heartlessviking

I see quite a few people unhappy with feeling nothing. If you haven’t known agony, I suppose nothing might seem unpleasant. I’m a big fan of nothing, that empty void which cannot be filled and doesn’t desire so. That’s me today, after several days of being moderately feeling, I awoke today to feel nothing. I look at my hands, arms, legs, body, and they are just a facile set of window dressing, very little to do with me.  I feel like a parade balloon, others pull me along by my guide lines, I just bob and nod, look at the meaningless man, is it Easter already? So festive.

So, as things seem to happen, we had a little collision between my private health crisis and the support group. The major issue/technique is called dissassociating. It’s the point you pull your brain back and try not to return to the land of the conscious. You can even do it while awake, and every now and then a therapist will tell you that it’s “meditation” and “good for you.”

I’ll grant, I’m a fan. When I first wake it is incorporeal, aware that my body has decided to be ready to be inhabited again. Then I fight that urge. Stay abstract, my hands and body feeling an inert lump of flesh. So far I’m still losing, but I’d be interested to see if I could force myself catatonic.

Today I came out to my wife that I might have to take some time off for my health. It was liberating, in a way.  It’s also a really dark place; everyone in my orbit can tell that I’m really sick, so when I mention it, they don’t really react. The idea that it’s “all in my head” kind of breaks down when I struggle to eat and sleep.

Oh, let’s talk about food. So I was eating better, but the trick to that was having a nice stiff drink. Then, my body being the responsive irritant that it is started gaining weight. I hate being overweight even more than being depressed. So, I push myself back down, and struggle to eat all the more. That’s how stress kills you, it destroys your function if you eat, and if you don’t. I’m being melodramatic; death is a long long long way off. Mores the pity.

so, today I went to a support group for suicidal people…. and they talked about the effects of stress on the human body, and breath training…… I have BS in psychology and have been in therapy for over twenty years. You seriously think I don’t know how to breath? or the effects of stress? For pity sake, I was doing breath exercises when I was 12…. here I am 21 years later realizing that there’s nothing better.

so, I also got an appointment with a therapist out of the whole thing……. not optimistic. The theme today was finding hope. What fucking hope? It’s a miserable species and it can come up with no more creative place for me than waiting to shuttle around children that the state can’t bother to provide decent care for, for $18 an hour….. benefits are good, but I guess I thought there was more to life than this.

whatever, I’m stuck on this planet while I work up the momentum to die….. futile is all that is available.

I think I’m settling in on method. Given that no one is at all interested in preserving my body, I’m thinking about killing my liver. Yes, I’m planning to drink to death. It might take decades, but it is relatively certain.

Right now I’m at the stage where I need a drink to get through the day, meaning I should be on to full day drinking alcoholic within a few years, non functional a few years after that. The difference is that I’m not keeping it any level of secret, my doctor knows, my therapist knows, they don’t have anything better to give me. I’ll take the slight numbness, the total black that only this can bring me. It’s a trial run for death, and if last night is an indicator, I’m getting reasonably good at it.

I study misery, so depression would be a common and understandable outcome. I’ve been thinking though about why I keep coming back to that state of powerlessness, of wanting to walk away from the project. I have a degree in psychology, published research, and I work with trauma victims.

The thing that irritates me, and I’ve been trying to find a way to discuss this with anyone who will listen… Though the violent people, the angry people, the judgemental people, may look like the problem, the problem is us. Those of us in polite society who are willing to dismiss; “evil”, “sick”, “racist”, does it matter? We’ve gotten very good at drugging those that don’t fit. Every time I bring this up, people say I take too much on my shoulders. The problem is that as far as I can see, I am the only one who begins to see the size of the problem. Everyone I’ve met would rather dismiss, they just throw up their hands and say; “That’s the way the world is.”

Yes, I agree entirely, and that is why someone has to do something. I’m going to do something. I don’t know what and I don’t know how, but no one has been able to remove this burden. I was taught that if you see something, you say something. Well what do you do when you say something and people are apathetic? I think you have to keep going. Keep pushing until you either solve it or find others to continue such a project.

