Unseen
To be known is to be seen.
What does it take to be seen? We want to be truly seen by people who mean the most to us, yet this truth makes us terrified of being vulnerable. These two sides form the dilemma that is the human condition, which constantly needs balance. Everything must be in moderation and reduced to numbers, like protein intake and hours of sleep. The three-month rule and the redundant space of minutes between replies. It turns into an analytical cost-benefit game where the stakes are always just as high as the reward. Even if there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward solution for great emotional gambles, some people still try.
The Unsent Project is a corner of the internet in which these two sides meet in the middle. A bridge between connection and anonymity. It’s a website with a collection of Tumblr-style messages to strangers’ first loves and lost friends. All of which are unsent and can be filtered through by name. Seems to be the perfect loophole, right?
Unknown Sender
‘Unrequited’ has a bitter aftertaste. An anticlimactic afterthought of a connection that was never meant to happen. The risk of a one-sided love pushes us to seek a confessional. Except instead of a dark booth and a listener clutching on a rosary, it’s the written form embodying truth for anyone and everyone to see.
The catharsis comes from the truth being witnessed, making the abstract become real. By maintaining anonymity, the confession in this digital space becomes ironic. The singular listener becomes a mass network. Webs of people who are capable of doing whatever they wish with this sacred secret.
To avoid one-sided connections, some try to dissociate the truth from themselves. How could they be seen if they can’t even claim their own words?
Fragility emerges when the online space is tethered to the messiness of emotion. There’s a temptation to reveal oneself, pull back the curtain and recite the timeless script of a play about living.
You know who this is.
This stopped me scrolling through the website. Until that moment, I was idly reading each message like fragmented chapters I wasn’t granted any context with. But this message disrupted the rhythm. A thin line between being unknown and known wavered slightly. I wondered how many times they signed off with their own name, just to delete it again. Like cutting off their air, so no sound could be heard. In one small act, this stage was theirs, and they knew that among the dead sea of the silent audience, the person who mattered the most would be in the middle of it. Anyone would be a little braver if they had that one person. But can you ever really discern the spotlight from the spectators?
Knowing Me Knowing You
Main character syndrome might be treated like an illness affecting a few unlucky, unaware performers who grip onto their persona by the reins with iron fists. Yet when the underlying symptom of excessive self-importance is looked at more closely, I can’t help but see that a great majority of us could relate to the obsessive yearning of being original. Sometimes it feels nice to have a pride point from finding a new ‘rare aesthetic’ in your life, knowing that only you could understand this. Just you.
To be one of the few rather than one of many. The prize for being unique stops being so glamorous when the other side of this is considered. Only you could understand that loss, heartbreak and despair. No one else. Shoulder through it alone. Keep that distance from the world. And when the mind becomes an echo chamber, you will go online like every other person outside of these walls. Find some sort of comfort in being the one to go through this. And it won’t take much time before you realise that you don’t exist as an individual with completely unfathomable experiences. You’re not alone.
Because then you will type in your name in the filter and find over 180 people. Around 50 of them will understand what it’s like to be hopelessly excited when someone says your name with warmth in their smile. Just like you. And around 20 of them will understand what it’s like to oversleep, so you can spend a few more minutes with a loved one in a dream.
You’re not the only one.
‘Sonder’ refers to the feeling that comes with realising every person’s life is just as profoundly complicated and nuanced as their own. We are more similar and intertwined with each other than we think. So much so that names can become symbols of sonder. Phil, Jane, Kate. At first, they seem common. Nothing abnormal, just normal. Until you remember that these aren’t just names in a database, but Phil is someone’s doting father, and Jane is someone’s outspoken friend. Kate is someone’s stern but loving neighbour.
To: Phil,
got into grad school today.
you’re the first person i wanted to tell
Empathy can be beautiful to have, but it can be exhausting in many cases. Constantly being aware that every person walking outside on a random Sunday is living through as much complicated chaos as the next could give you a headache or two. But these unsent messages are not the only place where people found homes within human experiences that can’t be fully encapsulated.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a community website that acts as an ever-evolving encyclopaedia, merging emotional turmoil with linguistic experimentation. The English language is already confined enough in the expressions of the most extreme emotions. Almost like the phrases had been rationed before we realised we had to feed both the heart and the voice. Many non-Anglicised languages have histories upheld by the profound remaining untranslatable, yet the vibrancy not only reveals the layers, but invents them time and time again. A legacy of languages that make memories meant to be changed. The English dictionary holds a history that smothers the space of missing meaning. Only enunciating the limited collections of antonyms and synonyms to hide how lost we have become when silence steals our words.
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This is precisely where The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows transcend beyond the silence. It continues the long-standing tradition of transforming the unknown into the known. To give what is unknown a body that belongs within a system that allows it to function, live, interact and exist as its own entity. Perhaps like a society. To seek a key for the untranslatable and unarticulated from kinship. In this case, what is the real difference between this dictionary and a place of worship?
