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| Jackie, pre-vanity, circa 2000 |
Me? No answers. Just a question.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Agreement
is that, in social networking - and I use the term in its pre-internet sense - in fact, in its most elemental sense, the exchange of pleasantries artfully packed with information entwined with inferred questions - is that one must never reveal more than the most fragmentary glimpse of one's own pain and struggle while sharing benign verbal and visual snapshots of beauty, and affection, and invulnerable comfort and equilibrium.
When's the last time you saw someone you know crying on Facebook? I know why we don't share that. But how great it could be, if we found a way to tell our real stories, that was not just a hideous catalog of misery.
Me? No answers. Just a question.
Me? No answers. Just a question.
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4 comments:
There is a closed group on FaceBook called Memory People. It is comprised of people with Alzheimers and caregivers. These are our peers, taking care of parents or taking care of spouses with Early Onset AD. They are suffering and they post their cries of frustration and their cries for help and understanding in this safe place.
I have "friended" a small number of caregivers outside of the group. And in their public profiles, they don't expose the burden they carry in their days. The truth is, "friends" are sorry for your bad luck, but they don't want to roll around in it with you.
So perhaps the real stories are out there - but they reside in secured groups - safe, quiet places of refuge.
MB, that is great to know. And of course my sorrows are nowhere near that depth. (I'm ashamed to even complain).
All of my heart,
Steve
You are so right. I have a few friends on facebook who know about some of my suffering. Some are friends I have known for years, some are acquaintances I have known from the past and have forged a bond through our common sense of compassion, and then there are a few friends in the facebook sense --- people I have never met, but through friends of friends have found a kindred spirit. To all the others I am a fun lover of music who shares posts of her favorite blues artists, or the obscure artist I discovered and enjoy sharing with others. I am the mother and philosopher, the bleeding heart liberal who bemoans our current political climate, the sometimes artist or writer, the ex-teacher who still loves teaching but can't handle the classroom. What most people don't know is why I can't handle the classroom, or many other jobs I've held recently. That out of nowhere I remember the faces of three people I knew and loved. Sometimes I remember their faces happy and smiling, but that's only after I force myself to remember those images. The image I have been haunted by for the past 14 years is their faces covered in blood; their bodies riddled with bullets, lying in a pool of blood and brains in the back room of the video store I owned, where I discovered their lifeless bodies the morning after the robbery.
The only thing I have shared with most of my facebook friends is a status memorializing three unknown people on the anniversary of their death. Perhaps I'm reaching out, begging others to ask about these three young souls who died over less than a thousand dollars, money to be used buying drugs to appease a hungry habit. But it's one of my few statuses that remains without comments. Perhaps everyone is afraid to know. I don't blame them.
I wish I could say something comforting but I just don't have the words.
People ARE often afraid to hear the complete and unrestrained answer to the question," How are you?" I know I am. Especially when I'm already overloaded with my own pain and fear.
But I can wish for you what I wish for myself (and which I do have, most of the time): people who will help you with your burden.
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