observation and participation

my, how i love reading blogs.

when i admit to others my secret vice, they look at me with bewilderment.

"you read what where?"

by september of my first year, i had a running tally of blogs that kept me occupied, and indoors, on days when i could not think about where i was. there were days when i would wake and read blogs for such lengths of time that my eyes would ache by the time i resigned myself back to sleep. oh, my eyes would be screaming at me, furious for having spent precious time and long days in front of variously colored splatterings of strangers' online journals.

the first time i stumbled into a blog was when i was hunting down every out lesbian on my university campus via facebook. the public profiles lead to others in certain campus groups that advocated for gay rights, etc., and i would spend hours wandering through the lives of these women (mostly women) as they sought out space for themselves in reality.

one of the profiles, held by a ftm transgender student, took me to live journal where i began reading her (still her then) thoughts on how hostile the world felt. i read diligently of her mundane job and the beautiful (bicurious?) tease who worked with her. she talked about music and her desire to write and play and sing it, confounded by her utter lack of motivation to really follow through with any substantial projects.

her life was there. raw. emotional. gut-wrenchingly honest. she wrote very seriously about gender and family relationships- of how her brother could physically not look at her because she manifested such masculinity in her every move. she wrote of the gaps of time that would open between she and her mother, their meetings and their lives.

it struck me as... lonely. not just her life. but her blogging. her need to explain to the world that she felt this way.

it struck me as weak. why did she need people to read these things? to what end was she moving towards in displaying her most preciously guarded fears and anxieties to an anonymous world?


it is, thus, strange to be here. to be writing my own blog. to be writing another legitimate blog for the real life audience i've promised to entertain.

and christ, it feels cathartic. had i known then what release i could possibly feel in writing to no one in particular, i might not have judged so harshly.

and reading blogs. well, that makes sense to me. my fascination with it needs no real long explanation.

i observe. i snoop and stalk. i am eerie in that sense- that i always seem to have a firmer grasp on the actions and reactions and lives of others than they have ever paused to give thought about in regards to me.

i lived a good portion of my youth feeling very creepy and odd. i adored the process of watching and processing and understanding others' lives even if it meant i was always jealous or in some state of longing for the things i saw i did not have.

as a child, this was remarkably painful. it is one of the many many reasons i will never have children. it is also one of the many reasons i feel so utterly disconnected from humanity.

observers, in my mind, aren't meant to take part. observation requires no active role in the observed by definition. if there is participation in observing, then the observation no longer is observation. it is something else entirely.

i have been observing my entire life. currently, i'm living in a situation where i'm actively being encouraged to take part in the life and people and culture i'm simultaneously observing. and i am failing at it.

i have not reconciled the division between observation and participation. herein lies my own dilemma, the one that has caught me in a whirlwind here, the one that continues to alienate me from people generally.

reading blogs, in this setting, makes perfect sense. it is my coping mechanism. it is my way of participating as i always have.