Everyone's Talking At The Same Time: On Paranoia

If social justice could woo the UFO crowd, we'd be unstoppable.

Being an artist, being "creative," I am steeped in paranoia. And in some ways, this is a good thing.

Distrust in others has prepared me to complete projects when people let me down, and disbelief in people's intentions has saved me from being apprehended or arrested by plainclothes officers while live-blogging civil disobedience. An open mind to conspiracy has allowed me to disregard that knee-jerk "shut down" I see a lot of people succumb to when you ply them with words like patriarchy and transmisogyny.

If social justice could woo the UFO crowd, we'd be unstoppable.

Then again, I also worry that my paranoia is debilitating.

I wish I could tell straight men that interconnected oppression, rape culture, and classism affect them. But I'm kinda busy right now, doing activist stuff. I'm going over my Twitter follower list, seeing who unfollowed me and ascertaining the likelihood 1) I pissed them off, 2) I told them personal stuff, 3) they will then share that personal stuff with any of the various people trying to ruin my life.

I can't sleep yet. I have to finish this medley of podcast snippets discussing unrelated topics that I can play when I'm alone in the house so anyone who might think of killing me while I'm napping or watching porn will think I'm in a room full of people having an excited talk about the 1986 Transformers animated movie.

4,800 stars are born every second in the universe. The oceans of the world have 11 million cubic miles of salt. There are more stars in the known universe than grains of sand on all the beaches on our planet. Much like you may tell yourself in the mirror that you can do it, that you are capable, I tell myself that I am small. Insignificant. Any moment I will blink into non-existence and all the world will roll along without me. 

Paranoia shrinks the world around you so that you seem larger, almost integral to its operations. 

As I get older, all the tiny cracks I've incurred—from nights protesting outside of police stations to long bouts of crying on the greyhound home—extend and become lacerations on my mind. I feel like I am morphing into a being made entirely of papercuts. Like a Lovecraftian Animorph.

Social media lets me live out my obsessive tendencies and follow the every movement of my friends (in exchange for having my movements surveilled in turn). 

But as seams slither and slide open, this network of affection, one that I rely on for my work and relationships, becomes a bustling invisible cityscape of terror. 

Every joke made between friends is one I'm meant not to uncover. Every ex-crush's selfies are an intentional affirmation that I mean nothing to them and that I am an idiot for caring. Every fave, retweet, and reblog is a sleight of hand to pass my shame and failures. 

I will fight patriarchy and the prison industrial complex and racism forever, if I can. I don't fear the loss of self that comes with a depleted enemy, should liberation come in my lifetime. I know how to knit; I would make due. But I do fear my inevitable failure at being unable to confront and contain the seething paranoia riling inside, convincing me in a thousand familiar voices that I'm not safe, that everyone is trying to hurt me.

I fear succumbing to spite, which paranoia can so frequently produce, and which is perhaps the greatest enemy activist communities face. Spite sways us to switch sides—all because someone we cared about hurt our feelings, or spoke to us in an unkind tone. Spite swells up in the cracks we leave when we hurt each other.

When you go days at a time without leaving the house, convinced that the friends cavorting downtown without you are laughing about your broken heart in between bites of thin-crust pizza, you become cocooned in spite. 

I don't know if there is "help"—am I a paranoid creative or was I created paranoid? And who created me? Are they the one holding the shoe? Is it a black pump with a strap across it? What are the long-term socio-economic consequences of the Transformers franchise, which started out as toys, then became a toy commercial disguised as a cartoon, and is now a product placement for real cars disguised as an adaptation of a cartoon about toys?

I'll have plenty of time to contemplate these queries should I let slip my grasp on my own mistrust.

In the meantime I will gaze unto the boundless black of space and remind myself: I am small. So, small. So small and significant. No one can even see me, I am so small.