november 27 etc
No one cares about anything anymore and it's breaking me.
For the longest time I thought it was me. I thought I had outlandish expectations of the world and the people in it. I backed off, got blasé, went limp. I stopped being myself completely if you want to know the truth. I invented four different versions of myself in the 1990s and grew those versions like I was raising Sims and I would slip into and out of them as needed to follow what was supposedly the good and smart path. Yeah, sure, it made me feel small and subservient, but at least I wasn't an easy target. I was so small you couldn't even see me, a speck on a speck —— but I was safe. I devoted my life to making other people feel more comfortable and they repaid me by occasionally remembering my name.
That held for a while, but then I got older and those folks told me I was taking life too seriously, that I needed to get blasé, go limp, not care so much. They told me I was worrying about things that normal people didn't and caring about things in a way that men just don't and I felt like an alien. Yes, I worried about those things and cared about those other things, but that's not the point. The point is that I don't know how to function when people don't care, if nothing matters, if being detached and distant and checked-out is the way. That seems so fucking boring and loser-coded to me. An existence where nothing is important and no one cares and the entire internet is bots and people are replacing the most human parts of themselves with algorithms and LLMs.
I get that caring takes time and effort and is so rarely rewarded in the ways people want to be rewarded, and I get that everyone over 30 is exhausted, but, like, not caring breaks you. It doesn't happen all at once. It's just little bit every other day. Then it's every day. Then it's twice a day. It chips away at you until you are dust. Until you are a husk. Until the organs in your torso are scooped out and your insides are buffed to a shine. Congratulations, you are now a kayak.
Ever since I snapped out of a two-decade hangover five and a half years ago I have come to understand that I am only content when I am fully myself. I am only alive when I am fully myself. And being fully myself means being upfront about struggling with a lot of things in the mental health and neuroatypicality realm(s), being obsessed with tiny things that other people think are stupid, getting too upset about people breaking the rules in a dynasty basketball league (it fucks up the ecosystem and is incredibly selfish!), and leaving a work call by saying "I'm about to have a panic attack and I don't want to be on a Teams call when I do."
If you are a young person reading this, do not believe the hype. Don't retreat inward. Retreat outwards. You don't need distance or a poncho to protect you from getting watermelon all over you. You need to press your face up against it. Swipe your nose like a credit card.
Fight the good fight. Give a fuck. Do your best. Not just some of the time, either. All of the time. Every day. Day in and day out.
Yeah it's exhausting. But doing your flat-out most, really working on your craft, really caring about your hobby, really devoting yourself to your people —— this is how you survive the suck.
This is how I will get by. Breaking is how I will stay unbroken. I will Kintsugi myself as often as I have to. I will do something good with this anger, this sadness. Tomorrow I will try again. My veins are made of gold.
🫤 xxxxx
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Be good to yourself.
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