanted to sit here and bring back the old days, so that’s how I operated and interacted with my feeds.

And I realize that things aren’t the same today as they were back then.

And I get a newly familiar feeling again.