There are moments when we’re taught to mistrust ourselves, to regard our own feelings with high suspicion, where we learn that we are not our own friends or companions, where we do not lead ourselves well through the world but instead point the way toward traps, pits, quicksand. We learn to view ourselves as enemies.

Don’t pretend this isn’t true of some more than others.

~

Calm down.

Immediately followed by Don’t take it so personally.

Immediately followed by It’s not serious.

This is not how it starts but this is how it continues, forever.

~

Reality is a platform on which we’re given to stand. This starts very early, and it starts early because how we live and move and are in the world is guided by how we orient ourselves to this concept. How we know what is. How we know what we trust. How we know what’s legitimate. How we know what’s Okay, so we know how to be Okay, and how we know when we are not Okay.

This is someone else’s idea of Okay and we’re taught not to question where it came from.

These are stories. These are the first stories. These are the oldest stories. I don’t know how many times I have to say this: These are stories and they are real but they aren’t true. On some level we know this, but you don’t trust yourself, do you? So you don’t trust that feeling. You are not Okay for having it. You are not Okay.

So there’s “real” and there’s Okay and later when we find holes and gaps in those walls and doors through which we might walk, when we find the membrane is more porous than we were told, we have no idea what to do. It’s terrifying. It’s shameful. It’s the lie of an enemy, and this is how we learn to hate our own stories.

This is how we learn to hate ourselves.

~

Calm down.

Immediately followed by Don’t be so sensitive.

Immediately followed by It’s all in your head.

If you don’t think words are real you have never encountered words.

~

I can’t tell you how many years I spent looking for the button that would turn this off. It’s been thirty years and I still haven’t found it.

We’re taught not to trust buttons. We’re taught that we should have them.

~

Calm down.

Immediately followed by It’s not that big a deal.

Immediately followed by It was just a joke.

~

What you need to understand is that the fetishization of the real is older than the digital. Okay, we know that. So what you need to understand is that the fetishization of the real is about more than what we can see, more than what we can hold in our hands.

The fetishization of the real is how we learn to make enemies of ourselves. It’s how we learn to hate our own stories.

~

I remember I was crying over something that wasn’t real, and I was trying to stop crying and I was trying to explain why I was crying and I was trying to explain why I was crying to myself, and I was trying to find that button that would turn it off and I was thinking about buttons, about programming, and I said I tell stories.

This is the bug in my feature.

~

When we look at what we make and what we do and how we use it, when we look at the meaning we construct around those things, when we look at what we know about ourselves and where we come from, when we look at the stories we tell about those things, when we look at our myths and our legends and every silly movie, TV show, book, video game, every stupid little piece of cultural paraphernalia, when we look at everything around us, every story, and we see ourselves injured, murdered, made monstrous, made weak, made insignificant, absent, erased, the story we’re told is that we don’t matter.

The story we’re told is that we don’t exist, and we never have, and we never will.

~

Calm down.

Immediately followed by It’s not real.

Immediately followed by It’s just a story.

~

And I said I don’t have to apologize for this, and I don’t have to justify it to anyone, and I don’t have to minimize my own pain. I don’t have to explain why I love these people who are far away, and whom I might never meet, and who aren’t real. I don’t have to be suspicious of myself. I don’t have to regard myself as an enemy. I don’t have to hate my stories.

I get to tell my stories. That’s the point.

~

Calm down.

Fuck you.

~

We have always been here. We are here. We always will be.

We’re real.

Sarah tells stories on Twitter – @dynamicsymmetry