In Consideration of a Public Diary
Dear Reader, My most sincere apologies to lack the simplest of courtesies as to reference you by your given name, but as it appears, I am not privy to such knowledge quite yet. Perhaps you are of the name David. Perhaps not. Perhaps you are Beth? Most unlikely. Alas, there is so much I do not know. Do forgive me.
A public diary is nearly oxymoronic, that which you keep your deepest truths in the sacred privacy of the depths of your bookshelf suddenly on display for the world to see. I’ve always found diaries so curious, I have never kept one myself, you see, I tend to find difficulty in make believe. I could never, truthfully still can’t understand why one is writing to the diary itself. It cannot aid your troubles, it cannot write back. It is but a vessel to hold your turmoil, so why does one truly write “dear diary”. I can’t help but assume it is a matter of tradition, that which one has seen done in abundance through tv and film, thus they replicate. It makes sense, so much of human nature is through the art of replication and tradition, but I feel no less baffled by “dear diary” all the same. To be clear, I understand the nature of which it serves, I have found much solace in journaling, allowing my pen to untangle my thoughts line by line, but “Dear Diary?” Dear Diary, I am a private person, deeply so. Perhaps worryingly so. Shut up it’s fine. I have always found comfort in keeping to myself and have found I most often best solve my troubles best in my own company. I am grateful I have learned the skills needed to work through my thoughts and feelings, there is so much power in being the sole keeper of your mind, but I have a rather unique predicament. I am my most authentic self when I am creating. Whether it be writing, sculpting, or telling jokes, I am my most fulfilled within the context of my own creation. I often feel as though in this time of Tiktok and Private stories and Finstas, that we have gotten perhaps too comfortable sharing. I am always awe struck by the things people post online, whether it be the extreme depths of their sex lives, their trauma, their emotional turmoil, I often wonder if it’s a good thing this generation is so comfortable being transparent. I don’t think being closed off by any means is a way to live, but if you’ve spent any time online you have to know what I mean. I think about what the consequences of these deeply personal stories going viral means. I think about what it does to our brains to receive the unparalleled gratification of virality for sharing our secrets. I don’t necessarily know if I think it’s good or bad in the long run, I’m sure it’s a complicated mix. I can personally attest to the impact seeing content about some experience I thought I was solely burdened by and discovering just how many people understood me; suddenly I am not so alone. I see the comment, “I have never had an original experience in my life” on tiktok a lot, and I think that sensation will do a world of good for so many people. That being said, I fear we are breaking down boundaries on the internet that are seeping into the real world in a way I find quite disturbing. I think there’s this impulse to share every big feeling and thought you have online, there’s so much rewarding you to do so. Sometimes money, but often the parasocial relief of a faceless username consoling you is more than enough. I worry we are becoming reliant on the void of affirmation we receive. I don’t know, though, really. Maybe it’s all a good thing, the only thing I know for certain is that as an adult, every day I am grateful I didn’t have access to this culture of emotional purging or the means to post every wave of emotion my teenage years hit me with on the internet in such unabashed honesty. I am a private person because I have a tendency to think and think and overthink, and run all the possible outcomes of my every action, and subsequently everyone else's. I often feel like I am watching the world from a third person point of view. Like I have this superpower to see the future in a splitsecond, to see every possible butterfly effect, to then come back to my body knowing exactly what to do for the most optimal outcome. I often wonder what it’s like to just do something. To stay in the present, trusting that any outcome will be a good one. It seems foolish. I sometimes feel frustrated when people refer to this hyper analysis as anxiety, which of course it is, but it feels so obviously rational. To me, it seems so completely idiotic to live blindly. It doesn’t feel like anxiety, I am not anxious, I am rational, I am intentional, I am in control. Of course, that is not the reality of the situation, I am not in fact in control, I am completely possessed by my need to be certain in my every action. I am controlled by my fear of the consequences of one teeny tiny mindless decision. I have never had a spontaneous moment in my life, everything I do has had months of constant consideration. I thought about cutting my hair for nine months, a decision that reasonably has no apparent consequences one way or another. It’s just hair. To be clear, by cut I don’t even mean anything drastic, I mean cutting off the six inches of dead hair I had accumulated in all the time I had spent considering if I should cut my hair over the years. I cut it to my shoulders. It has since grown back. I am a private person for a multitude of reasons, but one is, and this may sound pretentious, but I more often than not am the only person that knows the answer I am searching for in moments of strife. I don’t need someone to console me, or God forbid give me advice. Trust me, whatever you say, I’ve thought it and run through every possible outcome it would bring. I really don’t mean that in a “I am smarter than you way,” I mean it in a “I am so incredibly nuerotic and obsessive about every detail of my life that I have considered every possibility ten times over and then considered 10 possible outcomes for each possibilty ten more times. and then to be sure, I refresh my little brain simulator and do it all again” kind of way. I can guarantee, I do not need advice, unless I explicitly ask for it, not because I don’t think other people don’t have valuable input, but because I am pretty sure I am clinically insane and the only thing that brings me ease is the monotonous hum of my internal brain computer whirring though everything that is and ever will be. I am a private person because this whole experience happens fifty times a day, from