Speaking as and to the Void in 2020
Thursday, December 31st, 2020 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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feversendThis is a personal post. I talk about myself and life in 2020, particularly life online. I may allude to anxiety and/or depression very briefly, not sure if tagging those is the best way to do this on dreamwidth so I'm just saying it outright.
I am starting abruptly because I have been writing constantly for the last few days and it is tiring me out but these are thoughts that have been brewing for months so I wanted to get them out before I crash for a while. I did consider whether this journal is the best place for it but then reminded myself I didn't make the leap (finally!) to post whatever the hell you want on twitter and ao3 only to revert back to tepid nail-biting here. I will try to keep it short, for my own sake and given the fact that I have talked about myself a lot this month.
I've been in and around fandom for almost a decade now but I've only well and truly engaged with the other people in it, who weren't my own real life friends, very very recently. Initially it was because I stumbled into fandom very illicitly while in boarding school and suffice it to say I did not want to leave a trace of what I was reading anywhere. I got out of school, into a situation where I was miserable and beginning to realise that I was depressed although I was still reading and consuming content- by then on lj and tumblr or ao3 and twitter where I moved pretty quickly once my friend inducted me into kpop. But my twitter account had not a single tweet for two years. I just...lurked; a habit that unfortunately I find hard to shake off even now especially when I admire or am intimidated by someone.
Things changed in a big way in 2018 because of some life-changing events and I found myself knee-deep in the kpop fandom space on twitter but with no idea how to actually talk to people, so acute was my anxiety. It's been two years since and it took a lot of personal reckoning with offline relationships and a pandemic to make myself leave at least a chunk of the armor aside when I log on, to stop thinking about how much it feels like screaming into a void and just letting myself be, just a little bit.
And of course, you know what comes next. The void speaks back to you and you're so? Overwhelmed by it? At first it's just the thrill of finding that your voice has a landing place and it isn't just bouncing around. With time it grows and nuances beyond just having similar interests. Oh you cry to Siken, I do too can only take you till a point. Finding people who speak your tongue, beyond language and fandom-specific syntax, who haze your idiocies in fondness and who hold you up on terrible, terrible days is far tougher, but so goddamn rewarding. So, yeah some people have family and some people need a support system wherever they can find one.
I started writing this, or some part of it two months back when I read someone I admire say they wanted to read and write about loneliness and pain but only in the context of how life was "fucking awesome" even with all of those emotions. At the moment, I was reading nitilia's latest update on pieces (linked later!) and I didn't quite agree. Not at the moment. It's not something I haven't heard before but I had never continued to think about it beyond that moment. Perhaps because they weren't preaching to me or because living away from my own life, stuck in my parents' old house again has made me the most annoying shade of sentimental and nostalgic this year.
I kept thinking about it in the context of my own life, the one on the internet especially and, well, things aren't always rosy are they? Besides the pitfalls of being active in fandom in general, being vulnerable always sets you up for hurt. Add to that *vague hand gestures* bad brain and well, it is just as complicated and messy as any relationship. There have been multiple times I have shut down and retreated to a corner. In November an interaction gave me such a bad bout of anxiety I deactivated for a month and spent a whole week in bed. And yet I found myself coming back, slowly.
I ended up talking about pieces of this 2020 experience with the person whose words were stuck in my head. Nitilia replied to a comment I left after her series ended and it was this: Isn't it surreal how full we feel finding just one echo of our own emptiness? I had no recollection of writing this, I was sobbing when I read the ending and it hit me like a truck. Her quoting it back to me, the place, the conversation. Everything.
I have lived more than most of 2020 on the internet because what other option did I have if I wanted to survive? And it has brought me endless hope, companionship and *feeling* to pierce through the numbness even as it has brought me despair and anxiety that trembles me down to the pores of my skin. I wish one could be taken without being burdened with the other but don't we wish the same about the people that make up our everyday lives offline? So why would online be any different? Is there a point to repeating it still? I don't know, I didn't start writing this with a point in mind, I rarely do.
