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The Glitch That Could (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-05 22:00:52
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Days like this I really resent that I’m not allowed to kill myself.

No one else can finish these projects, shoulder this energy.

So wake up, get out there and drink!

My female friends report the dehumanizing effect of realizing that a male friend has wanted to have sex with you the whole time. Makes you doubt the entire friendship, doubt your selfhood. Sometimes when you shut the sex door you lose the entire person, who you loved.

I’ve been treated like some sort of dark angel a lot of my life. Easy to blame, easy to love, easy to hate, so arrogant they deserve to be taken down a peg, so beautiful that it’s their fault.

I am trying to be human. I guess I know I’m not. Until I suddenly am, in all my inadequacy and culpability. But I stare into other people’s eyes, and I’m trying to tell the truth, trying to connect, and I realize with a dead feeling in my chest that they’re not looking at me. They’re looking at something else. This thing that hangs over my head, the demon flowering from my neck.

I met two of the biggest R&B stars in the world for dinner and dazzled them with conversation. Afterwards their camera guy noted it as if it were a skill: “That’s impressive you can just walk in and entertain a room like that.” I told him it was nothing. If this is currency in your world then I am rich.

Born to be commodified. I’m perfect at it. Before I had anything I was already treated like a ghost. Maybe I crafted myself into one. Celebrity is the only thing that can triumph over money. If I am capable of performing, then I better put on a show and try to make things better.

But what about me? When do I stop being alone?

A long time ago I thought my real place in the universe could be in a pod. A big blank spherical pod isolated from existence. I would work and think and feel and create, and a few times a year I would be done, and I would press some button that says I’m done, and the people would open the pod and I would give them what I made, and they would thank me and give it to the universe, and people would rejoice and be enriched. Then they would shut the pod and I would get back to it. I’d never hurt anyone that way. I’d only make things better.

At the beach with my friends my stories don’t make sense anymore. Too much philosophy, too much business. Encompassing tales to which there’s nothing to add. Monologues that sound good on a podcast but awkward in real life.

My friend of a decade is here and there’s a sort of sad, familiar understanding in her eyes. She’s forgiving me for something because it’s not my fault, but I don’t know what it is. A loyal companion.

I toss myself back into my memories and realize I never really felt seen. There was always this inescapable awareness that I am different, I am too much, I am not executing protocol.

People are kind, in my experience. They speak to me anyways. They try to involve me. I think they know I’m trying and failing.

I show up late and leave early.

It’s okay. Everything makes more sense without me. I’m a better as a conversation topic.

I take 3 consecutive sips from my water bottle and spill a little dribble out the left corner of my mouth all three times.

I can’t even drink water right.

I order a mimosa.

Do you deserve love?

Every soul has Long Questions they never stop asking to which they never receive an answer. The recursive loop just deepens, ripens, gains texture and intricacy.

I feel like I wasn’t meant to exist. It was a mistake, somehow. This means I am not owed basic human dignity, but I also have the capacity to do things not in the code of the universe. I could make things better. I might justify my existence. It just has to be spectacular.

The glitch that could.

Maybe you’ve been too happy to be truly productive. Too much thinking and feeling. Not enough wringing the sponge entirely dry, black liquid pooling in the decanter.

Delicious.

That right there is your value.

Never forget.

You will be reminded.

A butterfly pinned in place. Prometheus punished.

The universe sieved through crag leaking starry pitch detritus.

Everyone deserves love. But you are not everyone.

[Photography by CJ The X in 2016]

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Comments

alicia

That last line, verbatim, has been like an anti-mantra I've tripped over in my head constantly for years. One of several. I'm not charismatic or productive enough to relate 100% to this but I definitely feel the spirit of it. Connecting to other humans is fucking hard. I often wish I could just skip hacking through all the layers of ego, social utility and unmet potential and distill my essence down to a shiny little pebble I could just feed someone to digest or reject. Assuming there'd be anything left to distill. Instead I just awkwardly overshare and wonder why nobody loves me lol. For what it's worth, I'm so relieved people like you exist, whether or not you do or produce a damn thing.

Olive Nicole

I fear that my relating to this could isolate you even more. If your words capture my experience, which you know nothing of, then maybe you’ve failed the impossible task of communicating to me what’s individual to you. A paradox of human relationships, even in relating, we isolate each other

benedict.m (matthew m)

i wish i didn't feel this. it's annoying isn't it, to put your singular experience of the universe delicately into words and metaphors and speak your truth as best you can, and then for hundreds of faceless people to go 'omg same.' i am not you, and i'm glad. i probably couldn't handle the weight of the calling you feel and the work you're doing. but i also am you. i might as well be. this is dark. it's scary, this feeling that you are different, fundamentally. you can see it in people's eyes, no matter how well they treat you or how kind they are. there are moments maybe where you feel truly in sync, like you're just another particle in the same way everyone else is. but most of the time you know people too well to ignore that they see your difference, how hard you're trying. it hurts. i feel for you. i know you're just a person. i feel the ghost of the real you within or behind the 2-d snapshots you choose to share. i think it's possible to love a stranger. i don't think it's unhealthy that i sometimes find myself praying for you.

