A Whole New Experience for Me…
Lately I’ve been revelling in the lives of other people, people I don’t even know. These are pages and blogs and journals linked from my friend Micah’s page. After reading about his friends’ lives (two of whom I actually know), I move on to their friends. I feel like a voyeur, but a happier one. I used to spend hours on the telephone listening to people’s problems and occasionally helping them solve them, but really just listening, and I liked that. I hang with a different crowd now, and I’m not at all confortable with them. Not like that. Their problems annoy me. But to read the blogs and journals of these strangers almost gives me that feeling again of being able to just listen without having to put on a face of any sort (sympathetic or not). When I read the entries of the people I am acquainted with, I can choose not to respond (by signing guestbooks or leaving comments) because I wonder if my “presence” would influence their posts. That may sound arrogant, to think that people with whom I am only acquainted (not particularly friends) would alter their private posts for my sake, but I know that people do in fact tailor their responses to their audience, and I fear that I put off an aura; many people think I’m a stuck-up elitist or the like, and don’t say certain things around me, or leave entire topics alone when I come around.
While I am almost never flippant about people’s problems and issues (as long as they are not being pressed upon me), I do find my load looking a little lighter after reading these pages. My former popcorn-slinging buddy Sonny summed it up perfectly:
[…] I just realized how much I have in common with the rest of the world’s teenagers. Lately, everyone has been telling me about their problems, and normally, they would make me depressed, but in reality, they are really making me happy right now (not that i am feeding off of your problems and laughing at you guys incessantly). It makes me feel like I am really not alone in this world (another cheesy line). But like, shit happens. And it happens all the time, especially to me. To know that it happens to other people just as often is a welcoming concept. But i mean, it IS a bad thing. The world should be nicer, don’t you think?
So in a spider’s web from Micah’s blog, including Ayana, Sonny, and a nifty-sounding dude named Scott, I voyeur people’s thoughts and problems, and watch as their thoughts and problems affect mine and my responses. An indescribable feeling is within me.
These are the few people I actually know: