Too Much Information

I know that the intimate details of my personal life and interior experience can be grating on some. I know that graphic descriptions of the body, inside and out, can be disturbing. I know that many people do not enjoy hearing the things that I often have to say.

But I know that some people are listening. I know that some people find the little details of other people’s experience deeply fascinating, and what’s more — I think that number is larger than some would expect. Humans are, at heart, a voyeuristic species. We are curious creatures; it is impossible to know anything beyond the confines of one’s own body. Our knowledge of ourselves and one another starts and stops at the edge of our skin. And so, I think, we have a fascination with dissection both literal and metaphorical, an irresistible urge to know one another in the most intimate way possible, and I believe that at its core this is the driving force behind any enduring romantic or sexual fascination with another person. We want to know. We want to almost become one another, if only for a split second, if only to say that we truly understand…but we never will.

And so we pry. We put our noses in other people’s business. We attempt to describe ourselves so that others might understand us in books, films, song, dance, art, and just as many people as those who make to make themselves understandable view, staring at at for hours in a dusty museum or gyrating to the lyrics of a band in some dive, trying for just a moment to comprehend what it all means.

I speak about some things because I feel I have a responsibility to do so. There are things I know, things I have felt and experienced, which other people might benefit from hearing. I’m not so conceited as to think that this is the vast majority of what I have to say, but it is there. Other things, I speak about because I want to, because I spent two years unable to voice my discomfort or my concerns to friends and family members for fear of being ostracized by them or abandoned by the person I loved most in the world. I was never told by my partner that I could not speak, but the reaction he gave me when I did was so consistently negative that I gradually shut down and could not speak at all. And that was a form of abuse, spiritual and emotional, because he well knew that speaking — writing — was my life, and the only thing more important in the world to me than he was, but I abandoned it for him. So now that this man is no longer in my life, I feel that I should speak, damn the consequences and damn what other people might think of the (possibly poor) choices I have made.

Words should never be suppressed. There is no such thing as too much information — there is only information which makes people uncomfortable. In many cases, yes, with good reason, but I tend to believe that if you live the way you think is “right”, if you do the things that you think are morally correct, if you try to live your life with no regrets and in a manner of which you can be proud…then there are no inappropriate things you can say about yourself, or anyone can say about you. If you are ashamed at certain details of your life, perhaps it is your life that should change. Of course, nobody’s perfect. There should be no words you could say which you are afraid of others hearing.

There will be words, yes, which upset others, no matter what you do. But your own words or the words of those close to you should never be able to hurt you. They can hurt, of course, and easily, when employed to the wrong ends — words are more powerful than most people imagine they are.

But not like this. Never like this. These words are powerful but should not be painful, and when they are painful they should not be threatening.

I don’t believe in such a thing as too much information. But nobody will force you to read.

Bait/Switch

Growing up, I could never believe in God. The concept of the divine was unfathomable to me. Plainly put, the idea of a big man up in the sky watching my every action and silently but irrevocably judging me was terrifying. (Perhaps that’s why, even now, I have such a hard time making decisions, wondering constantly if they are the “right” ones, to the point where inconsequential details can paralyze me with terror.) But the concept was also, on its face, patently absurd. I had more faith in the existence of fairies and unicorns than I did in God.

I was not a child who, shall we say, lived in anything resembling known reality. I lived an elaborate fantasy life, and frankly, I still do. I know better now than to really believe the things that come from my mouth and my fingertips, elaborately beautiful and dark stories of true loves and princesses, angels and mermaids and ghosts and demons, but part of me still clings stubbornly to the hope that there is more to this world than what I can see, just out of reach… I often wish that I could see the world for a moment the way that I did as a child. My days were filled with wonder and magic (and unicorns). But never God. Even as a child, I could not take God seriously.

My church taught me that doubts were synonymous with action; that lack of faith was sin. I was terrified of the implications, and prayed dutifully, every night, in my own amateur Pascal’s Wager, just in case someone was listening who cared. As I grew older, the fear became less urgent. My parents confirmed to me that it was reasonable to doubt by leaving the church. I wept with relief at the knowledge that this cosmic bully, this boogeyman haunting my dreams and every waking action, was dead. God had never been there, and I was free.