Among the many goals I had when starting The Memory Tourist was to be more open and personal. My belief was that previous endeavors catered to a more professional style that maybe wasn’t always the most fulfilling. Sure, it gave me exposure and allowed me to discuss topics that I wanted, but it also kept me from ever feeling too satisfied with myself as a writer. To me, every topic should be open to discussion, and I slowly realized that when I became a fan of Nathan Rabin, whose Happy Place website feels as much about reading entertaining essays of pop culture oddities as it is keeping tabs on a man being vulnerable and honest about his personal life.
In a lot of respects, this website was birthed out of that conceit and I think that it has brought me a lot closer to the satisfaction that I dreamed about back in March. It has kept me busy, allowing my imagination to never dry up. I always had something to keep me busy, to find ways to express myself both as a person and in my wild interests. The idea of continually looking to the future has, in some ways, made me a more optimistic person. I would never have a boring day of writing again (though a post-pandemic version of The Memory Tourist may or may not be cutting back content) and I am grateful for that. If anything, I hope expanding my content will eventually lead to more job opportunities.
But again, it’s difficult for me just to be personal. I have spent most of my adult life talking specifically through analysis. I look at my old work and while some of it has quality, there are others that make you realize how much more interesting I could’ve been if I brought in something more personal and honest. That is why I wanted to bake that into the center of these pieces, even though I don’t exactly know if I’m capable of being direct with people. Save for my opening piece called “The Pitch” where I outlined my mental breakdown that leads to this website, I don’t know that I’ve ever taken time to discuss myself in greater detail, free of some larger context.
This isn’t to say that everything has been perfect in that time. I have had good and bad days. However, this past weekend marked a strange moment in my life that inspired me to write this. In theory, this is part of a cycle that has continually returned at varying intervals. Even then, it’s the type of moment that thrusts me into my more irrational side. I’ve only grown thankful that I’m able to avoid indulgence in these times. It could be inconsequential, gone in a matter of days, but Lord does it feel painful to exist in my current state.
I can’t explain if it’s just the absence of election fever or something greater to focus on, but the past few nights have found my anxiety kicking in more and more. It’s at that moment where you’re done with your day, free of any commitment but maybe watching a movie and doing one last scroll through Twitter. It’s somewhere in there that I gained my latest existential crisis and one that made me feel the need to explain myself.
Thanks to some good networking (and increased output on here), I have had significant growth of followers on Twitter. Not only that, but there is a collection of people who are more than likely to respond. Every day for the past few months has brought wonderful conversations that make me feel validated. I’ve found people who care enough to talk to me. It’s strange to admit, but this has felt great, the spontaneity of feeling less alone on the internet, the feeling of acceptance for conversations that could be brief or continual over hours.
To be totally honest, it is both keeping me sane right now and maybe lead to my personal downfall. I ask that you don’t criticize the people themselves, who have not said anything to establish my condition. What I will say is my lifelong struggle with a series of personal problems, whether it be my fear of abandonment, my anxiety, the obsessiveness that comes with autism, or just the reality that my private life has been the right level of isolating this past week to make everything feel far worse than it is.
I can’t say when it started, but I do remember having that obsession. For a string of days in a row, I had nonstop notifications on Twitter. It felt exciting, seeing what my various followers wanted to talk to me about. I love that this website has finally felt substantial despite using it for over a decade. It was good escapism for when my day was getting pretty bad. In the evening, I’d try and hop onboard conversations just to feel some comfort before bedtime, feeling like there was somebody out there that cared about me.
To be honest, the mental breakdown came because I read this act as selfish or overbearing as the week carried on. The lack of response only confirmed initial fears that I wrote something intolerably stupid. That’s been my issue in life. In an act of insecurity and boredom, I’ll sometimes act out in such a way that I burn the goodwill I’ve built on Twitter. It’s not anything hateful, but an overabundance of stupid is still annoying. As a result, I’ll just think of myself as annoying and hate myself all over again. I’ve grown able to step away when I see that pattern emerge, but for some reason, it hit me hard this time.
Again, I have had a rare stretch of isolation over this past week that has been as freeing as it is despairing. You don’t know how much you miss conversation until you speak out and don’t get a response. To provide an apt comparison, the way I see relationships tend to be like fast food. I am intimidated by the drive-thru because the box is so inhuman. I like human interaction, and I’ve really missed it recently specifically in relation to immediate gratification and, quite frankly, the ability to comfort me with a hug. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed hugs.
