This is something a little different than what I usually write about. Lately, I’ve been sinking very far into something I can’t quite explain, and right now I don’t really know what to do about it other than write…anything.
It’s fun fantasizing about falling in love with someone that truly loves you. The sex scenes in my stories aren’t even that interesting. In fact, I don’t particularly enjoy writing them as much I as love writing the romance. I know this may seem like a shock, but it’s true. The sex scenes are what people expect, so I add them.
However, what most people really want goes beyond the physical. When the characters make that real connection we crave, there’s security knowing that for the rest of their lives (hopefully), they’ll have that person that’s not only their best friend but their entire world.
But…real life isn’t fantasy. I think that’s why romance is such a popular genre. It freezes a moment in time where there’s not only passion but real love, and it stops at the happily ever after, not daring to go beyond that because we all know what’s at the real end. There’s so much insecurity and everyone wants that person they know they can love and depend on, and when we don’t have that, we find other ways to escape.
At the same time, it’s terrifying. I’m sure you’ve heard stories about older couples that have been together for decades. One of them dies, and the other dies soon after of a broken heart. I couldn’t imagine losing that one person who was perfect for me, who had been a permanent fixture in my life for decades only to suddenly disappear. I know what loss is. I’ve lost so many people I loved throughout my life, but this would be the pinnacle of cruelty in an already cruel existence.
There’s that cliché about it being better to have loved and lost than not to have loved, and I’m not sure I share the same sentiment anymore as I inch ever closer to the eventual end of my life. It seems like that would be the worst imaginable outcome, and it’s inevitable for one of the two. But there’s also that need for that person, that stability, that feeling of validation that someone actually loves you no matter what.
They say that being alone is a death sentence, and more people are alone now than ever. It’s such a bleak outlook, and I wish there were more than online communities and long-distance relationships in this era of doom-scrolling, isolation, and cancellation. We spend so much time online without any real physical contact, and ironically, being so connected only makes us lonelier. Many of us are afraid of reaching outside because we’ve been locked in this antisocial bubble for most of our lives. Without that connection online, what do we have left in a society that grows more divided and hostile by the year?
Hostility and isolation that’s further fueled by the same online-only communities that can easily dehumanize people who have different views. If there’s no real connection with someone, then is that person on the other side of the computer screen a human with feelings and emotions? We manage to strip the humanity from everyone, distilling one person’s life to a simple username or online persona.
The people you see with perfect online lives may actually be suffering in silence. The people who make it their life’s work to ‘find receipts’ for people trying to make it in this world are people who haven’t made the effort to make it in this world yet. Sometimes their only source of accomplishment and validation are hollow virtue signaling while vilifying others. Everyone wants someone to hate, someone to ‘other’ to make themselves feel a part of something, like what they do matters to someone. It doesn’t matter what side of political spectrum, it happens everywhere.
Instead of trying to understand a person’s viewpoint or what led that person to those views, it’s so much easier to label them as the enemy. Online communities are like hives of Africanized bees, always on alert for anything that may be seen as a threat, even things that are not. Once they find a target, the rest will swarm.
This is what being terminally online does to people. It makes it easier to force-feed us all bias, keep us in our echo chambers because the algorithm keeps us there. It keeps us falling deeper into the mire of intolerance and ignorance, giving more and more control to the people who will stop at nothing to get that control. They use our trauma, our loneliness, our daily struggles, our inquiries for answers for these questions we fear…they concentrate what they think we are into a list of keywords, and we start to believe it. We believe in delusions–a collective psychosis brought about by nothing more than lines of complex code.
I know I’m just typing stuff no one will ever read. Hell, even my books will never be read by many people, but there’s more to everyone than who they are online. Most people have some kind of trauma or past that has shaped the person they are behind the keyboard. For me, it was childhood abuse, poverty, and seeing stuff that most people in the US will luckily never have to see. But my experiences don’t compare to other countries where children and teenagers see and experience so much worse.
Trauma put me in a blue box I couldn’t escape. It wasn’t until half my life was gone before I could climb out of it, only to keep slipping back in. Everyone seems to publicly proclaim individuality while internally yearning for inclusion. We do this to ourselves, and it’s hard to break when your mind is a prison. We’re kept in prison, and we don’t even realize it until it’s too late.
I for one am going to stop looking online for relationships and communities, because when it comes down to life, someone who lives 1,000 miles away isn’t going to be there for you when you need them most. They can’t. Someone who replies to your facebook, tiktok or instagram posts aren’t going to care if you’re struggling to make ends meet or have just lost a loved one. They can give you their condolences, but they can’t hold you and tell you it’s going to be okay.
Everyone is so touch-starved, and we don’t know what to do about it anymore. It’s hard to limit screen time when most of our work, entertainment, and socialization is online. I don’t know what the solution will be, but for me, I’m going to try to leave this pit of loneliness behind. If I can’t, then I don’t really know what will happen to me in the years to come–or any of us.