[991] I'm So Sick

Before I let my brain get too woken up…

It’s safe to say that I live in a fairly perpetual state of disorientation. It isn’t that I don’t have a direction or ideas of the directions I want to go. I feel like I’m trapped. I’ve written about how often I feel “stuck.” Whether I’m citing the practical limitations around a budget or physical limitations of my body, I find myself envious of those who appear to be moving freely about the world. I don’t mean celebrities or rich people. I mean the people who conceived of, built, and began operating the new hospital in town, and every new building on campus between me graduating and today. I mean Jonny Kim who’s the viral Navy Seal, doctor, astronaut by the age of 37.

So much of my self-conception was fueled, innocently enough I’m sure, by my time in school. I don’t think I was particularly “exceptionally” smart, but doing well in school kept me safe, got me praise, money, and like a lot of kids in my era I was told I could grow up to be whatever I wanted. When I “turned it on,” there was little I couldn’t understand or get an A, and when the psychological gains of doing so began to wane, I settled for As and Bs and still way more often than anyone should think about the circumstances for the 4 Cs I got in college.

I was told often, well before I had any concept of what it meant, that I was a “leader.” I don’t know if my parents were just trying to reframe my general obstinate posture or if they recognized a capacity I would later use for the party house and entrepreneurship. Either way, it is deep in my core conception of myself that I don’t just follow along. I don’t “just believe” things. I don’t deny myself a differing view or the opportunity to put my voice to it.

I’m shaped by dozens of formative phrases and incidents of my life. I’m perhaps moved to discuss them because I recently watched Dave Chappelle talk in 2020 about his history and contract issues. He was also full of confidence and potential that was recognized early. He’s at the point in his career where he’s functionally transcending his medium and giving more Carlin-esc speeches-necessary, wise, and still funny-speeches verses doing sets. He was stuck too, in his contract, and then parlayed his fame and love for him into a credible threat and escape.

I make a lot of superficial movement in the world. At bottom, it reduces to spending money. I have money to spend-ish, when I do, it allows me access to the city, parking, venue, restaurants, and less-than-cultivated or prettied-up  picture and video montages of what I’ve been up to. I get a third of the way through any project before the rain starts, budget dries up, heat cranks, or time gets crunchy. It’s become easier over time to notice more psychological gratification in taking an extended lunch or settling in for a show and Candy Crush. Things that started out as pacifying go-go-go anxiety and stress turned into “enjoy it now while you have it.”

I find myself reflexively comparing myself to people like Jonny Kim. Whether or not I’m actually capable of being, or have any genuine desire to be, anything like him. In the least disingenuous way I can say it, fuck the military lol. I still hold respect for doctors, but perhaps ones in different countries who haven’t been co-opted by our corrupt and ignorant system. And I can barely ride several roller coasters back-to-back without feeling pukey, let alone pass the tests NASA requires. Do I want to be like Jonny Kim? No. I want to own myself to the degree of analogous effort and distinction. I want the story of doing so to be a compelling and persistently meaningful personal narrative that helps drive my behavior and focus.

The amount of sacrifice is under-appreciated when it comes to being “high-achieving” or “exceptional.” You don’t do a lot of other things because there’s always a new nuance to incorporate or responsibility to rise to. It doesn’t mean you can’t have, say, a family or hobbies, but it does mean you’re probably feeling like they don’t get the attention you’d like or they might require. It means you now have plugged into the “advance the species” project more than “prioritize me and my life” one. Consciously or unconsciously, you have to believe we can “advance” at all. You have to remain steadfast in your dedication to “helping people.” You have a driving faith-claim that as a source of inspiration and demonstration “things” or “the world” will inch forward and be better overall.

Perhaps this is where I don’t have faith. I appreciate Charlamagne tha God’s recent discussion with Stephen Colbert. He’s persistently that matter-of-fact voice about the chaos and ever-analyzing his in-the-moment experience that only those with the same kind of anxiety can appreciate. We’re on the precipice of losing the country. He gets it. I get it. Noam Chomsky gets it. Historians and some of the more inflammatory voices of commentators and observers do too.

We don’t have people in power who represent us. I’ve watched the country, not just “struggle,” but defy notions of accountability and growth. I don’t make more money each year. I don’t find new friends with more time and opportunities. I find myself escalating my indulgent side. I find myself “wishing” for someone to give me a call to finally release me from my mockery of obligations. I don’t feel as though I have the power to lead myself out of the largest context and consequences.

I can spend a year of my life making phone calls and sending emails and waiting and waiting and waiting and I still can’t find a way to do literally the job I’m doing, but for myself? That’s a beyond-broken system. It’s defying the essence of self-determination, value, and individuality. Then each step you take to “fight back” becomes another self-defeating mockery. How do I discard my observations about addicts and addiction and then with a straight-face tell other professionals, “We don’t take insurance?” Every practice that doesn’t started with taking insurance, and after filtering through hundreds found their reliable self-payers, and closed the door to Medicaid. How do you “speed up” an office that loses your paperwork, an agency that lies to you or has an axe to grind, or follow ever-differing instructions from people not qualified to offer them?

But that’s just my smallest sliver of experience. What if you’re a Florida teacher being told someone observing your classroom for 12 hours is tantamount to your time in school, debt, and professional experience? What if you’re the half of the country or minority group watching the systematic obliteration of your rights? What if you’re a fat kid being told there’s nothing to see or worry about, just keep eating and loving yourself and things will turn out alright? What if you’re a kid with a bullet-proof backpack? What if your small sliver of experience is equally exhausted, desperate, confused, and unable to lead a kind of life that doesn’t suggest futile and pointless struggle as the raging fire dictates the context?

