There is a subtle hesitancy that accompanies acceptance of what was and commitment to what is.

Telling the truth is complex until you actually just tell it as it is without projecting a desired outcome, especially when that projected desired outcome may not even belong to you.

I’ve been studying the internet since I was first introduced to it as a child. When I was a kid, I used to take computers apart and put them back together again. One hard drive here, one hard drive there. One CPU fan blowing in the wind.

See, I’ve spent most of my life believing I am nothing. I ascribed value on the virtue of standards I was shown through social media. Originally, it was in the form of trashy romance novels, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, SEVENTEEN, peer pressure, bullying, showing up to school after being home-schooled by ESL parents and saying the word, development, wrong.

At a superficial level, this may be about being called pretty, smart, hot, unique, beautiful, interesting, you’re so mysterious and intriguing and “love is madness, passion, obsession,” and all that may in fact be true. But the source isn’t what I was trained to believe through feeds, feedback loops, the magnification of society’s projections, and my audacity to believe we were ever really talking about value or worth.

I feel free.

To believe that you have a self is to understand that you are protected by constitutions, that you have inviolable worth and dignity, that you are actually allowed to make mistakes, fall, falter, get all gloomy about it, and study like hell to find a window that looks out and over infinity.

Image Generated with Google’s Nano Banana.