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19 IV 2003 - 20:30 - verba46

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When I saw the latest Alchera project, I thought to myself, 'Now that's something that could be a useful procrastination tool when you're "trying" to work on your history report. How about that?

So here, as I predicted (such things are easily done with rudimentary self-knowledge. What magic!), is my essay.

Essay/Option No. Three:
Below is a row of numbers. You must pick a number, and a new window will open with the topic of your essay. Write an essay on your reaction, opinions, whatever on the topic. The topics are simple and each is up to free interpretation, and may be narrowed to a specific thing/event if the area is too broad.

Because my favorite number just happens to be the smallest prime number, I picked the second link -- and my topic was 'Betrayal.'


When the window popped up and I read the topic, I felt six different shades of unlucky. How on earth was I going to write something about this? My life has been (un)remarkably free of soap-opera drama, I haven't sold any state secrets, and my friends are all pretty good about keeping secrets. Betrayal? Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

But then (and this was dangerous) I turned off the computer, and went to my room, and turned off the lights, so I could sit and think for a bit. And I came up with this --

Betrayal can take many forms; perhaps it can be said that to have been untrue to oneself is a betrayal of a sort. Not that I advocate a brutal self-honesty without regard for others' feelings along the way, because I also believe that to have been civil, considerate, kind -- these are also expressions of self for the preservation of which I can easily and willingly hold my tongue.

Suddenly, what I was going to write about has evaporated; a little figure in the back of my head has popped that particular bubble, telling me no one wants to hear of it anyway. I know that, in the dark, I came up with something that upset me, which went something like:

On Thursday, I was standing in my history classroom about fifteen minutes before class. A friend of mine who's in the class motioned from the outside that I should open the window. I made vague motions with my hand which I hoped communicated the notion that I would go outside through the hallway and meet her, as the classroom isn't a pleasant place to spend time and I'd much rather be in the courtyard with her. She made an exasperated face and I knew I was in for it, so I opened the window -- at which point she told me that I was snarky and soon to be as bad as the librarian at our school [who tends to be rather authoritarian and sometimes hypocritical, although if she likes you, she can be quite nice]. Obviously, my friend had interpreted my hand motions as 'Go around and come in through the door instead of the window, idiot,' because she then proceeded to tell me that the door was locked. All of which I resented, as that hadn't been my intention at all, but sure -- she'd interpreted it that way, I could see how it was possible.

Did I try to explain anything? No; I figured it was just better for her to be upset at me, and now I'm upset. I think she's probably forgotten the entire thing by now -- that entire day was pretty bad for her, and I'm worried I may have had something to do with how other things went -- but I still resent not having made some effort to clear up the situation. And that this is still eating into me suggests that I could have been a bit happier with myself had I made an effort to say something, and it really wouldn't have cost me much. I don't know. Does this count as a betrayal? I suppose I really am just a novice at these sorts of things...

That little voice, that bubble-popper -- he tells me all the time I shouldn't have a voice, shouldn't, for that matter, call him an example of self-sabotage because I don't have the first idea of what self-sabotage means. I think he's full of it when he says things like that, but I drop everything and listen to him anyway, letting words fall away from me regularly, as if they were not still my children, as if they didn't say things I'd wanted to say.

And maybe that is the betrayal of self I thought I'd wasted time looking for. Because although I have people to remind me that words are not all or even most of who I am, they are nevertheless a great part of the identity I've found for myself, have settled in for now. And to throw that away because part of me seems devoted to shouting that everything I do is worthless -- well, what else can that be, then?

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