Sizzle Says

I woke up this morning thinking about the internet.

There are many things that are great about it- meeting people, learning new things, connecting, stalking, tracking down old friends, diagnosing your own illness (not recommended), etc. There are also many things that aren’t great about it- anonymous asshole commenters, learning things you didn’t want to know, old friends finding you when you didn’t want them to, diagnosing your own illness, etc. How it allows you to have an entire relationship electronically and then. . . just as easily erase any record of it.

That’s so fucking weird to me.

You can remove them from your blog roll. Delete old chats and emails. File away shared videos and photos or trash them altogether. You can change privacy settings to keep them from seeing certain things if you wanted. You can literally go completely mute on anything that remotely ties you to them. To the outward eye? No one is the wiser.

If you didn’t know any better, you could fool yourself into thinking it was all a dream. But then your iTunes shuffles and a song comes on, the one that you both loved, together. And there is no denying how deep he penetrated your defenses. How real he was to you. Back then.

You can delete all traces of what you shared but you can’t press a button to clear your heart of what passed between you. That, that’s yours and yours alone. No one gets access to that unless you let them.

Some things you keep just for you.