A Moment of Unfiltered Reflection

Maybe I’m self-absorbed. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, bordering on neurotic, and completely off base. Perhaps, I’m jaded by being handed shit packaged as chocolate and being told to swallow it without reproach.
 
I read—a lot—though, admittedly, not as much as I’d like to. That’s only a half truth, I suppose, as in the whole truth I never stop reading. Articles, textbooks, studies, prose, comment sections, subtitles…but I don’t read as many books as I’d like. Suffice it to say, if I could, I’d probably waste my days away lost in book after book written a hundred years ago and undoubtedly find all of the dots that still connect in society today. I’m often told that I think too much into things, but the truth of it is that I never have to put much thought into making such connections. They glare at me in the face and scream for recognition. How, then, am I supposed to say nothing of it? And for what? To save face, to play politics? Silly me for expecting words to mean as they are defined, and for actions to align with proclamations. For a while, I considered that maybe it was the genres I favour or that I’d gotten myself into a centuries old echo chamber, but that seems more illogical still. My bookcase and shelves are tightly packed with everything from personal development and social commentary to contemporary literature and historical fiction to horror and crime…nevermind the occasional romance, the textbooks, and the dozens of meta-analyses I have on my external hard drive. It wasn’t all too long ago that my personal library alone could have gotten me committed to an asylum, when female independence was seen as madness. Nonbinary identity not withheld, the world sees me as female—and there are considerably worse things to be. The point still stands, I wasn’t born in a body that permits the power knowledge holds. My attempts to understand and engage with the world around me, here, are frequently met with dismissal and hostility, an air of superiority and contempt.

As it stands, I’m not the type to stay quiet when I see a malfunction I can help fix, which is regarded as disadvantageous in most of the spaces I’ve occupied. It’s as if the concept of impact over intention has never crossed the minds of those who seamlessly move through spaces that I am almost forced to integrate. The phrase alone gives rise to parallels that seem all too disconnected from this conversation, on the surface, maybe, but at the root it’s a perfect testimonial to my point. Perhaps I do read too much, and my mind is filled with perspectives and thoughts that I too rarely have elsewhere heard or seen, except in my own mind and in a random book recommended to me by ai and algorithms. Tell me, though, how a writer of yesteryear and a reader of today can feel exactly the same in circumstances arguably better, but still not quite at balance, and the two can share fundamental experiences that are always mansplained away or, worse, lost to cognitive dissonance. I don’t understand how an overwhelming portion of the population can so contentedly exist in blind ignorance, not when data is so accessible that some of the most mis/ill-informed people I’ve ever met have pointed out that google is free and information is at our fingertips. Humorously enough, it’s been some of those very same people—those who are notoriously too well informed by their pastor and preferred news station to be bothered with things like reading—that always have the most to say about not only my reading lists, but of my identity, interpersonal skills, and lifestyle choices. It is because of this pattern that I’ve adopted the ideology that if I wouldn’t take their life advice, I don’t worry myself with their opinions of me.
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Honestly, that one change alone, only taking life advice from those whose life is worth coveting, has proven to upset  more people than it has a right to: in my humble opinion. Never have I ever lived so rent free in the minds of others, accused of competing for status and attention that I don’t value or respect, much less want. It is difficult to value, and respect faces and spaces that fuel the most toxic parts of me, that revive my survival mode with no reprieve, and no reward.
 
Where my respect for others wanes, my self-respect waxes. I’m not sure what that says about me or my life experience, and quite frankly I can’t think of a good reason why I should care. At this point, all things considered (political climate, social division, etc.), my faith in humanity is virtually nonexistent. Covert racism so freely exchanged amongst people who look like me that they’re comfortable and, dare I say, audacious enough to reveal their true colours. assuming that I share anything more with them than skin tone and possible ancestral origins. It’s truly nauseating to move through spaces looking and feeling as I do, existing between two worlds and never quite a part of either. Fortunately, I’m far too aware of the bubble in which I currently reside and know all too well its degradations and drudgeries to lose myself in the isolation experienced in the middle of every crowd. Like respawning in a video game, I find myself moving through the motions, going nowhere worth going fast enough to appease my inherent desire to be anywhere but here. Some might say to flee, but those are the same folks that would have me sit in silence, swallowing every aggression and disrespect, every transgression and betrayal. The very same ones that would paint me as both the victim and the villain, depending on their audience.
 
This all beginning to sound too much like an oh woe is me monologue, but my hardships and heartbreaks are not the point here; my perspective is. From where I’m standing, the root system that spawned me is full of rot and toxic waste and they’re but a fraction of the cancer that is eating away at a world that could otherwise be sincere in its integration. Something about the way things are currently aligning on the political stage makes all of the discomfort and fear and social division that much more prolific. Still, far too many people within my algorithms and throughout my immediate physical world are entirely oblivious to the tangible parallels. The demand for change is alive and well, though I fear that a lack of knowhow and an abundance of pride have tilled the ground for more of the same. True change comes when we address the root causes of this damage and hold ourselves accountable for the parts we play in perpetuating the same patterns in the same deranged system that we’ve been bucking against since Columbus stole this land. 

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