Radio Silence

     You know when it feels like you’ve fucked up but you’re just so certain that it can’t be you? That’s how I’m feeling right now.

    I wrote a post on the 8th of March, 2019, about getting back into contact with a friend I made just after college. Things were great and now they’re not. They haven’t been great since last Christmas and I think in the period from then to now, I’ve probably seen him seven or eight times. It feels like we don’t know each other anymore. He missed my birthday completely and that hit me the hardest, I think. It’s something I never expected from him.

    It sucks because… I always end up losing everybody. Every friend I’ve ever had has either moved on, forgotten about me or cut contact. I know times change, but I didn’t think people could change so dramatically, too. It hurts. It doesn’t feel like it’s what I deserve. I try to fill my time with meaningless things but nothing fills the void. Nothing fits in the spaces where my friends were. Nothing takes that deep, twisting ache away from my heart like having them back would.

    I just wish things would go back to how they were, or that he’d just let me in. I just want to be a part of his life and I don’t understand why he won’t let me.

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

21/11/2022

A Good Person

    Hey again. :) How are you? Mm, same. I feel that. I hope it improves for you soon. I know exactly how you feel. Like… right?! I always think, “wow, it really can’t be that hard to send a quick text message,” but hey, I guess it is. I guess I’m wrong. I’m wrong a LOT lately. I know! You wouldn’t think it just looking at me. But hey, nobody is perfect, y’know? I started this thing about four or five years ago now and I can’t even keep on top of it, so. What do I know, eh?

    I started this blog with the intention of talking about things I like, things that inspired me. Now I only use it to talk about things I don’t like. It’s sad, honestly. This medium has been hijacked by the negative thoughts in my brain. I can’t help it though, y’know? If I don’t get these thoughts out, I can’t focus in real time. I need to focus, for all the important things I do. Like, play Spider-Man or watch TV. Haha.

    I’ve been watching The Politician with Joe these past couple days and I love it. We started watching it as a meme because I like Ben Platt a lot and the premise sounded so silly, but it’s not a meme anymore. I genuinely really like it. Something about feeling like I relate to Ben’s character, Payton Hobart, in the way that he doesn’t believe he is a good person, and that he simply does good things to further his own agenda - his own agenda being becoming President of the United States one day - I feel like that often enough that I can see myself in Payton. Which is… problematic, to say the least. Sweat drip.

    If you asked anyone, they would probably tell you I’m a good person. In some ways, I am. I make time for people; that’s like, my superpower. Even when I’m absolutely drained, toe-to-toe with sleep deprivation, thrown to the ropes by my exhausted body, I still make time. I make time for my friends, I make time for my parents and I make time for Joe. I mean, I see my dad every single day, even when I feel like I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. And, I mean, he sees it. He’s not an idiot. Most days, without fail, it’s, “you shouldn’t have come if you feel tired,” and I just nod and tell him it’s okay and that I don’t mind. I don’t mind. I just want him to be happy, and he’s at his happiest when he’s seeing me.

    So, all that kind’ve makes me a good person, I suppose. Whatever ‘good’ is anyway. Societally, I could be considered a good person. But I feel like I have some pretty bad traits, too. For example, if I feel like somebody has wronged me I’ll probably just rip into them behind their back to make myself feel better. Make nasty jokes, say bad things, wish I’d never met that person, etc. I’ve had a lot of bad in my life, and whenever I finally get to hold onto something good, that good thing always grows legs, gets up and walks away. It feels so unfair, and I think that is what makes me the most angry.

    My neighbours think I’m a bad person. We don’t speak but I know they don’t like me. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not paranoia. I don’t like them either. If I can go a day without seeing them, that day is made just that bit better. I can’t stand them. The way they make noise and stomp around and talk to each other in the communal area, right outside my door. I just want to open it up and tell them to shut their loud fucking mouths. But I don’t. I sit inside and seethe about it. Luckily, Joe doesn’t like them either so we can have a good prattle about them. I wish they’d all just move out and piss off.

    The good thing about Payton Hobart is that even though he is painfully driven towards his one goal, he ends up doing the right thing in the end. He might not be a model good person, (what politician is?), but he tries to do good things for people he cares about, and his campaigns always reflect that. I hope that I can do good things for good people even when there isn’t anything for me in return. That’s like… the ultimate definition of a good person.

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

04/05/2022

I Miss

    I miss the way your fingers would tap whatever surface you were leaning on when you began to think deeply.