You could say damn that's a roundabout way of saying you are terrified of being perceived but are grateful for it and that you love your homies. Yes, it is. Yes, I do. My dear 'internet friend' will tell me it's because I'm an Aquarius. For the umpteenth time this year, I will nod and smile and ask her to tell me more even if I understand it even less every time. Someone more perceptive will ask me if I wrote this while Day6 live stages played in the background and I will gush "HOW DID YOU KNOW!" I will douse myself in wine and go to sleep and wake up sad, bitter, lonely. I will think a different way tomorrow when I wake up to class and the new sense of failure that every new year recycles for me. But shit, I still want to say it all now, for now.
Yes, this was me keeping it short, if you were wondering. Given my crazy bad attention span and ~depression~ consuming media has been really tough, I have barely read a singe book in years but I wanted to do a media roundup still! Just to share the things I loved and that in turn held me close this year.
Thank you for indulging me, giving me your time and letting me believe, for a moment, that my words are worth saying: without meaning or context or any great 'value'. Thank you for the pleasure of your company in a year that if you know me, you'll know has been so very difficult for reasons far beyond the pandemic. I allow myself to be a little more ajar than before because of it.
Why a media roundup on a post about my personal journey? Well, does anything lay me bare more plainly than what holds me together?
I am starting abruptly because I have been writing constantly for the last few days and it is tiring me out but these are thoughts that have been brewing for months so I wanted to get them out before I crash for a while. I did consider whether this journal is the best place for it but then reminded myself I didn't make the leap (finally!) to post whatever the hell you want on twitter and ao3 only to revert back to tepid nail-biting here. I will try to keep it short, for my own sake and given the fact that I have talked about myself a lot this month.
I've been in and around fandom for almost a decade now but I've only well and truly engaged with the other people in it, who weren't my own real life friends, very very recently. Initially it was because I stumbled into fandom very illicitly while in boarding school and suffice it to say I did not want to leave a trace of what I was reading anywhere. I got out of school, into a situation where I was miserable and beginning to realise that I was depressed although I was still reading and consuming content- by then on lj and tumblr or ao3 and twitter where I moved pretty quickly once my friend inducted me into kpop. But my twitter account had not a single tweet for two years. I just...lurked; a habit that unfortunately I find hard to shake off even now especially when I admire or am intimidated by someone.
Things changed in a big way in 2018 because of some life-changing events and I found myself knee-deep in the kpop fandom space on twitter but with no idea how to actually talk to people, so acute was my anxiety. It's been two years since and it took a lot of personal reckoning with offline relationships and a pandemic to make myself leave at least a chunk of the armor aside when I log on, to stop thinking about how much it feels like screaming into a void and just letting myself be, just a little bit.
And of course, you know what comes next. The void speaks back to you and you're so? Overwhelmed by it? At first it's just the thrill of finding that your voice has a landing place and it isn't just bouncing around. With time it grows and nuances beyond just having similar interests. Oh you cry to Siken, I do too can only take you till a point. Finding people who speak your tongue, beyond language and fandom-specific syntax, who haze your idiocies in fondness and who hold you up on terrible, terrible days is far tougher, but so goddamn rewarding. So, yeah some people have family and some people need a support system wherever they can find one.
I started writing this, or some part of it two months back when I read someone I admire say they wanted to read and write about loneliness and pain but only in the context of how life was "fucking awesome" even with all of those emotions. At the moment, I was reading nitilia's latest update on pieces (linked later!) and I didn't quite agree. Not at the moment. It's not something I haven't heard before but I had never continued to think about it beyond that moment. Perhaps because they weren't preaching to me or because living away from my own life, stuck in my parents' old house again has made me the most annoying shade of sentimental and nostalgic this year.