It’s going to kill me, comfort that such a thing is. No one wants to admit the amount of cruelty our society subjects people to on a daily basis, and how baked in being complicit is. People that see it sound hysterical, and get dismissed as paranoid. I’d love to be wrong. I have a scientific background, disproving the null hypothesis is the basis of all my work. My point is that no one is out to get you, or me for that matter. What people are is indifferent to our suffering, happy to profit from it.

We have to make them look at it, make them see, don’t we? If we suffer in silence then when we die they’ll find new people to fill this role, right? God, how I’d like to be utterly wrong about all of this….. I don’t think I am though.

I was trying to explain to a straight [non severely depressed] person how I feel today. Then I hit it;

the entire premise that most adults function on ; “Maybe someday it will get better.”

That’s just it though, if you fail that deception you end up depressed. The carrot on the stick is a better day later, and I’m at the point that the carrot has to be made of plastic, because that is how distant a better day is.

So, that’s it for me. It isn’t getting better. Everybody is dying the slow way, and all I want is to fast forward.

This captures my current attitude… empty, and craving proper disposal

A large amount of my issues have to do with ADHD and the combined effects of that, depression and anxiety. That’s as external as I can get; nothing I did wired my brain chemistry like this. I still feel like I should be doing better. I lost my wallet, and there remains a rational island in my mind that says it doesn’t matter, but it’s breaking me slowly but surely.

This whole year so far has been the end stages of the bargaining and beginning of trying to accept. I don’t belong, never have and never will. I really need to find a way to stop trying. Because the insanity of trying over and over and failing is hurting me more than the relative poverty if I was allowed to stop trying. I’m not allowed to stop trying, FYI, because my ex wife still holds part of the house in which my entire life savings is equity. Oh, and my current wife has 9 months left in her schooling. So, we can’t move until this time next year, and that’s assuming several major miracles that I have been conditioned to consider unlikely.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or where I’m supposed to go. Sometimes I feel so damn trapped…  and I am, but feeling that way isn’t helping anything.

this afternoon I started to pull up. Not significantly, there’s still no hope. The thing is, it doesn’t matter. I’m not invested in hope, it’s those other poor suckers. Tough luck for them, huh? Oh well, that’s life, and often enough death.

The metaphor I keep coming to is trying to make sense and come to peace with my prison. Granted I am technically a free man. Yet, I have no representation in government, nor freedom of movement, or even the freedom to do as I please with the things I own. I am as kept as an ambitious young man can be… and that’s the way it is. We can’t start working on anything until we identify conditions.

So the possession that in fact possesses me is my home. In it lies my entire life savings, with the exception of my possessions. It’s also a house that I bought with my EX-wife, and her name is on the mortgage. We’ve been paying on it for ten years, my family that is. She hasn’t financially contributed in a decade. Yet, that’s not how finances work. Why would they? Making sense is for math, or engineering. For the economy the job is to motivate, and I am excessively motivated to get out of this house. The worst years of my life were spent within these walls. Further, many of my problems are actually local. The big issue is that I can’t invest in people here, because I want to leave. I’ve never actually chosen to live here, that is in this state. My parents moved here when I was seven and I took a near instant dislike to it. It wavered during my first marriage, there’s one thing I’ll give my guards, they like to give the impression that the economy is growing…. I guess it is, it’s all government welfare which for the life of me I can’t understand why we can’t give our poor and needy…. Something about owning a business makes you the saddest and most destitute of all creatures, and who would help you if you didn’t buy a senator or two? Not your workers, you make their life hell to shave a few cents off the price of production.

Anyway, the point is that it is prison, but unlike most prisoners I do have some freedom of thought and viewing matter. I can choose my diet, both metaphorically and literally. If there is one thing I’ve learned about wanting something desperately, it is that going after it directly is a big mistake. The way to get things in this world is to find something better to do with your time, then make the world attempt to sell you it’s BS. Eventually it will come to a reasonable financial arrangement, you buy your freedom and VOOM, like a cat out of an aquaduct.

