How do you come back from the void when you're so burnt out inside, so jaded and empty, that you can't appreciate anything anymore?
The kind like when you take a hike out into the woods, and you stand at the edge of a stream, and you watch the water flow between rocks and splash in pools, and you find yourself consumed with thoughts of
"I hate this. I hate everything about this. I hate being here, I hate this air, I hate this ground, I hate this place, I hate being alive, I don't want to keep doing this, and even worse: I know that thinking these thoughts makes me a reprehensibly selfish person, that I should feel LUCKY to have the privilege of standing here in this forest when so many others had that that privilege taken away from them through the violence of others, yet the more I think about and confront that thought, it only fuels my hatred of this place and this air and this water and my very being, it stokes a white-hot fire of anger at the injustice of our reality, and that anger makes me want to choke and vomit and aspirate and cease to be".
Because that's basically what echoes in my head when I try to take a walk, or touch some grass, or breathe in deeply, or rest or take any other action that might make the permanent shaking in my hands subside or might calm the never-ending grinding of my cracked and brittle teeth.
When I try to sit still, I twitch all over, not like a restless leg or an alcoholic tremor (Have those too - This is different) but like a systemic instability, a body at war with itself. When I try to think, it is like angry crackling static and arcing electricity, swirling in a dark indiscernible blur. I cannot hold a thought for more than two or three seconds, often not long enough to grab a pen and write it down, sometimes not long enough to think the thought itself. And I feel as though I am deteriorating daily.
Current events... are not helping. Understatement. Leaving at that.
Being around people makes it worse. Trying to distract with something I enjoy is making it worse. Trying to distract with productivity is making it worse. Trying to stay informed is making it worse. Everything is making it worse. ... That, or perhaps: the world situation is making it worse more rapidly than any self-care or distraction or other countermeasures I can control are able to diffuse it. Regardless: It keeps getting worse.
I don't want to lie - inside my gut, what I hear and feel is: This is just the beginning, it will get so, so, so, so, so much worse than this, and it will never get better in my lifetime. I want to bury it and pretend I don't feel it, but I will be frank: My gut has been batting REALLY well so far on predicting how all this shit has gone down, some of my timing has been a little off but broadly the sequencing and events have been right. (Example: I thought more stuff would pop off July 4th 2025, but I think the Musk Debacle sidelined their momentum and shifted their opportunity window down the road.)
I don't have an optimistic "But wait" to follow that up with. That's what I'm ending on. My gut says "We are so, so fucked, chat." and according to the orange one's angry decree, we have less than 10 hours until we find out how fucked 'fucked' is.
By the way, did anyone see that France just repatriated a WHOLE LOT of gold? (And took a windfall in doing so?) That's what you call "a warning sign".
