I’ve been active on Twitter since some time last spring—a full year and a bit. I reached a thousand followers in March, and attained the present count of nearly 3400 followers ten days ago. Suddenly, I’d had enough. I started tweeting in order to validate my thoughts. As an adult, I have always felt the need to conceal the way I really feel, to add footnotes and disclaimers to my beliefs, to frame and reframe each statement until it’s simultaneously bulletproof and completely trivial. This is a frustrating thing. You feel like nobody understands you, because you don’t tell them who you are and how you want to be treated, because you’ve been taught that revealing what you really think usually results in sideways glances and nervous laughter and ignored messages and disinvitation from parties.
"I learned that the consistent social rejection that I had faced throughout my childhood was not a universal property of reality; rather, I had simply failed at a particular game that I had been coerced into playing for a brief period in the past."
Well said!!! I've been thinking a lot about games as well, though in a different context (https://vbud.dev/blog/game). It's so helpful to realize what game you are playing, especially the ones you are playing without knowing you are playing, or even the ones where you are an NPC in someone else's game.
"I learned that the consistent social rejection that I had faced throughout my childhood was not a universal property of reality; rather, I had simply failed at a particular game that I had been coerced into playing for a brief period in the past."
Well said!!! I've been thinking a lot about games as well, though in a different context (https://vbud.dev/blog/game). It's so helpful to realize what game you are playing, especially the ones you are playing without knowing you are playing, or even the ones where you are an NPC in someone else's game.