    I miss the way you would hold my hand, the way it felt like you thought you’d lose me if you let go.

    I miss the catch in your throat that came just before a thought that wasn’t properly thought out.

    I miss the way the food would fall out of your mouth when you ate because it always made me laugh.

    I miss the way you would message me out of the blue saying you loved me, not because I liked it or needed to hear it, but because you liked it and needed to say it.

    I miss the way you would ask if I wanted to see you, because of course I did, and of course I do.

    I miss the way we would both pass and waste time listening to music in your car, the way you’d lean your head, and sometimes your body on mine.

    I miss the way we raced our remote control cars in the burning heat for spontaneous fun.

    I miss the way we complained together about our respective problems.

    I miss the way your hugs would feel so urgent, like you needed my warmth or my closeness and affection.

    I miss the way you needed to be near me at all times, as if we were bound together and we would break if we parted.

    I miss the way you would always come to me first if you needed anything, including advice, opinions, or help.

    I miss the way I could see you anytime.

    I miss the way you would agree to watch movies with me and then fall asleep beside me when it got too much.

    I miss being able to make memories with you.

    I miss being around you.

    I miss those early days because it was all new again and yet so familiar.

    I miss being needed.

    I miss being your friend.

    I miss being wanted.

    I miss being around you.

    I miss being there.

    I miss being your friend.

    I miss you.

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

01/05/2022

A New Start

  I'm writing to you from a brand new laptop. It feels good, like a silver platter that I've been waiting to pull the lid off and devour the contents of. It's fresh, delicious and feels phenomenal. Even worth the faffing about. Such a slim, delightful, compact piece of tech.

   ...

  Anyways, this blog got abandoned again. Not forgotten about, but I will admit I went out to get the milk for a few months. Okay, okay... half a year? I'm not sure. I haven't checked the date of my last post. It was probably shit anyway so let's forget about it, yeah? Hey, hey I said to forget about it. Don't you dare. Don't scroll down. Just let it be. God, why do you always do that? You always act like you know what's best for us. Just listen to me for once.

  I have had a friend called Andrew. And that's what I wanted to write about in reality, but I needed time, a few months at least, to digest and compile what happened. I wish I could say that's what I did. I wish I could say that I put it all away and moved on, but in all honesty, being completely clear with you, I don't know what happened. I don't know why he stopped speaking to me. I don't really know what to tell you. I can only tell you my feelings towards what didn't happen. So that's what I'll do instead.

  We were fine as far as I knew. Normal. A regular online friendship where laughter and mutual respect was abound... until it wasn't. Things were great for almost a year until there just wasn't anything anymore. Don't get me wrong, I give people their space. Hell, I socially hibernate all the time. People know to leave me alone and check in every once in awhile to make sure I'm alive. But this wasn't that. It went from every day, to every week, or even every couple weeks. That was fine.

  Then it became a month and he didn't respond anymore. Nothing. Radio silence. Seems like a bit of a red flag, especially when you see you're being left on read. I don't like being ignored. One of my biggest pet peeves is being fucking ignored for no reason. I'd understand if we'd had an argument, I'd be glad of that because the reason for his disappearance would be obvious but no. Nothing. AWOL.

  I'm now having thoughts of, should I even post this? Maybe I should write something normal, regular and boring to come back with... what if he sees? He would know more than anyone else that I actually don't care. He deserves to be verbally chewed up and spat out because of the emotional distress he caused me, not to mention completely ignoring his girlfriend through this shit as well. His girlfriend who happens to be my best friend.

  I forgot to mention as well, it's not like he was completely gone and recuperating away from the internet. I would've understood that. But apparently he was perfectly capable of posting to all his social media and playing video games with his other friends. So... it was just my group of friends, including his girlfriend, he was ignoring. That was probably what angered me the most. As I said before, I hate being ignored with a burning passion. Don't want to talk to me? That's fine. Just fucking tell me. Not giving me a reason tells me that I'm not worth your time and nobody deserves to feel like that.

  Maybe Hitler. I'd leave Hitler on seen.

  Anyway, emotional dump aside, I heard from him and he apologised but didn't really say anything of value, and I haven't heard from him since. It's probably for the best, and I know I'll feel a lot better soon, but I gave a lot of myself to help him and he did the one thing he said he'd never do. So the trust is gone. Shame when that happens.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
24/11/2019

(Discovered and posted 13/08/2021).