Anonymous

You speak often of being a vessel for art, of manifesting heaven on earth. While these words have inspired people like me to pursue a cause that is at once greater than myself yet still in need of me, it's chilling to observe that those same words might be weighing you down, putting pressure on you to fulfill your calling, knowing that the pursuit of divine purpose is creating a distance from those you love. Not by intention, but by the transformation of your very primal self into something others can barely understand or relate to. You are achieving your divine purpose… but at what cost? I sometimes wonder if your Social No Para series is, quietly, a pursuit of someone you can truly relate to, someone who understands the vastness of what you know. Like handing out Golden Tickets in search of the Charlies to your Chocolate Factory. We are not the same, but in your words I feel ghosts of familiarity. It often feels as if the observations I’ve made and the epiphanies I’ve gained over years of being on the inside of the Business of Art have granted me access to some kind of higher truth, one that would make the world a better place if only everyone else could know it too. Sometimes it’s all I can talk about, hopelessly trying to guide others towards what I think to be a better way. I know it turns people off. I know it makes me lonely. But it’s my nature. I’ve seen things and I can’t escape what I know, I can’t un-me me. I feel like a goddamn cultist, an ant that for a split second caught a glimpse of the vastness of human emotion, and now spends its entire life trying to chase that euphoria of understanding that no one, much less itself, can ever truly understand. And all that everyone else can think is that I’ve gone mad. I know it may not help stave off the loneliness. But the only thing I can say, wishing it would, is “you are so much more than what you know”. You may be this chaotic maelstrom of philosophy and art. But you are also love, and life, and joy. You have to believe there is a way to bridge these two things. You need to believe you are enough, even when you think you may be too much.

Josh Foreman

Sometimes I wonder if being intelligent and articulate is a just a bad combo for mental health. Being able to instantiate feelings as beautiful or sublime word pictures that can then be retroactively used to interpret said feelings, potentially spinning them off into something else, inflating them, or building windmills we think we ought to tilt against. As opposed to... "I feel sad"

Josh Foreman
>>110091608

"I often wish I could just skip hacking through all the layers of ego, social utility and unmet potential and distill my essence down to a shiny little pebble I could just feed someone to digest or reject" I. Fucking. Love this.

Ren Breese

I went up to Ma’at at the door of the afterlife and she weighed my heart against a peacock feather. My heart was heavier, she sent me back. I wanted to justify my existence and I wanted everyone to honor and respect one another, impossible, stupid desires. “The sun also rises on those who fail the call” sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing this living thing for, the motivations have a darkness and a fire to them. If I really honored and respected myself, all of myself, I wouldn’t feel the need to be perfect and loveable at all times. So for the glory of Divine Love I look at myself in the human and let every part of me make sense… someday my heart will be light as a feather

saba

fuck

Anonymous

I don't think I've ever felt seen by a person. I've always felt as though they see the version of "me" they've built in their heads and not the me that exists as I am now. But at the same time, I don't provide them with the true essence of "me" to put in their head, it's terrifying having the totality of "me" to be in someone else's head. I want to be known but I'm completely and utterly terrified of it. It doesn't help that I feel as though my personality is always in flux. I'm like those theoretical observations of subatomic particles, I'm always in different positions and I change every time you take a snapshot. The only consistent factor is I am me, but tomorrow's me is different. I react well to something today and poorly tomorrow to the same thing.

Stephen York

Oof, that sounds like the neurodivergent experience in a nutshell. It's hard to exist in a world that wasn't made for you, but there's this constant urge to build a better one.

Costanza Polastri

It's very painful to be admired for the "wrong" reasons, I feel. To be praised for reasons that in your head you don't deem "deserving" of praise. It makes love feel like a chore, like you owe to others a version of yourself that you don't find entirely authentic. Like trying to get satiated on zero calorie drinks.

Nelson Mercer

Hey hey. Hey. As a fan, *I also* have a question: how are you doing, bud?

Julianna

I would love to interact with you CJ❤️

reva

wowwwwww that last line hits hard that's exactly what it feels like. it's so easy to convince yourself that you're just unnatural and so you don't fall into the categories of normal people who deserve good things

Anonymous

If it's of any consolation, I think a portion of people feel truly seen through your work. We're seeing each other, even if only in passing.

Anonymous

There are no words to say. Much love, CJ.

BestStressed

Your pod analogy reminds me of the short story "Unaccompanied Sonata" by Orson Scott Card. I know, I know, Orson Scott Card. It's a good story, though, and it's probably available somewhere for free.

theeladyking

Ah yes, this is the feeling (slightly to the left, but this is it)

Bloom

i fear that if i say “this is not an uncommon experience” it will diminish the writing instead of validate it. feeling truly seen as an articulate neurodivergent person whose brain moves at incomparable speeds feels like a neverending pursuit. and yet, the content you put out makes me feel radically less alone. maybe it’s isolating to know that your content makes others feel less alone and yet no one is there to do the same for you? although i also know you are inspired by many of the other great thinkers. either way, you are one of my favorite content creators because i see parts of myself in you. i’ve recently begun finding people who do see me deeply and don’t just treat me like an irl content producer. i hope the same happens for you, too.