big things to little, they all run in my brain the same way, so when someone notices that something might be wrong and ask me about it, I have nothing to say. It’s not that I am shutting them out, or don’t want to share, it just simply feels unneccessary. I have a little computer program in the back of my head that is running simulations nonstop, I don’t even notice it a lot of the time, I can just go back there and see what my brain has decided my best course of action is for any given thing, and that is what I do. It would actually be significantly more emotionally strenuous to me if I had to walk you through it, rather than let my brain work itself out. It would be like doing calculus on an abacus when you literally have a graphing calculator in your backpack. My therapist tells me I intellectualize my emotions too much. I told her it’s simply the most logical response. She laughed at me. I like my robot brain, I like being private, but I am in a peculiar predicament. I by nature prefer keeping the more intimate details of my life to myself, I didn’t tell my partner my last name for three months of us dating. That was partially because I thought it was funny, though. I am this deeply private person, but I am also an artist. I tried not to be, and it seemed that was simply not an option, I have no choice but to create. I am drawn to comedy like I am nothing else, that is my truest form, and I am increasingly aware that there is no room to be private in comedy. Whether you are telling true stories of your life or made up, if people believe them to be true, those people believe they know you. It doesn’t matter if it is true or not, it still feels like an invasion of my privacy. I have made it this far keeping to myself, simply sharing observations that feel rather disconnected from me, but as I have focused more this last year on exactly who I want to be and how I want to get there, it is clear I need to move beyond the discomfort that is to be known. I am holding myself back so immensely in my fear of being percieved. I often look at comedians and feel discouraged because I see someone I will never be. Not in a matter of their craft, I mean offstage. On podcasts, in interviews, etc. They so often have this unbridled sense of self that radiates “LOOK AT ME”. I don’t necessarily find it appealing, but I understand the crucial role it plays in their success. I have never wanted to be the star of the show anywhere but on a stage. I love performing, I love being in front of a crowd, that is where I thrive, but the second I step off the stage, I am happily invisible. I have felt these two opposing sides of myself tear through me for so much of my life, but when I really think about them, only one of them pulls me the direction I desire. I am not saying I need to change who I am by any means, but I do think it’s time I outgrow what is no longer serving me. I want to be unincumbered by this desire for annonymity when I write, when I post, when I perform. I see how deeply it’s held me back thus far, it’s time I accept the discomfort of the path I have chosen. I have so many jokes and stories I have written that I think are truly exceptionally funny, and as my harshest critic, I don’t say that lightly I keep them private because it is a side of me I have never shown. I have spent my entire life playing a million characters, the Lila I was for my friends, the Lila I was for my family, the Lila I was in school, and so on. It is easy to be someone else. It is terrifying to so publicly be myself. I am uncomfortable being transparent. I fully believe I have a really exciting career waiting for me on the other side of this discomfort. I have always found truth through writing, I feel compelled to be honest and the concision the written word me solace. I think I am more so a writer than a comedian, or a performer, or a star. I think being a writer is simultaneously the greatest advantage I possess and the strongest disadvantage I will face. I am exploring the idea of a public diary as it is the most comfortable form for me to share a more truthful version of myself with an audience. If I could be the most truthful version of myself right now, I have had to pee the entire time I wrote this, but I knew if I got up, the odds I came back to it were slim to none. So I will leave you with this last thought as to what inspired all of this. My partner and I live a few hours away and we write letters to one another. In a recent letter he wrote, he was sharing his career aspirations and toward the end pivoted the focus to mine, which I hadn’t discussed in length with him yet, or anybody, as I am still parsing them out for myself, and he wrote how much he admired my bravery. That he couldn’t think of a career choice that demands more courage to simply pursue let alone perform. I sat with that line for quite a while. I do not feel brave. I have never felt brave. So much of what has brought me this far feels like it was by force, by some cosmic pull I can’t escape. Not that I necessarily want to, I just mean that I have felt like a passenger rather than a conductor to get here, which I am aware isn’t entirely true, I have certainly put in the hours to claim otherwise, but still. This wasn’t the first time someone has said something like this, I often get commended for my bravery for pursuing comedy, and I am certain it is said in their full truth and intention, yet it tends to always feel a little sour to me. I don’t feel like I experience imposter syndrome really at all, but maybe this is that. I think when so much of what I do is online, it dilutes my comprehension of it all. None of it seems real, and maybe that circles back to why we feel so comfortable bearing our souls in their entirety on it. It all feels like I am just playing a video game. I talk into a void and in return I have stats. Followers, Views, Likes, none of it is tangible. I hope you don’t read that and feel that I don’t care about you, or the people that support me, I am beyond grateful for you, I just mean at a big picture glance, it all seems quite unreal. I think I am also relatively disillusioned to how far I have come. To me, I feel like anybody who wanted to gain a following could, it’s impossibly easy to forget it’s not all that simple. Internet stuff is weird. I am appreciative that people see me as brave, though, I guess. I think I am going to ponder what being brave would mean to me and get back to you soon. I love you, say it back, Lila
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