snippets from a journal I write, to try and not spill all this into my personal life and job; better on paper, and better left where some will agree and sympathize.
This is the modern world — if you are over 45 and out of work, you cannot expect a good job or a salary that is more than basic sustenance. There will be no retirement, no golden years, no health care, no public assistance. By not having amassed wealth, I became of no value to this country. I am miserable about the state of this country, half the citizens clamoring for more breaks for the super wealthy and less help for the needy. That anyone who isn’t well off doesn’t deserve to be. I DON’T feel the world owes me a living, but I didn’t recognize it’d kick me to the curb repeatedly no matter how well I did my job. I don’t hate the wealthy exactly; I hate the worship of wealth and the idiocy of the voting masses who think that it’s un American to render assistance to the poor or ask the wealthy to pay taxes. I hate how people who inherited wealth think anyone who didn’t was guilty of having lazy parents and being a failure. I hate how corporations ruin their employees and companies in search of that 1% more profit. And that we are poised to elect a psychotic billionaire Mormon whose entire career is making wealth by destroying jobs – he’s running on a promise to create jobs. He’s never created a job beyond cleaning his toilets. But he isn’t black, he is richer n shit, and he shows no compassion, and that’s all that matters to enough Americans that vote.
Hate the world I live in. Have totally given up on adding anything to it, just waiting for nature to subtract me from it. I envy the world of my grandparents – every one of them retired with a decent pension from an employer, and I don’t recall any of them being laid off or fired in the last ten years of their career. I am certain the core of my depression is the ability to realistically contemplate the future; if i had some hope of retiring with even my basic needs met, I could be less hopeless. But I know the truth. I, like most Americans, am one bad health diagnosis away from utter poverty and misery. I toil at my job just to be able to afford rent and utilities. what little I have saved will end up in the hands of some mega corporation when I need health care; by that time there will be no assistance from our government. I’ll lose my house as well as my health. People unable to work will be simply left to die in misery. America now runs for and by corporations, who have done a great job of convincing their victims that this is the American way: “fuck you if you’re not rich” “if you’re not me, you can die in the gutter, I do not give a shit”
So here we sit, richest nation on Earth, denying health care and unemployment benefits, worshipping athletes and celebrities, heaping a billion dollars on the Avengers movie while charities go unfunded and collapse, and calling our selves the greatest nation on Earth while ranking near the bottom in education, vacation, infant mortality, employment and sanity.
I AM headed to a shrink later this month – earliest appointment I could get was one month away, more proof that we have The Best Health Care In The World – for the one percent All that bullshit horror talk about having to wait weeks for help in countries with universal health care? Well, I wait as long or longer here, AND I pay for it, so for this average-incomed individual, our health care is not so great.
I have been extremely depressed and doing a bit of minor self-harm for months now. The better job ignited hope briefly, but then the doomed feeling returned. HOWEVER. I am introspective and, on some subjects, quite rational. And rationally, I know my life is not bad. I have (details follow) plenty of friends suffering incredibly poor health, family strife, all sorts of things i can compare to my own life and SHOULD be able to recognize I don’t really have it so bad. Knowing all that has had zero impact on my mood. Hence the decision to go to a shrink.
I have all the suggestions of friends and plenty of previous experience with crushing depression: exercise, “find something you like to do”, “make goals”, make new friends, go to church, volunteer to help the needy, etc. None of them are helping. My brain seems committed to making me unhappy. I can’t easily enjoy the little things that I used to pretty much live for! Music is the one thing that still stirs my soul and changes my mood. Drawing alleviates the pain and encourages self worth, but again, for only instants. It can’t beat back the swell of tide of hopelessness and ennui.
I can be briefly recharged by a nice thunderstorm, a breezy day – there are occasional sights and sounds that transcend this pitiful existence and take me somewhere magical. Alas, it fades the instant I am reminded of real life. Well, what am I saying?? Nature IS real life. It’s this artificial life that crushes me, this social agreement to ignore truths and embrace lies. The age-related feeling of being removed from, and puzzled by, what seems vitally important to most Americans: shoes, sports, celebrity trains wrecks. Dismay listening to youngsters espouse right-wing hatred and greed and intolerance for lifestyles that have ZERO impact on them. I know it’s all cyclical; this generation of right wing war zealots and money worshippers will likely be followed by one that rejects mindless consumerism and celebrity worship. But right now, the society I live in, makes me puke.
