it surprises me how so many of the people i know here, online, assume they know so much more about me than they actually do. they often assume because i do not talk about a thing, it doesn’t exist.
there are a number of things i never talk about here, mostly because they are the things that are good and healthy and go well in life. this place is the place where what doesn’t fit into those categories comes to rest, so it isn’t rolling around inside my head. and even the things i place here are mostly fictionalized or reduced to pronouns, to maintain promised confidences or avoid the manner of inflicting pain that ‘naming names’ often brings as outcome.
granted, lately things have been a bit on the rollercoasterish side… but that isn’t the whole of my life by far.
add to this that a good bit of what is here is a weaving of dream, meditation, AI, and storytelling… deliberately not noted. you just never know if what you’re reading here actually happened or happened… but not precisely like told or never happened at all. and that’s the way i want it.
the only people who know are those who were part of it, and even for them, they only get to see what i experienced, since i can’t talk about what is inside their head. since 2006, i have learned not to speak more than generically of the real world… and boy, has that been a wise decision.
in this moment, i sit here and think to myself about all of this… and comfort myself by reminding myself that, were i at all the way some of these folks try to portray me, they would have a heck of a lot more to complain of than the petty, selfish things they so often do.
and it occurs to me once more that trying to make real friends out of virtual ones seems to fail at the same point every time… the point at which someone has to do or be more than safely distant and able to unplug and forget at will.
one friend that has made the transition from virtual to real told me the other day that he agreed with mike, who said i really should be less forgiving toward these virtual friends. after this latest episode, i am much more inclined to agree.
it’s interesting. the lesson learned as a result of the Riders is found here as well. i should apply these things more universally, perhaps then i would not have to relearn them in each new venue. to be sure my enjoyment with gaming has improved since i stopped expecting people to be other than selfish and self-absorbed. in fact, using that expectation of their behavior as a guide, i’ve effectively eliminated every instance of being hurt or affected by any of it.
and it occurs to me that, had i been using that perspective in relation to the person in the west, it would have been very simple indeed to just not care what they did or didn’t do, or what outcome(s) it might or would bring.
i do not have to care for everyone. i do not have to hurt for their hurting. i can very easily chalk it all up to their own poor choices and accept that it is not my part or place to try and help.
i do not talk about most of my real life with these people, thanks to the events of 2006, in which doing so resulted in abject inappropriateness that continues to this day.
i gave entirely too much information (though not nearly as much as they seemed to think) to this person in the west and, once again, received nothing but the usual for it — assumptions and judgments that served their purpose to insure the boundary of ‘not real’ wasn’t eliminated for them.
my mistake, of course… but i am really quite thankful that most of the information given them was of a sort that cannot be effectively used against me. though they certainly tried in their little ‘dear john’ way… the hypocrisy of their lashing out while trying to castigate me for lashing out almost exactly as expected.
i do not think they actually realize that i anticipated how this would progress. or that the choices i made at each step were made with full knowledge that this outcome was the most likely.
i do not think they actually understand what it means that, knowing it, i still did what needed to be done.
it doesn’t matter, of course. that they understand it, i mean. too much to ask and i knew all along where their blind spots were… that’s kind of the problem with all of this — no matter how much you hope it will be different, it’s kind of a hopeless hope. besides, the point of it all wasn’t that i have this, that, or the other… it was that the path unfolded in the best way for lessons to be learned.
i do not envy them the lessons and i do not envy them that their choices mean they must learn most of them in decidedly hard ways.
there is one thing more that i never talk about… not here, and not even in the real world. but if you think on it, in light of reading here for any degree of time, it’s obvious.
frankly, it is the one thing i would change… if i could.