Ah, but there are always advantages to knowing the size of your imprisonment. As I learn that, I learn who the guards are. I’m a persuasive fella, when I want to be. I’m willing to bet I can persuade my way out. There is no prison that can truly hold a determined person. Just so, there is no unbreakable cypher, or bulletproof security. This knowledge of the lack of absolutes in a world where absolutes are assumed could be a tremendous asset to buying my freedom.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I have a lovely wife, some sweet puppies, and a warm place to sleep on this bitterly cold night. I’m going to call that enough. Also, tax return is round the corner, and that may be quite useful.

I’m fed up, with the whole thing. Specifically, I work my butt off, tend to turn in good work, which even my employer admits…. yet, despite supposed ability, I’m not worthy of paying enough for me to do what I want, which is to not need welfare to survive.

So, my doctor had pushed me out a month and a half, now I’ve been on the on call for cancelations, which means that at this point if he calls, I pick up. This morning I was doing more “essential” training… and I get the call. So, I take it, and I told him how it is, and he added more medications, and we’ll see how that works out….

I just think I’m asking a lot. At this point I don’t want to feel, period. Feeling leads to realizing what low regard my fellow human beings have for me, which makes me want to get away, which further reminds me that I’m not worth that much on the current open market. Then whenever I bring this up others try to remind me; “There’s more to life than money.”, Yes, so why must you pay me less than it costs to pay my bills? Is it because there isn’t?

It is an unclear amount of time before I am either sufficiently numb or sufficiently ticked off. If I get numb, I’m going to work for a few more years gathering all the money I can get. Nothing else, just planning my escape. If I get worse… then I’m leaving as soon as possible. I want to move into the middle of nowhere, build a house, grow potatoes, cabbage and carrots, raise a few goats for cheese / milk, barter for my coffee and I’m good. I want out. There is no place for me here. I’d die if that was an option, but I have a wife, family, etc. People that for reasons that escape me want me still alive. So, I’d like to set up my cell somewhere that I don’t have to make an effort for this lackluster and disappointing culture and species.

Note the sarcasm on the concept of “good news”, the “good news” is that after plenty of pain and drama the people I work for have decided to let me keep my job description. Middle class junk. I’m completely convinced that working class and middle class are in fact code for; subservient enough to admit that we are all owned, and none of us have independence of action or freedom.

All work which requires others is now in my mind a holding action. I want out, as in I am ready to retire, because I see no place in the economy for someone passionate about effectiveness and helping people. I’m 33 years old and completely done with capitalism, as a participatory sport it is a thing in which a large amount of people suffer, a few people reap the rewards, and at least half end up incapable of useful purpose all in the name of convenience and comfort for the select few.

I’m just going to go hunting for money. I’ve been hunting for meaningful and rewarding work for 15 years, and it is not something available to anyone not independently wealthy, which is something I could become. It becomes less what is possible, and more what is plausible and achievable. Money is relatively easy, if you just abandon all morality, which is EXACTLY the exchange you must make to work. That’s how it is. You cannot participate in the economy I live in without profiting from the suffering of others. Oh well, such is humanity, everyone else likes it so I guess that’s FINE?! Fine, screw with people without me. I’m buying my way out. I sold my soul the day I agreed to work for a living. I’d rather go the Bill Gates route and become so wealthy that no one can ask anything of me.

Consider it really is amazing, fantasy level the power we give billionaires. They can do anything they please. Meanwhile, the power of a mere consumer? Nearly nil, don’t be one of those. *upper crust affectation* Being poor and not well connected sure does seem like an awful bother…. why would anyone CHOOSE such an existence?

They don’t choose, I’m in the narrow field of people with such a choice. That doesn’t make it easy, it just puts it on the table. Life has gotten so dark that I’m willing to snatch it off the table. I understand exactly what I abandon for it.

Thus passed away this man’s sense of moral duty, his ethical feelings, and any remaining belief that what is right matters to anyone.

Understand that we all inhabit the pit, every and any person who has no particular influence, or economic consequence. The difference between the people here, and the people I deal with every day is precious few of the general public know how little they matter, or in fact anything matters.

The pit is where society puts you when it wants to forget about you. Every tale of misery or sorrow I hear describes accurately the atmosphere of the pit; that place where you wake up and realize that the framework of lies you’ve been telling yourself doesn’t make it any less of a pit. There’s this weird human desire to not be in a pit…. as though life was supposed to be fulfilling, or have meaning. It doesn’t, not for such a vast majority of people that the exceptions are truly consequence of exceptional circumstance, wealth and luck.