Oh yeah, friends. We all know there comes an age when your friends start getting diagnosed and dying.. and it isn’t fun. I am in amazingly good health except for my brain. I have watched one of my best friends lose a foot to diabetes, and have a stroke to boot, and he forges ahead full of positive energy, will to live, and always sees the bright side. Another suffered kidney failure, never companied once, even though on dialysis every other day. I did not even know of the situation till she got a new kidney. She too, is full of life and will to live longer. Another is undergoing bone grafting. So, make no mistake, I KNOW it is idiotic and selfish to be wallowing in despair and wishing for death while so many friends exhibit bravery and will to live despite GENUINE hardships. My hardships are all imaginary, and even at that, petty. But I am struggling to find happiness, and failing utterly.
I am also aghast to have squandered a few friendships recently. I’ve lost a few good ones lately over my depressed mood and debating skills. Goddamn Facebook; it is the Krell machine. By removing the personal aspect of communication, by removing the cues of body language and facial expression, the gap of misunderstanding and anger has grown gigantic. I say things I’d know better than to say in public; I misread the intent of my friends; they misread my debate as an attack. Other friends have simply drifted away to avoid being exposed to such a downer.
Food is the enemy. I want to eat comfort food, one of the handful of things that I still enjoy. But having eaten makes me guilty and fat. I can’t stand seeing myself in a mirror, given how far I’ve regressed to my pre-diet size. I exercise, but lose no weight; I eat, and hate haven eaten. Not eating encourages lethargy and depression; eating is a dull chore unless its something that puts the pounds – and guilt and self-loathing – on.
WHAT is my point, you may ask? Well, the only reason to post this is the main reason i read posts here — to see if I am alone in these thoughts or have company. I see I have plenty of company. I’m too old to relate to the teens contemplating suicide over lost love or bad grades, but also see many youths who have a painfully clear picture of what it takes to survive this shithole of a society: extreme, utter denial of reality. Taking an objective, rational look at the world we live in will fill most sane peopole with dread. When, like me, you are insane, it just makes you want to jump off a cliff into a stump grinder.
And if we did? Friends and family would mourn a bit, and within weeks return to their lives. We matter not one whit. And when mankind goes extinct, there will be much celebration in the universe.
23 comments
What else can I say? Agree with you all the way. I live in Australia and were following your country blindly down the garden path. Every day our country looks more and more like your’s.
Can you be my best friend? Seriously? I feel like I’m surrounded by people who either don’t agree or are blind or simply don’t care. And I also feel that the thing that keeps me alive is nature. Art, nature, animals…. And really an unhealthy nostalgia for an era I wasn’t even close to being born to live in, but a time when people had empathy and community and worked hard and believed in something.
Thanks for the smile, emptiness. They are very hard for me to come by now!! Sure, we can be best virtual friends :-). This board really helps me feel less alone, if not a whole lot better. IT’s nice to be able to post this and not be told I am being ridiculous or overdramatic or crying for attention. Heck, if i was doing this for attention I do have friends I could rant at!! But here, being hopeless is understood as often simply being realistic about where we are headed as a society and how I won’t fit – where we already are is bad, but where we are headed, where we will be when I am 65 – terrifies me.
my coping mechanisms to the absurdity of modern life:
– music and exercise
– interest in metaphysics
– be active in ‘real life’ as little as possible (being around people for too long tends to throw me off balance)
– not take people words to heart (the good and the bad)
I don’t love nor hate life in its essence, I’m solely longing to be done with it
excellent advice! Music and exercise – in fact, biking to music that stirs my soul is the best coping med of all. Now if i could just learn to let go of things I hear and things I say. I still punish myself for things I said ten years ago.
