Aaron
This was prompted while I was reading this, I had written it about halfway through the article; it was initially written on paper with a pen & then typed here with hopefully the majority of the mistakes fixed. It was influenced by this and this as well as others. It is as much a confession as a reflection, even a plea or a call to action. Whatever it is, here it is. Please be kind to me in any constructive criticism…
While this brilliant, but possibly at the time troubled kid was helping to frame the technologies that would push the web to new heights, I was only being exposed to the web. Albeit at the slow speeds of dial-up, but at least with no restrictions, from my somewhat clueless parents. To describe myself as young or naïve or even impressionable would be to attribute things I can’t possibly recollect at this time. I had complete unrestricted access to the web, as mostly I knew of nothing more or the breadth of the wider internet. But the freedom & anonymity of the early web formed my psyche. As time went by I learned more about technology & the web; the darker places of the net like 4chan, trolling made me what I am, for better or worse. Whether they ruined or made me is debatable. Unlike Aaron the breadth of freedom was also probably a shortfall, I didn’t learn programming and I wasn’t that interested in writing code nor did I fully understand how things worked & what I should pursue for my life. The personal problems from conflicts with the parents, to the identity crisis which would influence events for years to come, to general teenage angst surely didn’t add up to clarify things. Throughout all this the web or net supplemented friendship and the connections made on forums surely staved off the inevitable depression.
After high school came college, which unlike high school was mostly more interesting and the freedom of the experience was certainly beneficial. The choice to stay at home and circumstances forcing me to a community college as well as with hindsight my anti-social behavior, fear of failure, a much bigger ego (if such things could be believed) put me in a school where I’d never learn to code. My naiveté of the high school years and later the 3 years of school which were less so, but combined with the impossible expectation lead to debilitating procrastination. With simply the mounting pressure to transfer to a good school, the identity crisis mounting to an even greater collapse. All of that culminated in procrastination to basically dropping out of school, although having to lie about just another thing wasn’t that hard, so to my parents and at work I was commuting to school 3 days a week and on my way to getting my degree and that coveted high paying job I’m still at this time expected to land.
It should be noted that throughout this time I was still learning some things about technology and was using all my free time to learn more, but probably not the most useful skills. The net however was there, always present and a guiding light mostly to fill the void that depression threatened to fill and devour. I’m certainly grateful to the existence of that breadth of information at my fingertips. It was there to supply free and open media no matter the source. Music, movies, TV shows, and especially anime was freely available and just a click away. Anonymous was bad, funny, a force developing. A tremulous friendship formed at work also staved off full on depression. When neglect and a lack of hearing or seeing the signs because you could never conceive of such a thing happening close to you, because you looked at it as the cowards way out (still do to a much lesser extent, with pity and sadness to replace the contempt). But it did, a friend, possibly your only real or any friend at the time killed himself. You were angry, upset; how could he dare do this to me. You were considering telling him about your lies, you felt like you could trust him. His reason was so stupid you reasoned. When you found out you could fake all the public necessity of being sad and upset without being emotional or the craziness of shedding tears. You never attended the remembrance ceremony, you even felt guilty as the phone call asking for help just a few days before was clearly a plea for help, but you didn’t recognize it. Upset, angry and with a debilitating procrastination the depression finally set in. With each semester start coming up you would vow to fix your problem, but procrastination knew better. To the world everything was great, and perfect, and going exactly according to plan. Of course it was when it was all made up. The depression set in deep and flourished, but no one knew, the hermit was sick and broken, but he was great at faking it.
It should be noted now that the ego of the madman was too great to admit defeat, it is also that which has turned away from the subject of the tragedy of kid that was the same age as you, who in the same time accomplished so much in just a different set of circumstances. A kid that had the same ideas as you about freedom of information, of the beliefs that should foster the 21st century. Values that seem to have mostly been eschewed by the youth of today and always hated by the established political order as having the most to lose if the change occurred and the law of the internet crashed on “user space”. That was what Aaron was fighting for, to free information to the public against the tyrannical old world (20th century, cold-war mentality) ideas of right and wrong. A world still ruled by those that couldn’t didn’t or even wanted to understand the new age that was going to change the world. They were stubborn, but deliberately so. It is that world, that power, those laws; the ones Aaron fought against because they were unjust, stupid, unable to cope with the realities of the world and expectations the net has helped foster and develop. And it is because of those pressures that mounted on this troubled kid that he committed that transgression. The big bad brother had won, it had robbed us of a great voice; one about whom I unfortunately didn’t know much before. I’ve heard of the act that he was being prosecuted for and thought that such actions couldn’t actually be prosecuted to such an extreme. An act of cyber vandalism, worthy of a slap on the wrists or a small fine, but the kids previous actions had angered the beast and it wanted blood, to make an example to others so they would think twice. Aaron’s legacy and the outrage that the tragedy has created may yet achieve his goals; not knowing him I can only hope that the act wasn’t undertaken as a last resort to become a modern martyr for his cause that might’ve seem impossible to fight for from behind a jail cell. I hope it was just the action of a troubled kid, unable to face the possible consequences, even though the actions that provoked them were not only just, but necessary in ones mind; because any other reason would make these events even a bigger tragedy, an unnecessary loss of a great mind that had so much now lost potential.
The depression faded as a result of someone special in my life, of something or a hint of something developing that I never thought possible. There were of course mistakes and mostly dumb and stupid mistakes along the way, but I will live with them in the hopes not to commit them again. The lies are still there as of now; at least one of them is mostly dealt with and I’ve not only accepted myself as being gay, but just have the final and difficult step of coming out to my parents. I blame the other lies and procrastination on the depression stemming from the identity crisis. Since the crisis is over and only the last step remaining one would say that this chapter is almost closed. I just need to figure out how to deal with the other lies I have confected in my grand excuse of a real depression. It will certainly be hard and I think only a deus ex machina could solve my conundrum, but at least I’m hopefully optimistic of my future no matter how hard getting there will be.
Now I find myself having somehow fallen into a relationship and having convinced the young lad to fall madly in love with me, even though my cold dead heart can’t possibly reciprocate his feelings. At least I strive for complete honesty with him and that is also surprising to me. I am extremely grateful to him for putting up with me this past year and my giant ego, or character problems. I’ve grown to deeply care for him and would hate to hurt him, probably akin to a paternal instinct growing out of my soup of genetic abnormalities. He has given me so much more than he could possibly understand, but most of all I think I have gotten my confidence back. And over the course of the last few years I’ve mellowed out a bit and rounded out to be somewhat decent with some semblance of my goals. The inevitability of my house of lies crashing down on me, the tragedy of Aaron’s death all molded into my ego driven past experiences will hopefully propel me to change and at least to hope of being a small voice of reason in the absence of a great mind like Aaron. I hope that this tragedy will at least inspire others “change the world” or contribute to the change in any way even though they each may appear to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