That’s the heart of my restless and distracted soul. I’m not okay. “Things” aren’t good. I feel threatened. I feel sick. I feel immense hatred. And no amount of good books or TV shows are going to make me forget. No amount of skill I demonstrate on an instrument is going to put out the fire. No nerding-out on the history or rounding-out the context is going to erase the ever-present threat stabbing away at any remote confidence I have for our collective survival and understanding of what’s going on. We are not built for it. Individuals can cut paths that peacock a certain respect or intelligence, but “we” don’t exist and the animal that is human is as dumb and annoying as my cat resting on my armchair staring at me, expectant, selfish, ignorant of its motivations and mine.

I’m not okay. “It’s” not okay. “Things” aren’t okay. “We’re” not a thing. The country, if not literally a good portion of the world is on fire. I’m over here doing what? Haphazardly “counseling” those instinctively dosing themselves into oblivion to help cope with the pain? Because being numb with rotten teeth is preferable to medical debt and a big smile as they come to destroy what you’ve worked for or love? We’re not brave enough to even SPEAK!

We won’t even speak. We won’t talk about the big and obvious fucked up things. We won’t do it, ever. Not just for years, but ever. We won’t talk about how we’ve fucked up. We won’t talk about what it will actually take in actual work to change something today, right now, let alone in 10 years. The only people talking are the psychopaths, just as miserable and small and pathetic as we are, but with more fluid motion to exercise their greed and disdain for existence. And we won’t call them greedy and disdainful, we’ll celebrate how much they’ve “earned” and “innovated.” It is forever opposite-day in the mind of the damned. No story will sweep in and account for the deliberate ignorance or sacrifice itself on our behalf.

“Everybody knows there’s a party at the end of the world.”

The fact that I have this perspective and don’t know what it “means” is of ongoing concern. Do I pack up and leave the country? Do I power through my home projects? Do I double-down on the party? Do I make a more concerted effort to recruit and bolster physical or financial defenses? Right now, by default, I’m just playing along by ear. Things certainly “look” normal, as they have in every society the day before shit went crazy. We’re already crazy. It’s already happening, and has been, and we never talk about it. We never share anything but a meme. We don’t vote, we don’t fight unless it’s with a Russian bot, and we don’t really feel more than an overall foreboding that’s best not explored.

The vast majority of the world informing my experience is on some level suicidal. I have a friend actively disengaged from the larger political and historical context and conversation. I can’t blame her. I have professional connections that, even in places of power and relative comfort, can’t or won’t organize or find a momentum of sustained prosperity. I’ve been offering no-rent and creative expression for 3 or 4 years now, and not a single person has been able to enjoy or play with that for longer than a year without the greater anxiety or unaddressed nature of our problems winning the day.

The communication gets resented. The trust never exists. The real work and sacrifice go unacknowledged. The concept of how or why to connect reduced to social media pageantry or compulsion of your genes and cultural expectations. When I talk about being “alone,” it’s that singular lines of blogs like these would occasionally show up on the tongues of those I felt closest to after they were ridiculously drunk. Then, hush. Then, race away and get very busy before turning defensive and angry.

I will never forget when one of my friends said, “I think it’s going to have to be for Trump, man” when we were discussing politics and who to vote for before he was elected. This friend was intelligent, kind-hearted, and just an outsized positive presence on any occasion, but he fell under the spell of the malaise and inarticulate fog. He was, of course, busy and a professional and comes from a “normal” middle-to-upper-middle class background with an extended family and series of things on his mind a million miles away from the word “fascism,” which he’s perfectly capable of understanding intellectually.

But “we” aren’t wise enough to contend with how we aren’t intellectual. We don’t make the time to develop robust systems for determining what information is going to be used in service to our decision making. We watch people like me struggle endlessly to determine inches of movement, and figure it’s a lot easier to plug into the streams of consciousness that already presume to have figured something out. We’ll suicidally sacrifice ourselves with proud demonstrations of how little we appreciate what we’re actually worth. It’s routine. It’s normal. It’s, “Trump, I guess” because he “seems” to resemble the anger and confusion you haven’t been practicing putting better words to.

Barring a black swan event of currently inconceivable means, it’s not getting better. I might have a year or two to escape the country. I might have enough money to buy my way into a graduate program or immigrate to the country somewhere with a home-rehab immigration system. That fucking sucks. That’s fucking despicable. That’s something I’m talking about now, 1 or 2 years early, so when you’re mock “horrified” that coked-out Don Jr. is burning a 10-year-old who had an abortion at the stake in primetime (how “hyperbolic” can I get when the standard is already mass child slaughter?) I don’t fall under your spell.

Purely as an automatic predilection for survival, I complain about clenching my jaw or simple logistics.  I act like there’s a greater nobility or efficacy in attending to day-to-day details. The effort needs to be spent fighting or speaking to the problems dictating my greatest context, but who am I speaking to? What am I fighting against? Should I punch my friend until he comes to his senses? I can’t really help myself from continuing to scream into the silent abyss. Is this how I’ve transformed my conception of “the fight” into a series of indulgences and doing “regular” jobs? I do those jobs just long enough to flirt with getting fired as the microcosm demonstrations of our larger failures of leadership and imagination become too much to bear.

I can’t look away. More importantly, I don’t wish to. I don’t wish I’d stop talking, I wish someone would talk back. I wish I could trust anything about anyone that didn’t reduce to self-protection or indulgence. I can’t. I’m fighting to thrive in a world built on so many lies and confusions to do much of anything but pull out and run is going to feel like a futile mockery. It’s going to keep me as isolated and alone as it’s proven thus far. I can stay angry, or pretend hopeful, or I can make a better escape plan. I can engage the mockery with the ambivalence or play that seem to compete with my best notions of how I’ve conducted myself in the past. I need to start saving.