I dunno .. are you a water sign ? (cancer, scorpio or pisces)
I read they have a hard time letting go, especially scorpios who tend to be stuck in the past
(…)
I have to find a movie for the night and force myself to get into it
* cling to the past
tom – AMEN on your societal/political rant … I’s mind boggling to watch people I know who are sucking hind tit and scraping the bottom of the barrel espouse the right-wing lunacy! EVERYTHING the conservatives now stand for runs totally counter to ANYTHING good for anyone who’s net worth is under $10 million.
For all the working stiffs, the rightwing’s ONLY goal is to remove every last dime from your pocket and give you nothing in return … and THEN tell you to PRAY it gets better!
I could go on long and hard on all this but I won’t – but the youth REALLY need to pay attention and get registered and vote … but I will also add, what you and I grew up to know and watched dissolve runs MUCH deeper than JUST the president … the House of Reps been usurped by the teabaggers and has lost all civility and they won’t even USE the word “compromise” let alone DO it. and the Senate is held hostage by the minority republicans and for the first time since the birth of the country are forcing EVERY vote to meet a super majority.
It’s absolutely maddening to know that the right wingers in “power” will make outrageously insane demands to benefit their rich friends (corporations) and when the democrats vote against those demands they will turn around and say “Look at how the democrats screwed the Country” … AND PEOPLE WILL BELIEVE IT! UGH!
political dawg
Thanks — I wish we were wrong!! But American society seems to be headed to Hell, and mostly as a result of BOTH sides pandering to people’s prejudices, assumptions and fears. I have liberal friends every bit as deranged as the right!! There’s a real allergy to factual, rational observation. Stephen Colbert nailed it years ago – “I don’t need facts – I trust my gut!”. For a lot of people, that sounds sane, and they don’t see it as parody or irony. They really think what they “know” is right, and ignore facts and figures as “media bias”. The right is mostly to blame — having done a great job making intelligence the enemy.
Oh, meant to say — the news organizations also bent over and let this happen – as predicted in “Network”, news became just another game show.
I feel so validated reading your post…I’m over 45, alone, have suffered several severe paycuts, am struggling to hang on to my little house on my meager income, paying my own benefits (which don’t cover the mental health counseling I really need). I’ve applied for over 75 jobs at this point, everything from official postings on job boards to requests for information interviews to networking among former colleagues and friends…I don’t know what to do. Every rejection or non-response beats me down further and further. I feel so helpless and worthless in this society, especially in this country, even though I have 2 degrees from an Ivy League school and (in my clearer moments) know I’m an intelligent person, a quick learner, and a hard worker. I feel so distanced from this culture and society. I can’t understand why we as a society pay millions to watch inane reality stars, while our factories close and our nation’s debt spirals out of control. I long for a simpler time that may never have existed, but surely I could have found decent-paying, satisfying work even just 20 years ago. I read job descriptions that are full of jargon and acronyms I don’t even understand or want to. I detest Facebook and the pseudo-community it promotes. Where is the end to this darkness? I find small moments of comfort in food, in sleep, in a good book, in holding my cat, sometimes in prayer. But too often my prayers are requests for God to please just take me home.
Not only do they make intelligence the enemy by calling it elitist – but now they’re trying to de-fund public education and rewrite/whitewash history books AND they’ve found a way to co-opt religion and then with church leaders weighing in, they effectively had god as a campaign donor … the right actually wants to INTEGRATE religion – specifically chrstianity – into the government – go ahead – vote republican and you WILL get a state sanctioned religion and if you don’t subscribe you WILL be punished – in the name of “god” of course.
The news channels – specifically FOX – have been corrupted along with many other industries.
