Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Back in Black Bloc

[Content warning: Future tripping, extreme pessimism]

Well that was a summer.

Having anxiety feels a lot like you're spending your entire life bracing yourself. For what? Who knows. But this year I have a better idea, and my tension headaches have been worse. It's like I'm just constantly in a state of waiting for the moment that the world ends. I know it will probably involve fascism, the collapse of capitalism, climate change, and a fuckload of police brutality, but that's all I know.

Again, more than usual, but it's not much.

And at the same time, I have no vision of the future beyond November 3, 2020. I cope with my anxiety in part through methodical planning. Not that I've ever had an exact vision of my future because I've learned time and time again that shit goes awry, but a general road that I figure I will follow for a while. That road now stops at November 3 and gets shorter by the day.

My plan until then? Get ready. I literally just want to try and get into some level of mental and physical "shape" before that day. Part of that, I've decided, needs to be keeping a journal of some kind, so this is what this blog will be now. I don't need to report on any news in my spare time, that's what I do for work.

So for the second half of August I took a vacation from work and I tried to take a vacation from reality as much as I could. I was high for a lot of the day every day for nearly two weeks before I just needed to stop and be sober for a while. I definitely think I have a problem with weed at this point but fuck I mean who in the hell is getting by these days without some kind of crutch? I'm just going to do my best to keep it to confined to weekends (counting Friday nights because I said so) and keep plugging away at this health thing.

It was hard but inevitable to come to the decision to take care of myself rather than continue to constantly feel guilty about not helping more with the local uprisings. I want to be one of those people who is able to go and march every day or nearly every day or even once a week, but I'm just not there. Guilt around that gets all mixed up with general white guilt, knowing that many Black people don't have the luxury of feeling like they can take a vacation from this shit, or feeling like they can stay home and take care of themselves, or afford vacations or even weed. 

But at some point I've got to face facts. The guilt is not motivating me to do more, it's only adding to my piles of shame and stress, making me less able to help. I need to get a handle on this anxiety and my habit of avoiding anything that might make me anxious. Because that's a lot of stuff. Even thinking about trying to figure out how I might be most effective to the cause makes me anxious. Everything makes me anxious.

I've also got to break this awful habit I have of suppressing my emotions. It sounds weird but I do it automatically, without thinking about it, and even actively against my own wishes. It'll happen and I can feel it happening. I can feel whatever emotion I'm experiencing shrink and get shoved down and a lot of time there's a physical sensation in my stomach, a feeling of tightness or even pain, like my stomach is literally knotting up.

Sometimes I feel like I've largely lost the ability to feel anything. Sometimes I'll be smiling and laughing even and I'll think "but I don't feel anything, do I? Is this feeling? Didn't I used to feel so much more?"

Weed is weird because it often makes me feel better, and often seems to allow me to feel more. But the more I take, the more it feels like it's another way to avoid. On the one hand, it seems to create an ability to think on a deeper level than usual, to make all kinds of connections and even determine the nature of the universe and purpose of existence. I've actually got a running theory, all thanks to weed. But at the same time it makes it harder to focus? And I'm pretty sure it messes with my sleep.

So those two weeks were what might have been my last hurrah into just total avoidance of all the problems, pretending things were fine, and doing and eating some things for perhaps the last time. I really don't know anymore. Things could go really, really bad and we might lose electricity and maybe I'll never get to play a video game ever again? 

It seems possible. Don't listen to me on this because I got 2016 wrong but I have this unnerving certainty that Trump is going to win reelection. When that happens, I figure either riots engulf the entire nation or they fizzle out like they always do and things just get worse and worse under the next four years until either shit collapses or we reach 2024 and Trump declines to leave office, leaving us with the choice to either burn shit to the ground or sink quietly into full, open fascism while more and more people disappear.

This is why I can't much stand liberals right now. Liberals promise nothing much better than more of the same, and when you know the same is not sustainable, then all they're doing is promising you gold while handing you a big bowl of shit. No one likes that guy.

This is why I have no faith in the system anymore. I grew up being promised a bright future only to watch that transform into despair and visions of fire. Things have only gotten worse since I was born and the only path I see toward something better is dark and violent and uncertain. I'm scared and I don't know what to do. I feel like we're on a track and we can't get off. Too many people will continue to be afraid to fight. Liberal promises that have never manifested will continue to prove themselves lies.

Is there anyone out there who's not mentally ill anymore? What's that like?

All I have to hang onto anymore is what I will do for the next two months. I will do my best to get as healthy as possible for the day when I am really needed. I know fixing myself is the only logical thing to do, because I can't help others well while I'm so broken. Maybe I shouldn't be putting it in those terms but that's how I feel.

I feel so much. Actually, I feel like the accumulation of all the shit I've tried not to feel over the years will take as many years to dig through, and if I let it all out at once somehow the sheer force of it would cause me to literally disintegrate, maybe even take out part of this apartment building. At the very least the screaming would upset my neighbors.

Not to be dramatic or anything.

Anyway, I might post daily, I might post periodically, and I will at least sometimes post gifs again because that weird thing with the WEBP files seems to have disappeared as mysteriously as it came. I like gifs.

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