“Authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse.”

In the room without drywall the mattress was a sweat-stained mustard sponge, there were no presumptions of spare cotton bedding nor any present and for company, fleas, the echoing brawls of bickering kin tossing glass and kicking tins. For years for light we had nothing or an idea. No curtains, no moon. One night the ceiling socket wasn’t empty anymore and I wasn’t sure I liked that any better. Between the bulb and moth, I was as voyeur. The floor sometimes slithered, was always hard, cold and concrete. A swim in the creek paired with the prayer daddy’s lighter only burnt the back off leeches. The grey telly static felt familiar. The radio station was not.

Removing social apps from my phone made me realise just how often by habit I move to pick it up and share so many throwaway thoughts. That isn't in itself a bad thing, but does dilute the passions, just as does consistently venting directly to others. To some it's a salve to talk things through; sometimes is to me too and there are interpersonal gains too important to discount available in instances of intimacy, but more often this behaviour serves only to deny myself an opportunity to explore my psyche and relationship with everything creatively for relief that brings itself ephemerally and little more. I've struggled with my attention span, maybe forever, but the experience and burdens around it have felt more pronounced over the last span of a year. Something divine about life disappeared to me, because instead of following every next curiosity I looked and listened to the curiosities of others.

There’s rarely reward in warning against specific individuals, for any of the message to penetrate, a person must already respect our judgement. In even such circumstances the minefield is live. An impassioned warning strikes even the dimwit as a potential act of aggression, condescension or tactic of manipulation: they’ll comb over potential motives. Which is wise. To retain and wave around receipts of another's transgressions socially outside providing evidence necessary during legal proceedings signifies internal doubt, it's transparently an effort at validation through external affirmation which is natural and not contemptible. Still, the ascendant volume of one party more often serves the quieter perpetrator of ills. External validation of a history becomes largely unnecessary within a well-kempt inner environment of self trust. Once we no longer require anybody else to determine the fact or degree of ills against us, our inner dial is set and people rebound off our limits once hit. In knowing what's no good for us subjectively, neither denials nor applause serve as more than echoes. In no way is this the suggestion it's a mistake to share the events of our lives, particularly harms that have widdled us away and reshaped us. Nothing about my writing over fifteen years here suggests such a position. This comes upon reflection of painful instances in my life that were only redeemed if often only partially through a tweak in my expectations in sharing.

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