I find myself useless. No more and no less than anyone else. I turned 33 today. 11 years ago my marriage fell apart, it was no escape from the pit either. Five years ago my latest escape evaporated, a career ended and it took me two years just to start down the path towards another career. Now I understand that even that was an exercise in futility. I can never be smart enough, hard working enough, or effective enough to get out of the pit. Everyone lives in the pit, and we comfort ourselves most of all by saying “This is how it is for everyone.”

Thus, I no longer care. I want the best compensation I can earn for my time, given that regardless of what I do it will assuredly be meaningless and pointless. I want out of the pit, and I am willing to pay whatever price it costs.

I find vintage labor practices and relations fascinating, so you’ll excuse the digression into discussing coal mining, and why it may be indicative of the situation we will all shortly be in.

Coal mining was the first true modern labor job. While difficult, it involved juggling multiple details, and the cost of failure was death and destitution for owning companies. One of the first major strikes in US history was a coal miner strike. Around their necks they wore red handkerchiefs as a symbol of solidarity. These were the first rednecks.

Coming back to canaries. The reason canaries were used in coal mines had to do with their sensitivity to various toxic gases released in the process of mining coal.  The canary was more sensitive to the exposure to the gases than the miners, and thus if the canary died, it did so such that the remaining workers could escape the mine with their lives. I personally think, forced into that situation or not, that the canaries are kind of the heroes in that story.

I’m a canary, of sorts. I’m sensitive enough that dangerous practices tend to get to me before they do to others. Hence, as I sit taking my first health leave in seven years, it may be about to get quite a bit worse for everyone.

Humans in general are emotional and prone to exaggeration. Repeatedly over the last year I’ve heard from friends, family and coworkers; “It can’t get worse.” What they mean is they lack imagination, while I do not. It can get worse, and unless people act it will.

It’s a grim world out there. People have become secondary to material wealth, and the usefulness of human labor may be soon at an end. This is not doomsaying for the sake of upsetting you. This is a weather service of the current financial and emotional state of the species. The storm has been brewing for centuries, and only the action of prudent governing and managers has prevented it from reaching fever pitch so far.

I feel conflicted. There is a part of me, the compassionate part, which wants to see us pulled back from the brink. I know that going over that brink will mean more death and suffering. Then there is the pragmatic approach; maybe it needs to get worse before it can get better. I care little who dies, I’ve been dead for years and my body hasn’t caught on to such facts. Yet some people seem very attached to the whole living thing. They would be wise to pay attention to canaries such as myself. Yet, for all the admirable qualities our species might display, we have never been considered that wise.

To me, a semi suicidal middle aged man, the oncoming storm looks like freedom. It might just kill me, and that would be darn useful. I have no use for my fellow man, the economy, or nearly anything within my reach on this planet. Yet; people seem to value things. There appear to be people with great purpose and meaning in staying on this planet. I don’t understand them, but they have as much value as anyone else don’t they?

The struggle between myself and my employer is actually a negotiation of price. I hold that I deserve respect and to be considered competent when I am successful in my work. As such I think my value is greater than the $20k or so that they have invested in me. The requirements to achieve such ends however require that they become a more humane place to work, and thus may well exceed their investment, and even my relative value. Tis sad that correcting corruption is such an inconvenient circumstance that people lose value at the face of it, but such is the world that I live in.

A canary I am; nearly worthless, and my only worth that I feel I can offer is that when I die, it will be either followed by an adjustment towards greater health, or the death of those who forced me into such an uncomfortable situation as this.

I might have killed something today and it might be my career. The thing is; if I did it really needed to die.

I’m getting blamed for other people’s screw ups, and I reached my limit. I reported it all the way up the command chain, and told HR; “I don’t want to quit, but I cannot work under these conditions.”

It all comes down to Outlook calendar. Our division manager uses outlook schedules, and wants us to as well. What that really means is that she will verbally abuse us if we don’t. Yesterday she accused us of fraud for not keeping accurate outlook schedules. Then today I’m getting blamed for something way above my pay grade. I’m fine solving upper level problems, but you better give me the backing to solve them. As such, I turned her and her whole crooked scheme in. I may or may not have a job after this, but then again it might be her as well, or her alone.

