Basically, the tldr is this: I think I’m going to be spending less time on here. I’m not leaving entirely—I really value this community and I’m happy to still be our resident web designer, but I can’t let it be a substitute for in-life connection anymore. The connections I’ve made here, the support I’ve found, is as real as real life, and so important to me, but I need to find a balance. Human connection can exist outside of the internet and outside of people’s thoughts. I think I forgot that for a while.

Stay strange, community/TheUnusuals. I’ll see you around.

JUNE 16TH, 2017

Today is my twentieth birthday.

I decided to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground—no party, no big to-do. Emily was back in Arizona for the summer, with a promise that we’d make a point to talk every week. My parents were both working today, so I was going to make my own birthday cake. But as I was gathering together the ingredients, Aaron came into the kitchen, a determined look on his face.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going for a drive.”

Without thinking about it, I got into the car. We didn’t speak, I didn’t ask where we were going, just looked at the open road and all the lush, green trees that were in full summer bloom. Eventually, watching the roads pass, familiar landmarks entering the rearview, I realized where we were going.

There’s a river, just outside of Boston, that we would go to when we were kids. Our dad would take us, fishing rods in hand, and we’d sit on an old bridge—one from, like, the Revolutionary War or whatever—and pretend that we were going to catch something. But really, we were just there to sit in the sun, catch the breeze off the water, and enjoy the peace of being outside with no clear purpose.

That was what Aaron and I did today. We just sat.

“Thanks for this,” I said, my legs swinging over the edge of the bridge.

“I needed to get out too,” he said, before leaning back to grab something from his bag. “Twizzler?” he asked, revealing a packet of them. I grinned.

“Yeah, sure.”

We sat there for a moment before I clocked the phrasing of what he’d said, but I couldn’t find it in me to be annoyed that he’d read my thoughts. I’d dumped out all my thoughts and feelings onto him, so nothing felt private anymore. Now it was kind of nice that I had an older brother who just … knew.

“Does it ever get lonely?” I asked. “Hearing people’s thoughts but not having them hear yours?”

He didn’t seem surprised by the question, but stopped to consider it for a moment, gnawing on a Twizzler stalk.