Which may be why I read too much into specific conversations. At one point discussion of nostalgia came up and Person X discussed their depression. They have done so openly prior and I felt like it was a safe space to be open. As a result, I shared with them something that most people outside of my family didn’t know, which is my rough childhood at 11 and how it made me a much more cautious person. I still don’t know why I felt the need to be open, but at that moment I felt exhilaration and fear. It was like revealing a deep secret.
Thankfully, Person X was respectful of my comment but it maybe lead to my brain getting the wrong impression. My lack of inner-circle friends makes everything that follows a bit more plausible, but I began to see them as someone I could be comfortable with. I think by the end I was talking to them not because I had a great point, but because I wanted a conversation. To be honest, I still enjoy reading their work on Twitter. Also, I've contemplated the idea that maybe I'm a little bit of an empath and want to support people that aren't outwardly happy.
It’s just that the obsessiveness kicked in and I began to have trouble sleeping. I told myself to stop reading too much into the comments I wrote. I needed to respect people’s space and not be so quick to jump on conversations just to get a response. It got so bad that even conversations that were fruitful and lack this problem began to feel desperate in my mind not because what I said was awful, but because it came during a spiral into myself that has been deeply unpleasant.
I suppose to some extent this is all just a deconstruction of thinking too hard about my 11-year-old self, the feeling of being alone in the world. It’s the fear that one exchange with somebody will cause them to block me. Worse yet, the people that I’m trying to respect without being burdensome could see me as weak and pathetic and I lose everything that I’ve been building for. It’s a moment of vulnerability and the number of directions that the fear goes got unbearable by Friday night.
By Friday night, I had two nights of arguing with myself over obsessing over my followers’ lives. I want to be upfront and say that this only pertains to their current Twitter feed. I at least have convinced myself to not dig in further because that would be wrong, and unpleasant. Still, this idea that one personal conversation leading to a deeper friendship so quickly is a perverse thought that continued to bother me. Why did I want this so much? Why was I expecting this from my followers, who simply want to have fun conversations?
I think in some respects it was the isolation. It’s also that my anxiety spiked the uncertainty and focused on the various ways that my past has created disappointment. I was no longer living in the moment, but expecting something to be filled that is irrational. Friendship is nice, but I wonder if I was coming off as too desperate. Was I talking too much about ME in the conversations? Add in intrusive thoughts and this was a nightmare.
Friday night was a boring evening for me and it was when I began to notice the habits. Because of my inactivity, I was constantly opening my phone to check Twitter. I’d often read the same 20 posts over and over as if they provided some deeper context. I began to fear a lack of conversation emerging from the evening. So much was boiling that I decided to just take a day away, realizing that my loneliness in this brief window has caused me to look away from life and find it online.
I fear being vulnerable on here because of what everyone will think. I do not regret the conversations we had. I’m just somebody who has a natural tendency to be hypercritical of every engagement I have with friends throughout my life. I want to make the most of it and when something “goes wrong,” I simply obsess over it. I’ve gotten better about not blaming myself for everything, but I recognize it coming back, this time in the form of conversations that I read too much into. I wanted deeper catharsis and all I got was the revelation that maybe what I said was stupid. It’s exactly why I had to leave Twitter for a whole day if just to try and rejigger my brain chemistry.
Why did I write this here? To be totally honest, The Memory Tourist would feel less fulfilling if I only ever focused on the positive, the media, and not myself. With all of this said, 2020 has been a great year on my personal accomplishments level. I’ve self-published “Esoteric Shapes,” I got paid by Amazon, The Memory Tourist is reaching its 400th entry this week, and I have people on Twitter who keep me company. While I still long to have friends who I can confide with on an even more personal level, I am grateful for those who at least make me feel less alone right now.
I’m sorry if this comes across as unnecessary or even pointless. I always imagine mental health always seems that way to the outside world. I’ve mostly coped by reading articles from Psychology Today and Quora (because… I don’t know) and understand what it is I’m dealing with. Somehow the hard facts have made it easier. It always has, especially on days where I recognize depression kicking in. To have the feeling that I know I’m not alone remains powerful, and it’s what I’m thankful for achieving in some small part with The Memory Tourist. I hope that those out there experiencing some stress right now can reach out and not feel ashamed about the potential response. We need to treat each other right, and I can only hope that I’m doing that every day for the people I encounter in life and online. I’m sorry if I annoyed you, and I hope to work on being less annoying in the future.
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