I kept thinking about it in the context of my own life, the one on the internet especially and, well, things aren't always rosy are they? Besides the pitfalls of being active in fandom in general, being vulnerable always sets you up for hurt. Add to that *vague hand gestures* bad brain and well, it is just as complicated and messy as any relationship. There have been multiple times I have shut down and retreated to a corner. In November an interaction gave me such a bad bout of anxiety I deactivated for a month and spent a whole week in bed. And yet I found myself coming back, slowly.
I ended up talking about pieces of this 2020 experience with the person whose words were stuck in my head. Nitilia replied to a comment I left after her series ended and it was this: Isn't it surreal how full we feel finding just one echo of our own emptiness? I had no recollection of writing this, I was sobbing when I read the ending and it hit me like a truck. Her quoting it back to me, the place, the conversation. Everything.
I have lived more than most of 2020 on the internet because what other option did I have if I wanted to survive? And it has brought me endless hope, companionship and *feeling* to pierce through the numbness even as it has brought me despair and anxiety that trembles me down to the pores of my skin. I wish one could be taken without being burdened with the other but don't we wish the same about the people that make up our everyday lives offline? So why would online be any different? Is there a point to repeating it still? I don't know, I didn't start writing this with a point in mind, I rarely do.
You could say damn that's a roundabout way of saying you are terrified of being perceived but are grateful for it and that you love your homies. Yes, it is. Yes, I do. My dear 'internet friend' will tell me it's because I'm an Aquarius. For the umpteenth time this year, I will nod and smile and ask her to tell me more even if I understand it even less every time. Someone more perceptive will ask me if I wrote this while Day6 live stages played in the background and I will gush "HOW DID YOU KNOW!" I will douse myself in wine and go to sleep and wake up sad, bitter, lonely. I will think a different way tomorrow when I wake up to class and the new sense of failure that every new year recycles for me. But shit, I still want to say it all now, for now.
Yes, this was me keeping it short, if you were wondering. Given my crazy bad attention span and ~depression~ consuming media has been really tough, I have barely read a singe book in years but I wanted to do a media roundup still! Just to share the things I loved and that in turn held me close this year.
- Ada Limón's The End of Poetry
- Tu Zinda Hai, Tu Zindagi Ki Jeet Par Yakeen Kar by Shankar Shailendra
- The Loneliness One Dare Not Sound
- Love Me or Leave Me by Day6
- pieces by nitilia
- After Hours with Heize
- this craft capsule by Chen Chen
- this song
- bts in the soop
- in the dark times will there also be singing
- Tian Guan Ci Fu by Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù
- Ohio by Crush
- this piece on Annapurna Devi
- the holy trifecta of Reply 1988, Prison Playbook and Hospital Playlist written by Lee Woojung and directed by Shin Wonho...but especially Reply ;__;
- Movement at the current
- tablo tablo tablo
- Dark Pines by Klavier
- Der Lagi Lekin
- Bella Ciao
- Elegy by Aracelis Girmay
- Let it Rain by Epik High
- Going Seventeen 2020
- Emily Dickinson Complex?
- SEORI !! SEORI my gorgeous wonderful find of this year
- Varavara Rao's Poems they don't want you to read
- Lee Hi and Yiruma
- Chen Chen's twitter account
- Every single solo release by Young K of Day6
- Literacy, Libraries and Liberation- Angela Davis and Toni Morrison
- FAIZ!! Faiz and memories of January are still too much sometimes.
- Nilla Aakasx by Papon
- doremi market/amazing saturday episodes
- Still With You by Jungkook (almost included Your Eyes Tell instead because I learned to play it but, this one..)
- my wife's herbarium
- Pacman by eaj
- Manmarziyan by Shilpa Rao and Amitabh Bhattacharya
- of course Ocean Vuong and of course Siken
Thank you for indulging me, giving me your time and letting me believe, for a moment, that my words are worth saying: without meaning or context or any great 'value'. Thank you for the pleasure of your company in a year that if you know me, you'll know has been so very difficult for reasons far beyond the pandemic. I allow myself to be a little more ajar than before because of it.
Why a media roundup on a post about my personal journey? Well, does anything lay me bare more plainly than what holds me together?
