Um.

Well, this is me updating, I guess. Funny, it doesn't really register how difficult it is to type on cue until I'm trying it. Stream-of-somethingness gets tangled up with background PS2 sounds, fragments of the conversations I've been embroiled - is that even a word? - in... soda and absinthe and the knowledge that I will sleep as well as I can tonight. Everything wraps tight, forming almost a mummified version of Who I Am...

...and then this. Words. Dreams. All of it spilled out here onto the page in the hopes that someone will read it.

Be honest now, you who are reading this. Likely you have a journal of your own, possibly more than one, but certainly you have somewhere to put yourself. You know that someone else will read it. Strangers. Friends. Loved ones and people you were in pre-school with, the fellow walking past the bus stop you're waiting at or the driver of the taxi that just dropped you off. You don't always know WHO will read what you've written but you do know that the words will work their way into someone elses' vision.

So why write like this? Why the pretense that this time, this request, is in some way more important than the normal daily ramble that is common? I think it's the same reason that people get stage fright when their parents' or lover is in the audience, but not when the show is watched by strangers. It's harder to strip in the privacy of a house than it is to do at a club. It's harder to Come Out to your family than it is to do at National Gay Pride Parade.

Always, it's harder to leave yourself visible for the ones who in turn can affect your life.

I am writing this entry because Ryan wanted me to update. I didn't ask why, and I don't assume he is expecting any particular sort of writing. I'm just writing this because he asked. I've written for people before (and likely will again) but it wasn't until tonight that I was blindsided by the obvious. I'd never really thought about what I was getting out of these updates, but I think I've got it figured now. It's all about opening. Cleaning. It's about taking the random fragments of my life, the bits my friends off-line don't often see and the pieces my on-line friends can't witness, turning it all into one complete form.

I guess you could say that I live here, in the pages of this journal. I exist here, complete for anyone who wants to see. That's why I treasure the journals of friends, loved ones, even strangers. I know how hard it is to write out anything of importance, I know how much each word, each letter, costs. I know the value of a few short paragraphs written by someone who knows, who is certain, that someone specific will be reading them. I know what a struggle it is to find a way to press emotions, experiences, breathing and talking and everything else, all of it packed into text on a screen.

I exist here not only because I write, but because others write for me, because I write for others, because between us all we are more alive than anyone outside of the net-lives we share could ever even dream of being.

I used to think people without computers were just being slow to adapt, or stupid.

Now, I pity them. They live alone, unaware of the universe here. They die alone, nothing left behind.

Me? *grins softly* Whether I die today, tomorrow, or a thousand years from now, I will continue to exist in the memory of every person in this grand connection, touching, adding, becoming more than I started as.

I AM alive, and I will never die.