Manifest

It's location-based, at least in part. It's in the genes as well, and having been nurtured by deceit didn't exactly help. But what's going on now is more accute than all of that, and it's tied to this place in which I sit: the black and white view of the rectangular windows beyond my black, rectangular window, they people and the unimportance of that which they hold dear, the intricate systems they've built simultaneously to facilitate miscommunication and skirt accountability.

It is not me alone, but rather is the synergy between me and this, this ... this place.

Peter Steiner

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I was in a forum full of newbies. 'Twenty years! I can't imagine enduring it for that long' to paraphrase the reaction of one of the neophytes present.

What I didn't say was that twenty years is a conservative estimate; thirty is a more accurate figure. And some of these poor kids don't even realize they're sick. They believe that this is a phase that they're going through, a series of bad relationships, a temporary downturn of events, growing pains - just as I probably believed decades ago.

What can someone like me possibly offer a bunch of kids like that other than Oprah-esque survivor stories? And what what can they possibly offer me that wouldn't sound like one of my hallucinogenic undergraduate experiments in non-traditional narrative?

Peter Steiner was right, on the internet, no one knows you're a dog.

It's Not At All Like Inertia

It's very hard to explain to those who have only experienced it fleetingly. Words can't describe it because there is no logical analogy. It fools the senses into believing that the laws of physics have been suspended. And as you survive all of the secret attacks, you come to the incipient realization that you're better than everyone else. But the realization is a tragic one.