#information maze

Back in the days of AOL 3.0, when it was all so much smaller, my brother and I would go chatrooms, pretending we were older, pretending to be other people. He did most of the pretending, I just liked to see, see a room full of people talking to us, to me, people who wanted to talk to me even if I was halfway around the world, a world I was already afraid of.

By middle school it was already a big part of my life. I could learn about anything, see anywhere I wanted to go, for a moment, be someone who didn't fear the shadows around the light of the door. It made the dreams of getting far away not so hard even when I feared that they in meatspace would not let me see adulthood.

In high school, it had become more common place. It was also the most common place to find me, seeking more answers. It became my security blanket, my coping mechanism, and my dreams all in one. I made close friends, sought comfort, sought answers to my every question. I also hurt people, lost people, and lied to other's questions of me. I say I wanted answers, and even today I find myself connecting to a box hoping that the answers within will make it all better, when really - I just wanted someone to care, to connect people. And I have, I've found the greatest of friends there.

But I still find it easier to connect to the information, the drive to get it, even when I know what I want to connect with is people. It was so ingrained in me that even today, my search for the answers I wanted at 10 are still a driving force in my leisure time online. Molded by society around me and the lights within my screen,

I've bought into the idea that if I just find the right information, the right programme, the right teacher, then I can make sense of everything and do everything right. If I know the best foods and exercise, then I can be the healthy ideal that is everywhere, if I know everything, then I won't have an unknown to fear and be as confident and happy as the ideal I've been taught to reach. If I read all the parenting and development and texts on emotions, then I can be that parenting ideal that I've never seen with my own eyes. If I get just the right information, get it all together, then I can pass it on so others won't have to spend the hours I have done in search of them.

Like a dream, even when I know it is unreal and unrealistic, I find myself back in again, spending so much time looking for and organizing the information so it's always to hand, so I can pass it along, but who am I going to pass it to when I can't get the energy or past the fear of connecting to people again, and what am I going to do with so much of this information that isn't really mine. I know better, I know all the theory, but there is no programme to put it into practice and no push from anywhere to ever really do so. Find the answers is all I can hear, maybe getting lost in theory is what they want.

I know the theory and where to find the answers that are known, but what practice to put it into? I feel the pull to go looking for answers on what to do, but is that just more energy that is not being spent on doing what all this information tells me I really should do? Most of the life I can recall, I've sought for refuge here, and I've needed and am grateful that this has been here for me, but now I need more than just to absorb and realize that in all the theory I have ever sought and all the helpful to-dos to a better life that I dreamed of that dark room, none of it can ever push me out of the fear and into real connections. Even in those chatrooms, the text may be there, but the connections are what I do myself. I can do it, so why do I feel I need more answers, more programmes, more information?

Because this is the information age, where all the information is spread far and thin and mixed up in lies and deceit that one could spend a lifetime getting through it and not have time in their age to find out what to do with the information, no time to find out that the information most often seen is twisted versions to support a system from the words of people who are trying to do something.

I cleared out my favourites, my delicious, some email boxes, some old tumblr posts, so much information - so little of it really mine - and peeling away old layers of old attempts at finding the answer to see that I am more me than ever, I have years of theory and information, but so little of it is me and it's hard to see the word I've put through to become me through all of these archives of old mes. This me has dreams, but how do I make right that so much of my fire is the candles lit by other people that to me are shining bright but to the world are a flicker twisted and dismissed.