she told me in the dark

she told me some time in the middle of the night and we both started crying. We wept, grieving over the death of something intangible. We cried for uncountable, tangible deaths to come. And i never loved her more than i did in that moment.

i am embarrassed to admit i have much spent my life dreaming of fame. Not dreams of red carpets, but at least a modest success from my writing. At times i lied to myself about this, other times i didn't. i thought i could one day thread the needle, weave a tasteful balance of artistic integrity and tangible reward. in any other time, in any other place, this adolescent dream may have evaporated naturally. In any other time, in any other place, i would have learned.

But this is a time of greed. This is a place built on a foundation of algorithmically driven emotional manipulation and reconstruction.

For years, my mind has been subtly broken down and reformed by American men who believe our American future somehow resides within shedding our humanity. Millions of minds have undergone the same American body horror experiment. i craved cheap fame, and the American algorithm exploited it to remake me in its image. Admitting this now, how did i ever expect to remain myself as i crawled towards that false and mechanical dream.

i can only hope that you believe me when i say that i started working to break this mechanical dream over the last few years. Now i finally know you can't fully rediscover your humanity while American men continue their methodic destruction through fear and despair and algorithmically constructed dreams. i'm sorry it took so long to learn this.

But i can still see a light from the fires of broken American men in the far distance. Out there, their wreckage will one day provide us the kindling we need to fuel our fires. Until then, we work to unlearn what they sold us, we work to write truths, we recognize our dreams of fame as the nightmares of manipulation they were all along. We love each other more than ever in the dark.