Back to Incognito

Photo by Nhu Nguyen on Unsplash

My blog has risen from the dead. Hallelujah!

It has been a long time since I have posted an entry. Not that I have stopped writing (again), but because in 2020, I found myself involved in a small community online. I spent most of my waking hours in the past year in that fandom: from being a lurker, to a mutual, to an author...

And now, back to incognito.

So many things had happened this past week. I am not going into detail, for I wish to throw those recollections to oblivion and only retain the happy ones.

Long story short: it was good while it lasted.

The days of being away from what I considered my safe place allowed me to reflect on a lot of things — my beliefs, my feelings, my fragility (even now that I am in my third decade). Looking back, there were sentiments I could have phrased better, gestures I could have shown towards others, yet the fact remains that I do not regret what I did because I spoke for what I thought was right — with respect and good intentions.

Before I ruffle any feathers, I acknowledge that one may have a different version of this story, and I do not challenge the veracity of it. But a slight change in vantage point can make a huge difference, especially when there are blind spots hindering a spectator from seeing the whole picture.

If there was a silver lining, the fiasco made me realize how much I depended on that so-called “safe place” for sanity during the pandemic — a time of constant worry, a period of falling out from the real world. Since it was not wise to go out, social media became a stand-in for my absent social circles, an avenue to meet people and foster friendships through screens. The notion of ‘stranger danger’ was still in my head, yes; yet peculiarly, there were several instances when I willfully ignored this fear since the mutuals turned out to be kinder than some of the figures I knew personally before the quarantine locked us in.

In many ways, it felt like the club that you go straight to after your last class, right before you go home. In many ways, it felt like family.

Then again, familiarity somehow ended up to be the enemy. Ultimately, trivial incidents began to blow out of proportion, often curtly imposing silence in an environment that was usually happy, positive, and uplifting. Hostility creeped in like a thief in the night, and it did not take long for things to change.

Funny how this broke my heart more than I cared to admit. Why, you ask? Well, imagine being sad over the end of certain virtual relationships. It’s not even real life, for chrissakes!

Still, the antagonism which was rooted from varying perspectives of a fragmented story, shooting from all directions without reprieve, took a toll on me.

Perhaps we have the pandemic to blame for making our emotions and our judgment volatile. Or maybe, it’s just me and my rather careless decision to permit my walls to crumble in front of an audience that I cannot even see with my eyes.

In the end, I decided to vanish, and coming back is a question of if than a question of when.

Again, it was a good run. I am grateful for the guiltless laughs that saved my disastrous day, the crumbs that sustained us until the confirmation finally came, the friendships that kept everyone in their right minds at a time when tomorrow was ambiguous, the moments when the timeline almost felt like home, and the realization that online relationships can be as real as the ones you have outside the internet.

And that turned out to be a good thing and a bad thing in the end.