The Digital Diary

Once, the weight of words fell directly into another's hands. 

Over a table. 

Beneath a your cheap slow ceiling fan bought at shopee. 

In the shadowed pause between heartbeats where one dared to be seen.

But now?

Now we bleed into screens.

We scatter our grievances across fiber optic veins, each confession wrapped in curated mystery — a status here, a story there — hoping the algorithms might understand the things we are too afraid to say aloud.
It is not dialogue. It is performance. Therapy for an audience we cannot touch.

We call it connection.
We call it healing.

But sometimes it feels like shouting into a void that only reflects your own voice back at you.

We craft vague laments and exquisite accusations in 280 characters or less, praying for the balm of a like, the lifeline of a comment. We trade the raw, trembling labor of conversation for the quick narcotic of validation, forgetting that what we seek cannot be delivered by a tap on a screen.

The person we ache against — the one whose name tangles silently behind our ribs —
they are elsewhere, laughing at cat videos, unaware that somewhere, we have built a cathedral of rage in their honor.

It’s easier this way.
No risk of shattering silence with vulnerability.
No danger of finding out we were wrong, too.

Screens promise safety.
But it is a hollow sanctuary.

True dialogue demands surrender: the aching art of listening, the patience to sit with discomfort, the humility to be changed by another’s truth.
Social media demands only cleverness, timing, and just enough pain to feel compelling without bleeding too much.

We mistake the roar of attention for the balm of being heard.
We sip saltwater and call it relief.

We do not resolve.
We postpone.

We barter confrontation for catharsis, mistaking the exhale of public grievance for the long, slow work of healing.

And somewhere beneath the hum of Wi-Fi signals and scrolling thumbs,
the old ways — the real ways — wait for us still.

A quiet room.
A trembling voice.
A conversation that might unmake and remake everything we believe about ourselves.

Harder, yes.
Messier, yes.
But real.

In the end, it is simple and impossibly hard:
put down the screen.
lift your eyes.
say the thing.

Not to the crowd.
Not to the endless empty feed.
But to the person who matters.

Connection is not built in the shadow of performance.
It is born — raw and unspectacular —
in the terrifying, sacred space between two human beings brave enough to stay.

So speak.
Even if your voice shakes.
Especially if it does.