Wrong
Today I realized just how much I have failed. There is a person, little more than an acquaintance, who has been keeping a blog for years. This person was blogging way before people were blogging. And for years, I have been reading this person's blog. Never commenting, never e-mailing her about anything I read there, never mentioning it when I would see her around town.
Today I read something on her blog that greatly disturbed me: the undeniable words of someone who is seriously, clinically depressed. Someone who is hurting so badly, in the most painful way you can hurt. And I was struck with the realization that for all the years I have been a silent reader of this blog, I have been wronging this person. Hers is not a blog about technology or fashion, it is a blog about herself, and I've been using it like a reality television show. I know I'm not alone in this. I know that millions of people follow blogs without ever sending a word to the human behind the Web site. But that doesn't make it right.
One day in the locker room of my middle school, two girls got into a fight. They were punching each other and pulling one another's hair--it was violent in the sickest way. The coach was still out in the gym, putting away equipment, and somehow, there was a silent consensus amongst the other girls in the room to keep quiet so as not to attract the attention of our coach. So the two girls just kept fighting. I will never forget the sound of their tired fists hitting each other's heads--dull, sickening thunks--and I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive myself for not stepping forward and doing something, saying something. To watch another human suffer and keep quiet? That is the very meaning of evil.
To this person, the one whom I've been watching, silently--I am so sorry. I am sorry because I know the pain that you are feeling, and I know that no human deserves to feel that way, even for an hour, even for a moment. I have behaved wrongly toward you, because I saw your pain and I didn't reach out. I hope that you know there are people out there, people who are a lot like you. I am out here.
April
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