With the most wins what?

I deleted my Twitter accounts today. In a world of casual, disposable interactions, it seemed more part of a problem, not a solution. I realized it was giving me nothing and only taking: time, energy, resources. I'm so enervated of late by this weird interpersonal desert I'm wandering around in that I just can't bear that kind of drain anymore. I've spent the last five years of my life living in astrange city, and I still feel like a stranger here. I am stretchedthin by 1,817 days of feeling unknown. Things like Twitter -- theydon't help me feel connected. They make me feel that much moreestranged. Reducing me, and my thoughts or my activities, to one shortsentence? To which people may or may not have a reaction, assuming theyeven read it, and none of it will I ever know about? (Unless theybother to comment or "retweet," which happened so infrequently as to benot at all.) I can't believe I ever thought that was a meaningful wayto spend my time! I am chagrined at the things I've tweeted to completestrangers, who don't give one red shit about me or my comings/goings,thoughts, feelings ... .

I wondered today if the only point of knowing people is to have bodiesto show up to one's funeral. (If so, Twitter fails even on that count, asmost people don't even know where Tweeters live. How would they evenknow one had died?) If the point of connection with people is to *know*them, and NOT merely have them show up and shake their heads sadly atone's coffin, then I am dumbfounded as to how anything less than goodold-fashioned conversation will serve that connective purpose. Theideal is face-to-face bonding, where nonverbal blends with the verbaland humans -- gregarious by nature -- can have that subconscious needfor communion fed. Anything less than that are distant runners-up: thephone call (with at least the enrichment of sound and timbre), theletter or email (with the focused effort on communicating one-on-one).And what texting or "chatting" offer in real-time response theysacrifice away in misunderstood tone and loss of nuance. The point is to build some foundation with another person; something that you both can refer back to, and share, over time. How does one build that exclusively through snippets of broken conversation, misread cyber tone, or Tweets?

My life -- all our lives -- are already plenty full of inconsequential interactions. Mine has felt increasingly cluttered with those, to the point that it feels I don't relate to anyone on an authentically personal level anymore. With no job to force me out of my Shoebox, I am down to the following flesh-and-blood flora: the rotating check-out clerk at the grocery store, who peers over my self-checkout process from a distance. (I don't think it's ever the same one twice.) The barista who takes my latte order (IF I decide I can afford the splurge). The stranger who jostles me on the streetcar, sometimes with an apology but usually not. The concierge at my apartment building, who probably knows my last name (because he occasionally drops off deliveries at my door) but not my first. The postal clerk who took my packages to mail back to loved ones in the South. The bank tellers who watch me come and go at the ATM. The homeless man who sells newspapers outside the grocery store. I don't know them; they don't know me. We all make certain efforts to stay closed off and protected, behind a veneer of anonymity. We don'see each other; it's that way by our mutual design. Other than living with my wife, these few, random people are the only regular real human contact I've had this month. In a dearth of the Consequential, one is left with these fractured slivers. It isn't impressive, is it.

I am not really sure what I'm protecting myself from. It's habit,really. Too often trying to get to know random people doesn't pay off-- they end up kooky, or outright unhinged. Even dangerous. It seemssafer, less trouble overall, to just blur on by. To not be seen. To not see. To let chancerule any outcomes that last longer than a two-second meeting of theeyes or an intrusively overhead phone conversation. Even that "eyes meet" thing has slid beyond my grasp; I came back from Europe with a disturbing new tendency to not look people in the eye. I've spent months trying to figure out what happened to me to make me so resolute to not look at anyone. I came up with a few different explanations, but mostly? It's because I can't bear to not be seen anymore. If I don't look at them, they won't look through me, and I don't have to wonder if I'm invisible. I just ... pretend they aren't there. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of tragically epic proportions. I see that; I just have no idea how to change it.

Twitter just seemed to be that same meaningless torture on an exponential, electronic scale. So much "look at me, read me," without any feedback or confirmation. I occasionally cared about how many people followed me; I guess it gave me some sense of "accomplishment" to be "followed" by yet another Doesn't Know Me Stranger. Mostly I cared that people commented or "retweeted" me, because that seemed to be proof  that someone, somewhere, was paying attention and listening to me. That didn't happen as much as I'd hoped. And now it won't happen at all.  Which is probably how it should have been all along.

I try to resolve (somehow, with the tatters of what's left of my Give a Shit) to only interact meaningfully going forward from now. Given that I know firsthand how edifying it can feel for someone to really "SEE" me, maybe more of that will come back to feed me if I try harder to meaningfully interact, even if it's only for a moment -- on the streetcar, to sense that someone else understands what it feels like to be trapped in such a small space with complete strangers. Or when waiting impatiently in an endless line, where banter is shared like a drug to numb the irritation. Or on the elevator when someone looks at me when I say hello. It seems I've been trapped in a quicksand of oblivion, and if I don't get out soon, I will drown in it.

Last week, we went to an atheist potluck, a sort of "secular holiday celebration." I enjoyed the last hour of the night most, as we played a "Loaded Questions" game. Some of the questions were merely fun, and enlightening in a cursory way -- what is your favourite movie quote? If you had a yacht, what would you name it? But some questions were more probing, and the more transparent, vulnerable answers to those almost broke my heart. To the question "What did you most want when you were a child?" one man responded "A more loving father." The courage it takes to volunteer such a thing in a crowd of mostly strangers! He shines in my memory like a beacon. A beacon like I've tried to be, but it seems that's been a failure. Cuz I was tweeting when I should have been ... connecting.

The flipside to this loneliness as been an all-too-easy intoxication inperceiving any kind of persistent connection with anyone at all. Ibehave like a starving ghost of myself, emaciated and grasping atanything that feels warm or familiar and safe. This, also, is notimpressive. I really am more than I've appeared to be. I really am ... more. Aren't I?