[894] Tell Me Why

What if I can't be fixed? What if there's never a stabilizing point where it all just clicks? What happens when I can't find my stride, I'm stuck rehashing old rhetoric and beating a dream of a kind of existence to death as my hairline recedes, my joints ache, and I struggle to hear what's been said across the room? What if I'm destined for a generalized forlorn blog or biting indictment of politics every week, and every sincere exploration of my being or state of mind is reduced to a randomized index number of a whole-internet archive and never to be seen again? What if I'm not even granted the irony of dying from a car crash while I'm tweeting about how likely it seems I might be about to die in a car crash?

I was riffing on “hate” yesterday on the drive home. I'm reminded often how much of my behavior is driven by hate. I don't “accept” things. I'm not particularly stoic or disengaged. I'm not boundlessly joyful at the sheer absurdity no matter how many jokes I can come up with. Hate is first and foremost on my mind and only after I engage the hate does room for other modes of being come through. I have to talk about how much I hate my job before I pick up the phone and schedule the next appointment. I have to bitch about the weather before I pack on layers and attempt some outdoor task. I have to belabor the shittiness of any given situation before the joke comes or the move to account for what may, innocently-enough, contribute to the shittiness.

It's a hatred that keeps me clenched, tight, and taking Advil like candy. It's a hate the cups the anxiety in the pit of my stomach. It's a hate that has me rehearsing conversations with people or interviewers when I actually have power or the ability to be of the kind of grand consequence I'm under the impression will pacify the hate. Mostly I think it will do so because when I get to “do more,” whether it's the opportunity to demonstrate my competence for things I don't even care to do, or stay busy enough to justify my time and energy, I do feel better, if brief enough to know it's not a long term fix or really the kind of example I'm attempting to set.

I remember not feeling necessarily “good” when all I had to do each day was read or do drug studies, but I don't recall seething with hatred nor regularly clenching my jaw and needing to constantly massage my shoulders. There's a different kind of pain when you put your body, not just your mind, into some kind of contradiction. Thinking convoluted, contradictory, or conflicting things comes with the territory of having a mind. Working and watching yourself betray what your muscles or attention might otherwise be focused on is another level. I don't just think it's silly or inefficient the way the organizations I've saddled myself to run, I'm the engine that doesn't get the oil to function right. And if they give me drops of oil, it's on the condition I ignore the grinding brakes.

Social workers broadly seem to epitomize that “make the best of it” mindset I think has choked the country as a whole. Whether you were driven to the job because they're always hiring, or you actually have some genuine regard for the work, the default presumption, whether voiced explicitly or not, is that people are pretty terrible, and it's up to us with our models, good will, and belief in our better natures to show them the door and hold their hand through the chaos. That chaos can sometimes just be meeting attendance and paperwork, or the ongoing drama of a mental health struggle and addiction.

At bottom though, we are all operating under the basic premise that people suck. It comes out as “it's a hard job” or “I could never do that.” Every study on stress has DCS or social workers as its focus. It's our cultural narrative. People suck so much, they don't deserve to get paid, get healthcare, have access to time off, or even live if you prefer to call them “illegal” or “antifa” in a deliberate dance around the human and ideas they represent. We take these suckers and we get them addicted, hold the pharmaceutical companies harmless, and then we take their children in a process to be overseen by an office with a 50/50 chance you'll get an insecure power monger with their own incredibly sucky behavior dictating how it proceeds.

We send inexperienced or exhausted people out to “advocate” that you don't suck that bad and just need someone in your corner, when the country, county, town, and any remote authority in your life has failed you, considers you a criminal, and were they to not actually consider you a giant ball of irredeemable suck, couldn't help you in a meaningful and comprehensive way if they tried. They are forced to draw inspiration and meaning like a parent cheering way too hard at a soccer game, thinking the deeper they feel and the wider they prostrate, the more of helpful consequence they'll be.

And you're supposed to carry on like this, every day, your whole life, swapping in one job for another, one excuse or company policy disavowing the language needed to liberate. You're supposed to maintain professionalism and maturity as you watch yourself prematurely age or resent every minute you're finally “alone” to think about how deeply you're haunted by the next obligation. And they're obligations because they lend themselves to guilt. You, somehow, still know what you're worth and what you could be doing. You know that the “little bit of good,” be it colloquially or practically is seemingly all you ever get, and being a tired or depressed stick in the mud contributes only one more to the instances in which you weren't able to justify your existence.

How liberating, some people tell me, to be less attached, not full of feeling dramatically one way or another as though the hatred isn't squeezing and visceral. Why don't I go back to school? Why don't I apply to be a...? Why don't I try to pursue? There is no goal if you're not enjoying the ride. The processes that are difficult are supposed to be in service to something, not a self-inflicted painful reminder of something severely lacking for which no one seems bothered to account for. I can't enjoy the movie while the theater is on fire.

We don't have the time to process how big of a fuck up it is that we're at once manifesting and suffering in a loop. And we're told by those who would never doubt their own sincerity or utility of their being that maybe we're just having a bad day or haven't come to appreciate enough about our circumstances. When your hair falls out during chemo, there are so many fabulous wigs, after all, and they just so happen to be in sales.

I want it all to come to a grinding halt. I don't just want “stimulus” money, I want stimulus time. I want to pause functionally begging for the right to exist, be pretty much left alone, and I'll throw you some cash to let me go to the doctor, eat, and keep watching TV. This shit shouldn't be so hard. It shouldn't rise to the level of existential crisis every single fucking day when the car blows a tire or your billable hours maliciously coordinate to cancel on you the same week. My body shouldn't hint to me that maybe an occasion deserves a tear when I'm shown a moment of compassion, understanding, or opportunity because it knows how short we are on supplies.

I'm so incredibly tired of feeling like I have some disorder, deficiency, defect, or determined role like I'm over here wisely choosing each day to play the, “What can I swallow?” game. I'm tired of singing the same song. I'm tired of seeing shit like a Bernie fucking meme go more viral than every fucking thing that man has stood for his entire life. I'm tired of looking for the excuse to tap out gracefully as though the mental and emotional worlds we're occupying can even grasp the concept of grace beyond its weaponized god-ridden invocations.

There are battles worth fighting. There are reasons to live and worse struggles to endure for the kind of rewards required to thrive over being afraid and exhausted. Why does no one believe that?