It’s my intent to try and stay “topside” to at least vote in november … if the “R”s win … I’m out
Insanity … and disheartening
blue dawg
Raingirl, glad I was able to do that little thing. I think we are a small window on a huge issue that our beloved journalists will never cover. Your experience is so similar to mine! In 2008, at age 50, I was dumped from a well paying job to be replaced with minimum wage temp labor. I have a fairly rare skill – I am a superb image retoucher and my work is seen nationwide on many popular food brands. It took me 9 months to find another job in 2008, and that 9 months was hell – rarely even got a response on an application to an ad. I kept positive for months but the inability to even get an interview despite valuable skill wore me down. I had to give up my medical coverage and meds. I felt frozen, unwilling to spend money and feeling guilty when I did. Eventually i took a job at a soul crushing hellhole, doing my retouching, but being subjected to intense psychological damage. The owner was one fo those “crisis” junkies who could not go a day without telling us we were all within an instant of being fired and that we were all doing poor work. I escaped that hellhole when a RERAL job came along – and for about a year, thought I had found reliable employment and rewarding work. Then out of the blue i was laid off. Was told how excellent my work was, how they wanted to keep me but had no choice, times are tough. And there I was aagin, in 2011, unemployed. Again, 9 months 100 applications, 1 interview. Again, I settled for another massive pay cut, no benefits, no sick days, to work in a shithole where the psycho boss made things 10x as bad as they already were.
Then – out of the blue – the company that had laid me off in 2011 called me back. At same pay and benefits. HOORAY! I was delighted. But that delight lasted about 8 weeks. Then reality set in. it WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. They will, when they have a budget glitch, kick me to the curb again. This time I will be 55 and even less employable. My spirit has been crushed. I am now incapable of relaxing, just waiting for that call to the office and that sincere, sad “sorry we have to do this”. MY company and its owners are NOT mean. They would, if they could, keep me forever. But the reality of our economy and the coming collapse of civilazation as we know it informs me otherwise. It might be tomorrow, it might be 2015, but I WILL be kciked into the cold again. And then what will I do? I guess eventually i am going to become well acquainted with the underside of a freeway overpass. Unless i throw myself off one first.
None of what i have just written will cheer you, and it may not be much solace to know you are not alone. But it;’s worth this: YOU ARE NOT CRAZY AND YOU ARE NOT WORTHLESS. Society is crazy and corporations are evil. To paraphrase the brilliant book The Axe, ours is the first society to behave this way – discard the most knowledgable and useful citizens to benefit youth and power. Many civilizations and all animals do have a history of letting the weak and infirm go off to die by themselves: Indians, Eskimos, Lions. But only in our generation have top performing citizens been thrown into the cold just so the shareholders can earn another half a percent. Humanity means nothing; profit trumps all sanity and sympathy.
OH ps — i went bankrupt in 2008, and that forced me to live to learn within my means. The only good thing that came of it, and the only reason the 2011 unemployment didn’t completely destroy me.
AYUP Blue Dawg. The same people screaming about “Sharia law” would pass “Christian law” in a heartbeat, and cheer it by breaking at least 5 commandments at once. The loudest Christians among us are the ones that are the least Christian. But good Christians just look away when the insane in their midst take center stage. They bemoan that Imans don’t speak out enough against terrorism, but say not one word when a doctor is shot or a homosexual is beatend “for the glory of god”. Religion’s number one product is hypocrisy.
There is so much metal that gets this idea out. My thing is like, what’s the fucking point? You work your ass off for 60 years, be bored for 10, you have dementia for another 5, then die. Why is society built like this? My advice… get into nature. Become a survivalist. That’s what I really want to do, go to the mountains, away from society, live in a shanty, hunt my own food, grow my own vegetables, and smoke weed all fucking day. This world is shit. It’s worthless, and nothing is fun unless you have money or do drugs.
And I have some bad news for you — at a certain point even the drugs stop helping. I did my share of most from age 18-30, and sometime in my thirties let them all go but weed. Weed was the on thing I enjoyed for 40 years – and even though I often wondered if it was the source of my dismay, it was something that made me feel better, enjoy things more and look forward to. But in 2011, whether age or unemployment, something happened, and it is no longer very enjoyable. It has lost its value as a space for relaxing and laughing. It often inspires regret and depression now, and makes my head feel like it’s been squeezed in a vice. So, now I have even less buffer against the bullshit. And see the hell that is reality too clearly.