Her

  Jeez, my last post was in July last year. I swear it didn’t feel that long ago. I’m sorry. I haven’t felt all that complete in myself, and so I haven’t really had anything to write. The first year I had this blog, I put my all into it. And now? Well, now I barely write anything at all. You know that as much as I do. It’s sad. I don’t want to discuss what’s going on in the world right now, because I can guarantee that you already know. I wish it would end, I really do.

  I’ve watched a lot of movies about Artificial Intelligence, lately. I watched Ex Machina, which I personally wasn’t all that much of a fan of because the protagonist was beyond the point of insufferable. Before that, I watched Transcendence, the Johnny Depp film that pretty much nobody remembers, and of course A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the 2001 Steven Spielberg epic that I’ve been obsessed with since I saw it as a kid. Tonight I watched Her. Now Her, well... she made me feel something else.

  Growing up a fairly lonely person, I always watched A.I. and wished I had someone like Teddy, (an artificial intelligent super toy), to talk to. Obviously I never did, so my imagination had to make do. Believe me, it was rampant. Though, saying that, my brain would input slight limitations and I would adhere to them. For instance; I had an imaginary friend named Leo. He was a seven foot, fierce, but very handsome lion. He was wonderful, and when I was around him I felt less alone. Unfortunately, I could only visit him in a certain toilet stall of a specific pub called The Phoenix. I was probably kind of dumb, like most kids.

  Anyway, I watched this movie tonight and at the start I was thinking, “wow, if everyone just had one of these seemingly semi-sentient operating systems, people would be so much less lonely, and therefore happier.” But as the film continued, new problems and complications would crop up that involved actual real human feelings and emotions. Like, what if your operating system wasn’t only yours? Would it bother you if they were speaking to other people? Thousands of other people, to be more exact. I knew my answer right away would be that it would bother me.

  If this operating system wanted to learn more than what was just effectively myself, it would have to speak to new people all the time. That would then take the personal factor away from it and it would be pointless, at least to me.

  It made me think a lot, and I can’t put a tonne of it into words. I just think if more people had someone, or something, life might be a little lighter sometimes. My friend, who I haven’t seen for a few years because he did a very bad, deplorable thing, might have benefited from a thing like that. An unbiased program to talk to. But would that then cause other issues that might lead to something else? Something worse, maybe, due to a lack of filtering system designed to make the user more comfortable with sharing their deepest internal thoughts? I don’t know. I will never know. Not unless it happens one day. Until then, these are all hypotheticals.

  I wish I had an unbiased thing to talk to.

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

19/01/2021

Hope Rides Alone

  Andrew, 26/10/2019, 22:14:
  "You are absolutely right. I am a coward. Most of my actions are done in cowardice, in a bottomless sea of unrelenting fear. And every single time, my actions result in the consequences I am trying so desperately to avoid. I just compound and double down. Certain that my experiences will fare me better. I am living an endless souls-like where I don't realize that my past experience is only good for avoiding doing that exact same mistake, but never learning why I failed in the first place in hopes of moving on. Ultimately that just leaves me pushing forward while countless others are left behind uncertain why. I'm sorry. I truly am. At the same time, there isn't anything that matters regarding how I feel. You are the one hurt, and that's not fair. You shouldn't be punished for being vulnerable, you shouldn't feel abandoned for always being available. You shouldn't feel those things because it is what I am afraid of. My actions are simply causing others to experience my fears while I do my best to avoid them. So for that I am sorry. That is not fair to you. That is not fair to any of you. Not that it should be of surprise but; I have no found anything 'better'. I'm just stopping myself from keeping this pointless cycle up, just sitting quietly alone in my room with shadow. Sometimes playing games, but mostly just doing what I can to avoid people as much as possible. I'm not sad or upset, I'm not happy or excited, I'm just doing what it takes to survive with as little impact to others as I possibly can. I will send a proper apology to ___ and ___, just as I am doing so to you, because you are right, you deserve an answer. Not saying anything doesn't absolve me from what I've done, it just means I suffer the consequences ignorantly. So once again; I'm sorry."

  Andrew always knew how to talk to people. His patter was word perfect from the day of our first interaction to the moment of our last. It was mesmerising. In reading over his last message now, I realise it was not open-ended. It was not encouraging a conversation or a discussion on how we could mend our friendship, but a goodbye. He was done. Trying had become too much effort for him, and there was nothing left for him to give. Maybe he thought he was offering me closure, or perhaps saying goodbye was better than no response at all, (I had strongly expressed my distaste for being ignored to him multiple times).

