This is the opposite of hope. This is despair.
Honestly, I don't think I can survive another Great Depression.
These are the years of tears and salt.
I wanted a family. A wife. Kids. A home to call my own. I see that dream vanishing.
The other day I helped a homeless woman because I saw myself in her eyes. I saw the fear, the shame, the desperation. I saw a child who never thought it would come to this. I, too, never thought it would come to this.
Where are the jobs? The good paying jobs, with benefits and a chance to retire someday? I see that dream disappearing for millions of people like me, and instead we are being sold a future of living as the working poor at best, or in abject poverty and scorn. There are no bootstraps. The bank repossessed them.
I fuck up opportunities. I don't know if I am sabotaging myself or if I am just like everyone else, and that we are all struggling alone, but I suspect it is a little bit of both. I see the suffering, but I don't see when it ends, when it gets better. If anything, it looks like things are getting worse.
More below the fold
If it was not for writing I would have been lost these last few months. If not for the kindness I have found here I do not know what would have become of me, but as I type in the small room I have here in a big city of cold strangers I realize that should things get worse, as it appears they shall, I have no idea how I am going to make it. I don't know how I am going to make it now!
A world where you will have to work until you die. Work, if you can find it, until you die.
So I write, because it is the only thing that keeps me going. Sharing these thoughts makes me feel less alone and more human. If not for the screennames I have come to know and love over these last few years I might have gone mad. Perhaps I have gone mad. I no longer can differentiate between sanity and madness. If it is sane that hundreds of millions must "share the sacrifice" so that a few greedy rich men may reap the rewards than I am better off crazy.
None of our "leaders" have indicated that they are going to make things better for those of us like myself who are on the ropes, all I hear is "sacrifice". I don't know what that means anymore. I have nothing left to sacrifice. I have nothing left to steal. If by sacrifice they mean taking away our retirements, taking away the last good paying jobs and replacing them with minimum wage jobs with no social safety net, if by sacrifice they mean endless war profiteering and ever growing prison populations while the wealthy criminals who lies us into war and rob us of our homes get off scot-free, if that is the idea of "sacrifice" that we are being sold, that I must starve so that our job creator pigs can feast and the scraps will trickle down, then I say NO to your sacrifice. Throw a banker in a volcano if that is what it takes to please the market gods, but I will not be your human sacrifice.
I see a world where people are barely hanging on and things are certain to get worse. When will the jobs come back? Two years? Five years? Ten years? What do we do until then? Hope? You can not eat hope. Hope will not keep you dry in the storm.
I think I need to take a break from politics. I have been writing more fiction lately. Reality has become so absurd and bleak I find myself withdrawing into myself. I don't know if that is unhealthy or just a defense mechanism that helps me cope with a reality that is cruel and dark. Perhaps writing fiction is just an escape that allows me to pursue my dreams in a sub-reality that is less dismal than this, but when you wake up to a home you don't know how you are going to pay for, with an empty refrigerator and an electric bill you can't afford, I suppose it should come as no comfort that at least you aren't poor, I mean hey, you have an empty refrigerator, right?
So I write to survive. Survival should not be the goal, there should be something more. I hope one day to fall in love, to be a better man than my father was. I don't know if my father would look at me in pride or shame. I swore that I would never follow his path into despair, but I would be a fool if I did not realize that things are really bad now and they appear to only be getting worse, and as I am hardly hanging on for dear life now I don't know what will happen to me if the last few strings on the safety net are cut away from under me, because I am free falling into an abyss right now.
Last month I bought medicine for my ear infection, and it has healed. I paid my rent, I bought some food, and now the food is gone and the rent is due again. I don't know how I can carry on like this. I know that I can't make it alone. Is it that I am just incapable of caring for myself? Is it that the chips are so stacked against me, against people like me, that I had no chance in the first place? I do not know. All I do know is that something has to change, something has to give, because all that I see in the future is suffering and sacrifice. A positive vision of the future is what I need, what we need as a people, but I don't see it coming from anywhere.
It is raining here in New York City. I have a roof over my head for now. How long will that last? And if we are all doomed to live thorough another Great Depression what will we do then? I don't know.
So I write, because without writing I would shrivel up and disappear. Some have offered to help me edit my book. I am ready to accept that help, or any other help that may be offered. I do not do so with pride, though I take pride in the good people and good friends I have come to know through this, our little orange oasis amidst the desert of the real. A week ago I took pity on a poor hungry woman. Now I know how it feels.
What happens when the next crash comes, as seems likely. What happens when the Too Big To Fail banks inevitably fail again, crushed under the weight of their fraud and hubris? Shall we sacrifice the future of millions? I do not know, and I honestly don't know how I am going to make it, or how we are going to survive. All I know is that we need each other, now more than ever. We can not make it alone, and I, again, do not know where else to turn.
Forgive me for my weakness. I hope this rant helps someone else who may not know what this bleak future holds. Know this, you are not alone.
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Forgive me, father, for I know not what I do.
My apologies if I am not quick to respond to comments. I need to take a walk and clear my head out, venting like this is emotionally exhausting, but I hope it does me some good, and if it helps others, even better.
Peace and love to all, and more for those who need it the most.
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