Ahhh but to the shareholders (and when time were better and you and I had a 401k you and technically were happily shareholders) … are many steps removed from that aspect of “humanity” … usually, it’s a task quietly and anonymously left to the heartless bean counters like Mittens (Romney). No – shareholders (a vast majority) are people hoping their meager bets on mutual funds and stock picks in 401k’s will rise enough to allow them a meager retirement like their parents before them – although their parents had pensions provided by the company they worked for all their lives – but that is no longer “profitable” … loyalty is no longer an asset, it’s now a liability … never mind that biblegod requires it (if you believe in such things – I no longer do)
Those profits that are wrung from slash and burn corporate take overs, are reduced to cheerfully written quarterly statements.
Tom – it good to know I’m no longer the oldest one here 😉 … i’m in my 40s … 10 short years ago, i also had a great tech job and was on my way to amassing a net worth over half a million only to be fill upside down by the bank/financial/housing meltdown … now here i sit owing over a half mill, a squatter, and working a menial physical labor job similar to what I did to put me through school … except without the healthy body i had back then – I sill got mad skilz in this “career” – but it’s still a poverty level job 😉
but it is what it is … I don’t pine over what was lost … but the edge i walk, if i slip just a little, i’m just not going to bother trying to climb back … i’m just too tired to try to scratch and claw my way back if i fall any lower. but I’m not going to let past present or future “woulda coulda shouldas” steal the beauty of a sunset or the soft warmth and love of a puppy kiss from me … just can’t let it bother me … the dice were rolled … I lost … what I didn’t know at the time was the game was rigged … with my time remaining, however long that may be, I will fight the crooks … but I won’ waste time being mad/sad at a game I decided to play without knowing the rules
fair dawg
Dawg, you are an admirable fellow and the world did you a disservice!
@themaskoftom
I usually do not discuss political things because my idea is that no human is worthy to lead another human.
All human have failings and putting some in power was the worst thing that the citizenry could have done.
The thing is it will never improve in the span of the next few generations unless something drastic happens. The situation might appear to be better in some areas for a time but it will still be slowly eroding. Because there are not enough willing to cooperate and share for things to get better for everyone.
And with some who do have that attitude, the preference for socioeconomic success burns it out of them.
But when resources are arbitrarily or naturally scarce, the beast will do what it can for its own survival. And some beasts do the same to keep their power and abundant resources.
I appreciate the kind words … i don’t know if they are deserved … i can be obstinate about certain things … i refuse to allow this world to twist and corrupt my feelings … there are plenty of circumstances that can depress a person, I’ve experience many of them … but there’s no hard fast rule that says just because life dealt you shit, you MUST feel like shit and treat people like shit. There’s also no rule that says how long a person must feel bad about something bad that happens to them … I set those feelings free … I force myself to smile when I want to kill shit … I force myself to be warm, caring and pleasant to others when I interact with them when I want to hide and pull the covers over my head.
It’s hard to do … and sometimes i snap someone’s head off … but if I do, i apologize – others don’t deserve to be injected with my problems – just because i might be irritable doesn’t mean someone needs to be made miserable with me.
I don’t fault the world … i’d argue that 90% of the people in the world are good, decent people … and just because certain individuals/corporations have benefitted off my misfortune and i’ve resolved to not let them continue to benefit should ‘they’ try to take another pound of flesh … doesn’t mean I’m required to expend energy laying blame … for those who have earned the blame, they FEED on the misery of others – to show them misery only makes them stronger. why give them the icing on the cake?
baker dawg
themaskoftom, once again you’ve encouraged me–thank you! Just to hear the words “you are not crazy and you are not worthless” is balm to the soul. To know that someone else who is clearly intelligent and talented, as you are, has been through the job-search mill, and the layoff carousel, and the fear that it will keep going…I’m not at all glad you’ve suffered it, but I don’t feel like such a hopeless failure. Thank you for giving me some sense of perspective and comfort!
I totally agree with everything stated. The USA has become a place where only those blessed with riches will prosper. Money has become the center of everything, for without money you can’t do anything. I’m sick of all these slimy, hypocritical politicians, spending money on unneeded and totally unjustified wars and not on the middle-class and lower-class who actually need the help and service. It sickens me. I love this country but hate the government!