[568] Soup Chicken

I think the game is lost. The problem doesn’t really concern how I think though. I feel it is lost as well. In order to make that sentiment coherent we need parameters.

I look at my relationships. They’re virtual. They’re “polite.” They’re old and tired in their 20s. It’s not about judging them as “bad” or “good,” it’s simply that they’re not as human as they were. They’ve been lost to however you want to describe modernity.

I look at work. It’s exploitative. It’s superficial. It’s unhealthy. It’s precarious. The immense pride and entitlement that previous generations learned growing up during a fluke period in history didn’t just slowly decline, it was sharply cut off.

I look at the environment. It’s running away. It’s flooding and starving people. Literally, we’ve figured out how to make the planet attack us in ways one struggles to denote as “natural.” Animals are going to be memories or pictures from books we read growing up. Wars might be fought over water.

I look at what’s popular. Memes and videogames and self-indulgent immaturity with millions of views take top marks. Pills and bad music glorify zoning out and dying young. TV produces more to watch a season than entire generations would have consumed in a lifetime.

I look at politics and my left hand fights my right hand to put the gun back on the table.

I get accused, any time I make the mistake of engaging online with someone past a single line, of being crazy and hating my life. I get told, in odd passive aggressive ways that people aren’t afraid of me...yet, but that I clearly need help with my “obsession” towards speaking to things accurately and exhaustively. I get told I’m denigrating people and am too harsh or abrasive in how I talk literally following lines of insults, speculations, and mischaracterizations. It’s enough to drive you mad.

Attempting to account for people’s behavior, I’m wondering if you can be human if you haven’t felt suicidal. If you haven’t stared so hard at some intractable travesty that you think it’s better to end it now than to keep suffering this moment. I phrase it that way because you’d think that’s the choice I’m giving people. You’d think that by asking them to accept and define fascism, their next decision has to be to kill themselves. I can’t conjure anything but mortal fear in my desperate, and they truly are desperate, attempts to get people to hold themselves accountable.

You can’t imagine what I go through. That must be the only way to say it. You literally can’t imagine it. You can’t imagine being always and forever the bad guy. You can’t imagine having to be your own cheerleader and grasping around in the dark for a kudos from one of your smart or empathetic friends from time to time. You can’t imagine going into detail about how not just some social faux-pas was your fault, but the whole world too. You don’t know what it’s like to have people constantly react to what you have to say as if, “Why do you think that way?” is the same question as, “Why are you an impossible cunty fuck head?”

You don’t know how desperate I am to believe in something. I’m losing even the capacity to believe in myself, but I can only feel it. My thoughts remain each line trying to grasp the words for how endlessly hollow and alone I feel. For every one person that understands, there’s thousands or hundreds of thousands actually in power or who don’t. For every 100 lines you’ll find yourself nodding alone in weepy solidarity, one will get lifted to paint me as a boar or jackal muddying or thrashing your disposition as if I were literally massaging your brain.

I don’t hate my life, I hate you. I just wish you hated you. I wish you knew what an impossible fuck head you were and then you’d learn how to talk to me. I wish you knew that you are so violently mean that you’re killing everyone around you. I wish you knew that the words you’re not saying are so much worse than the one’s you’re pretending I am. I wish you knew what responsibility for your actions felt like and it gave you pause and caution before you opened your mouth or let your fingers fly.

I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be made to feel like even when I apologize, it’s not good enough. I can’t cope with the idea that I need even the bare minimum and it’s too much. I can’t call you worth my time and sacrifice. I can’t believe you deserve my thoughts, effort, or consideration. I need to let you die. I need to escape. It’s impossible to exist in a place where your pain isn’t real. It consumes you. It changes you. I can’t become like you and forget how to recognize myself.

Here I thought it was a dangerous game to consume so much media, but it turns out it’s my lifeblood. I’d rather be in campy revamped Cory Matthew’s New York studio than in the seat next to you. I’d rather fight for my life against zombies and A.I. than hear about your day. I want to feel like I could fall in love with two dreamy actors playing and replaying the same old story because that version of love is the only reliable thing. You’re gonna rally together and chant on January 20th? I’m going to wish there’s an asteroid coming we haven’t accounted for.

I can’t get rid of my anxiety because it’s not mine. I’m a reflective individual who can’t make you stop standing in front of me. I’m being forced to accept my own death well before I’m ready to go. I’m being told I don’t matter, I’m not thinking correctly, or that my decision to try is everything but. And so I don’t have a choice anymore than I’m allowed a voice. I can defy the silence at my peril. I can stare beyond the horizon as the light burns my eyes. I can feel my heart dying to get out and look like everything else that’s dead and rotting before it.

We’re too far gone. We can’t keep living under the delusion that if you’ve read this and understood and liked and empathy-d until your lungs have given out that there’s anyone but you and me who’ve done so. The rest can’t. The rest are trapped in a death spiral polishing their wings. They’re drowning and reaching for a glass of water. They’ve slit their wrists and told you not to be afraid for them. It’s time to listen.