Suddenly there was no need to hold back, to say the right things, to try and preserve anything because it was already over the edge; she communicated quite clearly that I could not have an independent thought or action under her rule. Hence, either I topple her or find someone else to supervise me. It feels quite similar to when I walked out of my first marriage. On one hand it hurts because I’m killing something I love. On the other hand, I’ve been trying so hard to try a peaceful resolution, it feels GOOD to hurt someone. How sick is that? I’ve run out of care, out of passion and out of empathy. I tried my best, today I found out my boss had been bragging about my work to people above her. Huh, that’s not how she treated me.

Eventually what happened was I started asking myself if I deserved to be constantly insulted by my supervisor… and I decided that I don’t. Take whatever you want, I don’t care anymore, not enough to put up with this. So, complaints made to appropriate entities and it is unclear what will happen from there. The point is; either we move forward or we decay, and I’m done decaying.

I’m getting closer, I can feel it. Eventually all my proverbial parachutes are deployed, all my favors cashed and all legitimate debts paid. I want to quit; the whole dang thing. I don’t want a boss, or a mortgage, or crushing debt that I might pay off if I am very hard working and lucky. This life I’m living, is a waste of good time.

I want to move to the country and teach. I think I’d teach high schoolers rhetoric or something like that.  I wouldn’t ask for much money, enough for me to eat is plenty. I’d go in three days a week and teach, maybe make $200…. I hate money, and everything it does to people. I’ve kept my nose clean my whole life. Never been arrested, most I’ve ever gotten was a ticket. I have worked hard for fourteen years, and I still have just as much debt as when I started, if not more.

So, I’m probably going to walk out. The only reason anyone is as nice as I’ve been is under the theory that people would appreciate it enough to keep me healthy and functional.  Not a thing. There is no reward. I talked to my parents about it; no employer will ever appreciate devotion or passion. That’s the game, everyone else is bought up, think it’s worth being treated like shit because INSURANCE?! What a backwards country, where if you don’t have a decent employer you can’t stay insured. There’s no such thing in this country as a decent human being in management. By the time you get up to management you’ve signed off on so much criminal activity and suffering, you’re an accomplice.

So screw it, screw the whole silly system. If those that do what they are supposed to are punished, there’s no point at all in doing anything for anyone outside of family. I’ll still be nice, and take care of people because that is what I enjoy. What I want cut out is the BS employers. I’m ashamed to be an American, where “at-will employment” is a politically correct way of saying “Something between slavery and indentured servitude, where the employer absolutely does not care if you are still alive.”

Interesting to me how anticipation and fear are essentially the same emotion; terror. Notably artist Andy Warhol of Campbell’s  Tomato Soup painting fame was considered a “holy terror” by his contemporaries. He outraged, everybody was on pins and needles to see what he might do next.

I digress because even writing about this hurts. For two weeks I have known about what is coming in the morning, a scant eleven hours from when I write this; someone important is coming into town; my four up boss. Explaining – I have a supervisor, who gets the final word about what I do. Her supervisor directs the entire county we work in. The person her supervisor is supervised by is the one I meet tomorrow. The meeting is about the county director. Okay, not officially, but the rumor mill indicates so, however reliable that might be.

Let me clarify; up to now my largest problem has been our county director. She changes signals with the wind, and even when she intends to be kind comes off abrasive. I have been certain for the last four months (which is my entire tenure in this department) that if I lost my job, it would be due to this person and not due to my actual competence. Half of the team that was there when I was hired are gone now, and every one of them has implicated the county director in their departure.

Just so you understand my position in the totem pole; There is no one lower status in our organization. They can fire me because they dislike me for another eight months. Further, multiple superiors have indicated to me that I may have some sort of advancement potential, which I put on the line tomorrow when I speak my mind to the big boss.

On the other hand, I came this close to killing myself this prior wednesday. I’m not telling anyone I work with about it, but it was because I felt humiliated, frustrated, impotent in my career. In the end I decided that if this meeting does not go well, I’ll be transferring elsewhere at my earliest oppertunity. Hence, my desire to protect my career, yet somehow in this mess I have to find comfort, calm. I don’t know where it is. The only comfort I have is that tomorrow will end as well, and in 24 hours this will be behind me.