  At the time, I can confirm his message did not offer me any closure. At all. I responded with a lengthy message of my own, my childlike naivety kicking in. I didn't receive anything else. It took five days to get the above message after the last one I'd sent on the 21st. I actually wasn't expecting anything at all. It was a month or so since he'd spoken to me, verbally or otherwise, and I had sort of come to terms with the fact that we were done. I decided to unfollow him to spare my feelings, and then five days later he sent the goodbye.

  In a toxic, probably very unhealthy way, writing about him here helps the hurt I feel when I think of him. When I'm talking about him, it feels like he's still with me. It feels like I haven't lost what we had. Like I wasn't abandoned by a person I loved so much and cared so dearly for. It would be hard to describe just how much I loved Andrew. He was, and is, like no other person I've ever met. He was harsh and pointed, and he always said what was on his mind no matter how scathing. And I liked that. I shouldn't have; he was nasty, and irritated by the smallest and most meaningless things. He would let something put him in a bad mood, and he'd allow that to ruin his day. But even when he was angry he would still talk. He'd tell me all the horrible details in his head. I can't count the hours we spent discussing the people he hated.

  I apologise for consistently jumping between tenses. It's hard to always speak about somebody in the past tense when they're not dead. Yet it's equally as difficult to stay in the present tense when you no longer speak to a person. It's been less than a year and so much must have happened that I don't know about. I feel like I should know, but I don't have the opportunity of being on the inside anymore. It isn't my place to know, and I do realise that, but even now it's still so hard. I've never grieved for a friend like I have Andrew, and I'm still not done.

  There is a part of me that will never let him go. There will always be a hole in my heart where Andrew fits perfectly. I know it's bad for me but if I could make the conscious decision for myself and carry it out, I wouldn't even be writing this post. He is simultaneously dead to me, and very much alive because I am unable to move past him. My life is different without him in it and my mental health has taken a significant dive. He is the only reason I cry anymore. As I said before, it's unhealthy. I know that. But keeping a part of him with me, immortalising him within these words like a character that never really existed in the first place, I suppose has some kind of therapeutic affect. Even if it is damaging in the long run. I never was very good at looking after myself.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
05/07/2020

  

Small Circle

  It’s... been another three months, hasn’t it. I’m sorry, I really am. Though that word means fuck-all in the grand scheme, especially when nobody can see the meaning behind it. If there’s any meaning at all.

  It sounds silly, but the last few months have been so up and down that I’m not sure where I’m at right now. I’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons like most other people on the planet that own a Switch. There hasn’t been an AC game that I haven’t enjoyed, so I knew the latest instalment was something I wanted to personally experience rather than vicariously live through an obnoxious YouTube gamer. I’ve really enjoyed having a new little project to work on, (my island), even though I never make it all that pretty. I have villagers I love and a space that’s my own, so that’s what matters to me.

  It’s nice, in a way, to be able to escape my own circle. You wouldn’t think it be possible to fuck up and still be a bad person when you only talk to like, three people? But trust me, it’s still very much a risk if you’re an idiot like I am. Imagine potentially sacrificing something you love so much for literally no reason at all. If you can’t think of how that would make you feel, or can’t begin to conceive of what that would be like, then just trust me when I say that it’s bad.

  Is the reason I stay away from people really for my benefit? Or is it for theirs? I think about that a lot. Is it because I’m scared of what they’ll do to me? Or because I’m scared of what I could do to them if I become even more apathetic and even more complacent?

  Of course, these questions are all rhetoric. There’s no telling what the answers really are, hell, even I don’t know most of the time.

  I miss having things to be passionate about other than games. I miss writing. I miss being interested in other things. I miss being interested in people. I miss expressing my political stances in spaces that really didn’t matter to people that didn’t even care to hear about what you thought or believed. Those don’t exist anymore. This is my only platform. I have no interests. I am an empty shell of what I once believed myself to be. Where does that leave me?

  What’s it like, you ask? If I could explain it any better than I already have, then I would. But I can’t. I mentally, physically, emotionally, (and any other planes besides these that might exist), can’t. There are no words for it. None that I can conjure up. The only thing that comes close is this empty feeling... I need to do some more thinking.

Signed,

Elijah.

Meta Sentience.

08/06/2020