The events of today strangely — eerily, in fact — mirror something that happened just over two years ago, something that changed me for likely the rest of my life, something that made me think twice. Three times, even. And while this situation is not nearly as serious, it hurts similarly, only with less emphasis.

I don’t know if I have the energy left to fully explain the hopelessness I feel at this precise moment. I will, however, say this: It seems that no matter what I say or the manner in which I say it, someone I care about will either hurt because of it or, at the very least, be offended by it.

I can’t handle that sort of responsibility. I don’t ever want anyone I care about to hurt, and most certainly not because of something that I say. This place, in all its incarnations, has always been somewhere I could go to exercise my frustrations, put down my thoughts, or just rant about nothing. That ability is both this place’s beauty and its curse.

With one exception — that being two years ago — I’ve never tried to use this place as a way of hurting or upsetting anyone, and it pains me incredibly that it’s had that effect at all. Since the beginning, I’ve treated this place as if it were a private journal. It just happened to be accessible to anyone who wanted or cared enough to view it, and perhaps that’s the wrong approach now. Perhaps it was wrong all along.

I was always taught that there was no such thing as a bad word, that words in and of themselves were not nearly as important as the thought, intent and context of their expression. I’ve always believed strongly in that rule. That rule is the reason why I can’t go around using the N word at my leisure without being the subject of scrutiny (not that I would anyway), but rappers can, and get paid millions of dollars for doing so. People understand the context and the intent of who the author is, what they’re saying, and how it applies to them.

As far as I’m concerned, it leads to two possible conclusions. Either the rule does not apply to this journal and nobody told me or I’m just not articulate or skilled enough to apply it correctly. At this point, I don’t know which it is, but until something changes or I figure out how to say something without someone thinking it’s designed to attack them, this place no longer feels safe to me.