I passed the tests my employer set, thus I get to continue doing the job I was hired for…. I’m empty.. had a long talk with the suicide lifeline people, and it fundamentally comes down to believing this or not;

people have innate value.
I think that’s the big joke, that we even pretend that’s true. In my state this month alone hundreds of preventable deaths, my governor says thoughts and prayers. So why are they asking me to stick around on this planet? I’d just be one more of thousands who covid finished off.

I had to drive an hour out, and an hour back to do a small task at work. The work bit isn’t important. It was raining, gray, and desolate. As I drove I kept having the same thought come to the front of my mind; “That’s a pretty big/sturdy tree, I bet it could hold my weight.” Like, you get where that’s going. I came this close to going to the store and buying some rope to practice my knots.

And the lady on the line, sweet lady, probably deserves better than to hear me hem and haw about wanting to die; “You love other people, therefor they have value”…. which makes no sense to me. I love other people because they are there. I love them so that when they spit in my face they are the assholes. As long as I give others no reason to treat me as poorly as they do, it is a reflection of their lack of character. It’s not like they have value, or I do, or any person does. It isn’t like we’re businesses, or job creating billionaires, right? You know the top 5% in our country doubled their wealth in the last year. You get that the trillions of stimulus was stolen by some rich jerks, that’s understood I hope.

So go ahead, tell me how people have value. I’d love for that to be true. It’s a glorious fantasy. It remains just that, a feeble fantasy for those too weak to accept that they are but dust in the wind, meaningless before, meaningless now, and meaningless evermore.

I wish I knew how to ever be proud of anything I’ve done. I woke up this morning thinking about every place I’ve missed the mark on my goals;

the kind of family I wanted to have

the person I wanted to marry

the degrees I wanted to get

the place I wanted to live

Now here’s the weird thing; I have other things to fill those slots. On paper, it should be lovely. Yet, my heart aches in the suspicion that I will never see satisfaction in this life.

It isn’t so much that not existing would be better, given that I wouldn’t experience it. The thing I wish I knew how to do was offline my personality, memories and hungers for long enough to hunt down the flaws. I’m constantly surrounded by people who tell me I make a difference, what do they see? Not what I see, a middle aged guy who talked a big game, but in reality was far less than anyone ever believed.

I’m so angry and frustrated either that this is the best I can do, or that my faking it and halfway doing is considered amazing by others. No one ever asks for more, and I’ve been looking for just such a person. I get praised for being sympathetic to people who have lost anything, but it seems so simple when for my entire life what I desire has been held out of reach. Sometimes I just want to shoot up some illicit substance…. it seems to do something for some people that I have been searching my whole life for such gratification.

quel dommage means; “what a pity” usually in a snarky way, it seems like I enjoy a fair amount of sayings in French, but don’t have the ambition to learn most of it.

I’m the source of the majority of my own misery, and I know it, and have known it for most of my life. Knowing the location of the problem doesn’t do a thing if there are no available remedies, or if the cure is worse.

I keep getting presented with this sham cure for my dissatisfaction; to become satisfied with things as they are now. Is that really how a match is won? To quit? I couldn’t live with myself under such circumstances.

Yet, I sold out, I shook hands with demonic forces and was given sanctuary away from the pressures and demands of “reality.” It’s that cognitive dissonance that causes agony; I’m a paid up rebel, a rebel without the convictions to keep at it full time. I feel hollow, a shell that satisfies the demands the world has. Inside, agony, turmoil, and an insatiable hunger for something more. Outside; your friendly neighborhood high functioning junky. I’ve had dark circles under my eyes for so long that there is nothing I can do about it outside of surgery. I wish that someone had told me that where I was going was a path to this face, because I thought you had to do meth and be homeless for a bit to look as used up as I do.

Sometimes I feel as if I am falling, that unsettling feeling of your stomach dropping out, and uncontrollable plummeting ever downwards. Yet, I never hit anything. Like time is a dimension in which I am always descending, deeper, until the pressure way down there so deep gets to me to the point my heart or kidneys stop.