Sometimes I forget that not everyone has to read, and if I'm preempting what I want to say for fear of it sounding "whiny" or indulgent, I'm defeating the purpose.
I just got out of my bankruptcy hearing. It's been psychologically taxing for month and a half as I got everything together for it, within hours of things being requested. I've sent polite emails regarding my questions and concerns, all mostly gently and persistently dismissed. I've been reassured that my filing was straight-forward and I should know by the end of the hearing whether the petition was successful. I'm not writing because I got good news, but because again I am in limbo and stewing about what feels like negligence and disregard.
The trustee asked for Door Dash's address. I want you to know that so you can get an impression of how boxed-in her world must be if she's not aware of how food delivery works.
I got drilled on the value of my, closed, business during January. These are numbers I submitted to my lawyer, who did not say a single word while I was being grilled. When I opened the bank account and read what the amount was for the time in January when I informed my lawyers about the business closing, it seemed to just hit her as "not good enough" and she pivoted to my lawyer and said, "I think you know what I need," to which the lawyer agreed.
I was in the room for the last person's session. She "grilled" him about the process for self-publishing a book on Amazon in a way that made me think she was interested in writing one herself. I don't know if she liked him because he's married and has a kid with autism, but she found his case in his favor before the sign-off, so someone's in a decent mood right now.
Barring getting sick, sitting in psychologically tortuous limbo states is as furious, panicked, and dramatic as I get. I don't sit and spin in silence. I try, earnestly, patiently, persistently, to get people to engage and address my needs in a way that is respectful to them and myself. I am forever, routinely, denied. I am subjected to the whims and arbitrary judgement of people who can go through motions, but not be expected to show any real discernment or accountability. And I have to wait, at their behest indefinitely, pinging between crises, either financial or interpersonal.
I haven't written in a long time. I've been immersed in vibe-coding tools for making local politics more accessible and transparent. I've been spending 15-20 hours a day refining rules and codes and learning how to get things hosted and parsed. I've been, always glimpsing, at what I've been desiring to my whole adult life. I've aspired to throw myself into problem-solving in creative and engaging ways. I'm happy to do it at the minimally viable means available to me. It's why I live in a shed. It's why I have so many things for their "potential." It's why betrayals and humiliating questions or accusations penetrate beyond the mere annoyance or absurdity offered by an individual playing their part.
In what feels like a cosmic ironic nod, I wrote several paragraphs I felt like they captured the feeling well, and in spite of hitting to save, several times, they disappeared quicker than they arrived.
I caught a video talking about Mamdani advertising $30/hr for people to sign up and engage in emergency snow-shoveling. Everyone showed up, the snow got shoveled. The statement from the girl in the video was, “We’re not used to this,” and “You mean paying people a living wage motivates them to work?” Idiot-proof instant accountability from both sides of the equation is not the world I’ve grown up or worked in.
Are there bombs going off? Are their Epstein survivors recalling their PTSD for decades? Never will the greater atrocity prevent you from suffering your antagonists first. They’re a product of the same forces. It’s another’s ego and neglect they’re meant to suffer. It’s undue pride for privileges and access that have been systematically denied. What about their stories suggests you’ll find any justice for your own? It’s girls in tank-tops and skits getting told “you asked for it.” It’s Iranian protesters matter-of-factly told to “rise up.” Good luck! Yeah, fuck you too.
There’s a temptation to claim there’s a “lesson” here. Like all the suffering is worth it or adds up to some grand takeaway you couldn’t achieve otherwise. It’s just a fancy and convoluted way to make an excuse. There is no deliberate and conscious effort for something to be taught. This isn’t about a grand narrative of redemption, finding solace in the persecution as some Christ-like figure. Isn’t that why he’s so popular? “Why have you forsaken me!?” And then just don’t think too hard about not really being dead, and it’s YOU who sacrificed you, bro.
If “we’re” going to pretend to have learned anything over the last decade, it’s that there is no bottom to the amount of humiliation and depravity. Your reasons and story doesn’t matter. That you dance subjected to power’s will is all that’s fundamentally being demanded. Every time I show up in earnest, I feel like I’m being puppetted. Every time I try, I learn why I get to fail, fail alone, and should have thought about why I had the hair-brained idea to try in the first place.
Where do I get off being so entitled!? To my time and to be more or less left alone to decide how to spend it? That’s fucking crazy. I need to work to death for people who will die never having seen me. I need to sacrifice, not just the idea of an indulgence, but every remote joy to combat the narratives about who I am or what I deserve. And I continue to refuse, so life continues to string me along.
I’ve jumped into many hundreds, maybe well over a thousand, people’s lives regarding the drama of their terrible families, addictions, or child abuse allegations. I’ve felt the second-hand stress of trying to figure out how I would handle or escape their “impossible” circumstances. It’s made it abundantly clear the difference between the places you’re stuck and the places you stick yourself. Many can only make a terrible or slightly-less-terrible “choice” that amounts to hanging on and waiting to see.
Simultaneously, often in the next breath they’ll feed the excuse narrative. “It is what it is,” like the cunt who would decry the “lesson” of suffering is that life is, in fact, suffering - not it’s mitigation, sublimation, or incorporation. The first and worst experience is the rule and reactivity is the key to unlocking a win. Seeking a savior is always the answer, and he’s always on his way, or deny the nature of things altogether.
I feel like me at my worst isn’t what I observe from most people at their best, and it means nothing. It might mean something to a handful of friends and family. It might mean something if there’s some cosmic karmic bean-counter. I’m severely doubtful. I think I’m trapped in a tabloid. I fear I’m going to lose the capacity and desire for a just and reasonable existence because it just gets too exhausting to keep fighting and spite isn’t sustainable.
The sense of injustice and arbitrariness I feel is part of a self-reinforcing loop. Once you feel the string and trap of being subjected to it, I think most turn into a force for taking advantage and punishing the next person. Overzealous prosecutors of faithfully executed consequences. When all you've ever known or been made to believe in are ones that happen for no reason or bad reasons, why not? What else is there? Actually follow your Jesus and forgive? Ha! Find the power and choice to weigh things more scientifically or accurately? Way too much work.
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