Are We Having Fun Here?

If you’re hiding behind anonymity, it’s because you know that what you’re saying is inappropriate. It’s because you’re embarrassed & because you don’t want folks to know that it’s you saying it. If you’re going to speak to people this way, say it with your whole chest. This is cowardly.

I also want to be frank in that this isn’t the only anonymous message I’ve received similar to this. It’s been pretty constant. I was only ever posting drafts of things in my Google Docs that I wrote for myself to enjoy. I shared them because I wanted to make somebody else smile or improve their day for a minute. I was under no false impression that I’m the best writer ever or even remotely good. Still. I can’t be dishonest and say that the messages don’t hurt me. It really, really sucked to wake up this morning. Admittedly, I cried about it. It just isn’t nice to share something you made with not even the world, but just within the community, and then to be ridiculed for it. I feel a little embarrassed posting this at all.

I’m going to pull the fics down for a while I think and the remainder will stay in my drafts.

Hey Siri, how do I get rid of people who are so enraged by the mere existence of people who appear differently from them that they feel the need to throw a temper tantrum about it in anonymous asks?

On a real level though, my fics aren’t secretly black x reader. I wrote them with the intention of anybody being able to place themselves in the role.

I'm afraid when I open the boxes (of convention and defense), layer by layer, searching for the soul-self-core like a child opening a surprise package large enough to contain a man, finding box after box, each inside the other each carefully wrapped and padded, hermetically sealed and lined with shredded hopes, each smaller than the last... last?...what's last?...perhaps a wasp? (at least that's something)...not a butterfly?...nothing?...nothing I'm afraid...I'm afraid of nothing...I am afraid.

How do I love? With my body of course. Yes!...no? Is that anything but my way of attempting to demonstrate my own existence? Is that only my pinching myself to see if I am awake, as the masochist tries to prove to herself that she (too) can feel. Work, play, art, pain, joy, friends, "loves"...are these only tape wrapped around the face of the "Invisible Woman"? She frightened me...was I afraid for the others...or for her? What will happen if, when I look in the mirror after removing the wraps, I see only a heap of limp rags that had been held in place by their own starch? What then? Death? That would be only spontaneous combustion of the rags; there would be nothing to kill...god! Perhaps I've already looked... and what?... and gotten dressed again...more than once perhaps...when? When I'm afraid? I am afraid.

Stop pondering... I can't. That's what I've been trained to do... for too long.

Run?... Where?... And from what?

Just go on living?

(Am I?)

Who am I?

I am... afraid.

I am afraid... that I'm nothing.

I am afraid of nothing...