My nakedness couldn’t save me.
Honesty makes you a whore to life. Ever since I started documenting my life and sharing it with the world, I feel like I’m always on the short side of the stick. And I know. The stick is a social construct; it’s not real, and no one really cares. There isn’t a secret under my skin that is worth the freedom of being truly open, but why do I feel some sort of carnal sickness when I say a little too much? Not to quote Carrie Bradshaw, but sometimes I feel like the sex column they run next to ads for penile implants. There isn’t a world where I wouldn’t yap until there are no more words left to pour out of me, but why then do I feel like I’m giving more than I can ever get back, and why does it bother me? This stick, the transactional nature of intimacy, is something that I adamantly try to fight, but living in a world full of trees makes me second-guess if my quest for freedom is logical. The truth is that I’m beginning to wonder if what I’m offering is enough. The life I’ve chosen is starting to feel like a performance that is not worth the maintenance fee. What happens when your nakedness becomes a prison?
Individual liberation will NOT save you. My social exhibition can’t free me from the concept of shame. In a capitalist world, you can see the transactional nature of everything. A secret for a secret, a part of me for a part of you. While true experiences cannot truly be quantified, you can see this back and forth of intimacy between two parties. Under this understanding, I’m burning my money and letting its ashes fall on the heads of everyone. I shouldn’t care about what I get in return for me displaying my heart to the world, but I know to the standards of my society I am objectively losing. Should a person who detests capitalism forego all their riches in the name of their morals? In the same vein, can I ignore the systems at work in the name of personal “enlightenment”?
A part of me knows that this perspective of capitalism might be a cover-up for something more heartbreaking. Is what I’m saying important? Deep down, I’m aware that all that I’ve experienced has been depicted in hundreds of different ways and in words I’m not even capable of thinking about. Are my words cheap sex to the world? Deeply intimate to me but meaningless to anyone. When I talk about the unraveling of my being, do you see it as a passing story in a sea of identical words? What is my perspective worth when everyone has their own? The sad reality is there isn’t enough sentimental value you can give to something for it to be objectively worthy. In this case, it’s my soul.
There isn’t really an answer for my predicament. No one will ever be able to give me an objective measure of my worth, and there will always be this uneven relationship between anyone experiencing life and those consuming it. I hope there will be a day that it won’t bother me.