Relationships are a nightmare. My day-to-day interactions with peers, coworkers, and friends are all pleasant enough, but I find myself viewing these types of things as a battlefield more and more often. Conversations become sorties, words become weapons, laughs are tactical nuclear strikes. I feel like a World War II soldier whenever I write a Facebook status update: in the trenches, shivering with trepidation, waiting for someone anyone to do something anything to break the stalemate, scribbling a letter to my sweetie back stateside about how the junkslut at Subway used too many green peppers on my Fastball sub.
Suddenly, a "Like." Validation. We aren't fighting and dying on the constantly-redesigned-but-never-improved timeline for nothing. Whenever a "friend" signs off of Facebook chat, I struggle to remember her face. Profile pages line up in tidy white lines; wall posts may as well be grieving families placing a trembling hands on a head stone. "good to see you the other day lol." Somewhere, a dove flies by a setting sun.
And this is the easy stuff! I have an unhealthy reliance on virtual interactions because of the structure. In person you have to be on and that is exhausting. Electronic personas are always charming, always aloof, always calculated. I never worry about saying the wrong thing online because the medium is the message; plausible deniability behind a screen and keyboard. My meatbag body and mind and voice crackle with energy. There's no control. It all just happens, whether I want it to or not.
Which, sure. No regrets, right? But there's a haunting permanence in exasperated responses. I love everyone, and it's so much easier to type than say. A raised eyebrow, a nanosecond of frown--these things are more devastating that bombs.
It's winter, though. Cold times and cold thoughts and stolen moments of warmth are the point.
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