Isn’t there some solace in knowing that someone a thousand miles away understands you? That this isn’t the first or last time that anyone in history has gone through this? Isn’t this the closest to being seen? In knowing yourself, you could know hundreds of other people. Some you may never meet, some might be around the corner.
Hidden Messages
We lie all the time. It’s the one undeniable fact that can’t be fabricated. Deception is often understood as an insidious glimpse into self-preservation. Of course, these anonymous messages are no exception to such actions. However, the anonymity leaves us in the dark about these senders’ motives for lying. Like a confessional, we are sometimes the ones who must listen and decide which stories we can truly believe in.
Our messages are not in a vacuum in which only pure intentions exist. If our messages hold our truths, then these confessions evoke as much pain as the comfort they bring. In the context of anonymity, self-preservation can’t be the sole reason for deception, as it’s mainly driven by the fear of being openly named and shamed for committing a mistake or being associated with it.
Perhaps the lies made by the nameless expose something else. We offer only pieces of ourselves to others when honesty is on the line, and that can manifest in many ways, including manipulation of language. Full truths, half-truths, white lies, remorseless lies. All of them exist, and all of them are invited into the forum.
We want to trust each other in our most vulnerable moments. The burden of having to collate evidence planted by the suspect draws us away from embracing someone’s statement of their reality. Instead, the mask of impartiality is donned, and attention is entirely taken away from the relationship between the sender and recipient. It’s whether the message is right or wrong. Expectations are made and not being met, and promises appeal to the hopeful but are not fit for use.
However, there could be a direction towards uncovering at least some of the hidden messages. Think of how the most expert liars would tell you that decorating the lie with some semblance of truth makes the whole act more convincing for the unsuspecting audience. That is precisely what these forum messages represent. Some of them are red herrings. Classic misdirection. Instead of discarding these as spam or junk, take a moment to find out why they might exist in the first place. Why was there an urge to hide behind a lie? And what’s just as crucial is accepting that you might never know. You might never know if the message that has changed everything for you is based on something that wasn’t real.
Concealing messages can also be a symptom of someone taking charge of another’s story. Censorship is inflicted on messages and inadvertently reveals the silhouette of the missing truths, like fire leaving gaps in burnt fabric.
Queering the Map is a website that has gained online traction from its anonymous messages sent from Palestine. People from the queer community within Gaza sent what might have been their final messages. Confessions left unsaid gather in pinpointed destinations on the map, left behind for everyone else to see. In reading each of these messages, knowing that they were writing their own eulogies to be read by the silent audience, there came an eerie weight in my stomach. Yet, somehow, amid knowing that these messages were never going to be retrieved and read by the people they loved until everything was gone, I still saw so much hope. Testimonies of childhood friends becoming lovers, separated by the war, but so inextricably tethered to one another. Their voices could be censored, altered, demonised or forgotten. But their words will be kept in the form of last rites, captured in a single pin drop. A single message that tells their lover that even if their home can no longer hold space for both of them, this one memory in time will be the only home they need when everything else is lost.
What If?
There’s another layer to these messages. Spectators read these, and one question inevitably emerges, whispers in their mind. What if this were me? The self-referential tendency is the backbone of all stories. Searching for oneself in between the crevices of the idyllic past and the dreary present. It’s how we find out who we could be, for better or for worse.
You’ve really blossomed, you’re too kind for this world, please never change ❤
To internalise this message, there needs to be a semblance of hope that somehow this person chose to write this for you. To prove that you are more loved than you will ever really know. When I read this, someone’s voice came into mind. Then a few more followed. It could have been written by any of them or none at all. Regardless, being in the role of a spectator became more fluid. It became more personal. The recipient was no longer confined by a name. Instead, they merged with the sea of witnesses.
This is storytelling. You could have been in any other place and in any other time zone, someone else could have had your life now. It’s all a game of chance that can’t be negotiated. But our curiosity always tries to imagine if things were different. And then stories are woven from this relentless rewiring.
What if I were a fan of Black Mirror and loved horror? Would I have also confessed to a friend at a watch party? What if I looked better in red or were more callous? It’s a terrifying thought to acknowledge that if I were living as any other person with the same name as me, I might not have some of the greatest people I know. But my choices have already made me miss out on many connections that could have changed everything. When does a what-if become destructive?
Sent
The Unsent Project gave me more questions than answers, as all great complexities do. These heartfelt messages showed that the recipient can’t always be separated from the audience. Your life could be another person’s story, whether it’s unreachable to them or so relatable that it’s painfully potent.
There’s one thing I’m now closer to understanding, though. The thin line between being seen and unseen is the fear. Over 500,000 messages are archived in this collection. 500,000 chances are put on hold in exhibits without any origin preserved. These can still reach out to strangers and change them for the better, of course. But they will always exist as conditional hypotheticals behind screens.
Don’t spend the rest of your time adding to those missed chances. Tell that person how you feel. Embrace the knowledge that someone else can finally see you, instead of the silent masses. You are never alone with this fear, trust me, ask a friend and the right one will be there to endure it with you.
Send that message and sign off with your name. Your name deserves as much grace as you give to others. You know who this is.
