The great escape from reality.
I still come for the humor and humanity. I still smile when I see photos of nature and animals. Giggle at pets. I still am in awe of the talent and creativity. The beautiful souls and lovely poetry. The music I didn't know I needed to hear. Forgotten lyrics that somehow find their way back to me. Sometimes I just sit with it for a while.
I see breakups and people wanting to be seen. Not in likes or selfies, just daring the mass to truly see them. I feel deep grief and sadness, loneliness and insecurity. I stay amused by the audacities and unshaken confidence. The budding friendships and people who are genuinely kind.
The tenderness and the teeth.
And sometimes I am surprised by the bullying and ignorance that passes through my feed. How casually cruelty takes hold, how effortlessly contempt passes for conversation, and how easily people turn on one another. The ugliness of it all, and how comfortably they wear it.
The contradictions hold me. The way some people evolve and other people never change.
I feel lost in a place I like to wander.
The news, the clickbait, the thirst traps, the rage bait, the politics, the sports, the way beauty gets buried beneath the rubble of a world that has shattered.
I see the hopeful collecting the glass and trying to make sense of something so right. Why does something so right tear us apart so wretchedly wrong?
The anxiety, the depression, the creeping, the ostentation. The onslaught of hypersensitivity and oversexualization. The desensitized, the leery, the otraverts. People finding each other. Losing each other. Holding on too tightly. Letting go without looking back. The community. The loneliness of it.
Some leave an impression. Some leave a wound. And some disappear so quietly you don't notice until you go looking for them.
And sometimes I'm the one who disappears.
Shutting the door and still passing each other. In the same place.
The chair between us, empty.
A madhouse full of all kinds, a Pandora's box left open and neglected.
I wonder why I keep coming back.
