dont sell yourself

For way too long now I've been doing basically everything solely for other folks.

I saw the world imploding, and thought, "it's going to take a lot of work and care to make myself feel better about this.  It's easier to help other people, I should do that instead."  I naïvely thought, "the world sucks so bad these days and it's all getting so much worse, if this world's really gonna rage through everything and burn it all down, it'll have to burn through miles of ocean before it can come through those I'm trying to protect.  I'm strong enough for this...  I have to be, for their sake."

But what I didn't realize was that the world can effortlessly vaporize one person in the time it takes to burn a few hundred meters of ocean, nonetheless the whole world.

Part of constantly appealing to other folks before myself meant that I've always been unable to tell the difference between friends and loved ones.  The line between whatever those things are is so blurry for me it might as well be the same grey smudge.  I should reïterate: it's not that I don't love people, it's that I love nearly everyone, but forget to include myself in that.

But because I only ever do things for others, I don't spend time responsibly considering the relationships I'm in.  I bring folks together in the hope that we'll feel something, anything.  I convince myself it's what I want because the end result of having "a good thing" with other people is what will justify it all.  It's like the sunk-cost fallacy.  It all feels muddy, groggy, everything blurs together.

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Combining three parts:

• "forcing myself and others into relationships without critical thinking",
• "never include myself assert myself in any of it, play solely to what I imagine others would want",
• "never do my part in communicating with them, out of fear I'd be selfish or that somehow I'd hurt them by rejection"...

and you get a nasty cocktail that rots you, rots you, rots you.  When you're hung over the arms of a friend, puking this cocktail out of your guts and onto their shoes, it burns them too.  Fights break out between you and those you know, fisticuffs spiraling into paranoia once the party's over and you go home, and don't want to leave it ever again.  "Fuck them all, none of them understand anyways.  I spent so many years on all this for it to all be bullshit?  What the hell matters at all, then?  Why am I here?  Maybe if I still cling on to this hope that everyone else is good and I'm bad, I can redeem myself by doing them one last favor and ending it here."  And I hang on, and hang on, nauseated and hoping.  Nervous, sad, poor...

I don't know all the different pieces in this puzzle.  What I do know is that the relationships (friendly or otherwise) that I've developed over the years have been increasingly more and more on-line, to an exclusive extent.  It stunted me.  I don't go outside, I don't work, I don't do anything I should be doing in order to get on my own feet more.  I'm scared to do it all.  I know it's the same experience everyone else goes through.

It's an increasingly volatile position to be in, since the means of communicating on-line effectively with other folks are decreasing.  Collapsing into authoritarian capitalists' control.  When I fell off the wagon for this last time, I tried to come back and rekindle the different relationships I've had and I realized that every single one of them relied on communication through some proprietary means.  I dealt with it all for a bit, but it took all of my limited energy to "put it aside", instead of just talking with folks.  Time I could spend simply existing, time I could be doing things to support myself and grow.

Existing, by itself, should not feel like a job.  It should just "be".  Sure, you won't get paid for all that labor.  At least not immediately.  But you can't let them get that fucking money from you and your work, either.  Don't pay them in exchange for pain.  Don't sell yourself to them.

⸻ ⸙ ⸻

Bleak, uncertain, beautiful...

So I draw the line here, for myself.  I dropped Discord, and I don't want to use it ever again.  Most proprietary services I will be extremely avoidant of from now on, actually.  When's the last time you picked up the hammer and shattered the bricks?  Hope is a hammer, after all.

I should be getting a job soon, hoping to move out to a certain place on the coast when I can.  There are good people there.  Consider this a eulogy to a bitter chapter, not of the whole story.  The winter approaches, and yet I feel it's all beginning to thaw.  I don't know if I'll use this thing regularly, but then again that's kind of missing the original point, isn't it?  I write when and where I want to.

If you've made it this far, something tells me you either have a lot of patience, or relate.  If you're in the latter — you genuinely have to reconsider all these connections you have.  Are they through viable, sustainable means?  Is the connection you have with yourself volatile?  The revolution starts in your heart.  I believe in you.