I have both inadvertantly and - somehow - intentionally isolated myself from pretty much everyone.
Inadvertantly in the sense that I have allowed a lot of relationships to lapse.
Intentionally in that I don't see much good in trying to revive them.
That's not the paradox, though. The paradox is that I desperately crave and need a community of people - right now more than ever.
But I have lost all sense of trust and, therefore, struggle to let anyone - even the people in my own house - too close.
This has widened and deepened a depression that has been growing for about a decade. It started in 2017 when I had my first surgery and everyone seemed to treat it as a burden to them than a worry about me. Work especially seemed pretty upset that the time I needed to heal impacted my ability to travel - a particularly galling response considering all the work and travel is what led to the surgery to begin with.
It worsened when my father fell ill and I dropped everything important in my life to tend to him for seven months since he literally had no one else. I was desperate for a catharsis in our strained relationship. What I got instead was direct and unassailable proof that I was always a bit of a second thought to him. I jeopardized everything in my life that mattered to me in the hope of capturing at least a semblance of a positive relationship with the man, only to have him completely throw it all in my face. Now, I'm just waiting for word that he has died so that I can do my final duty and bury him.
That is a terrible feeling that I carry it with me every day.
That whole experience also tanked my finances, so I was relieved when I got a job at WeWork for a salary that seemed too good to be true.
Because it was.
The S-1 that completely tanked all hopes of an IPO came three months into the job. I stuck around for three more until they laid me off with a generous severance. I was so burned out by everything by this point - and I had enough severance that I could - so I took a month off to try and reset.
I ended my sabbatical just in time for the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns to hit. I interviewed with Google and Amazon, both of which got to the point where they said they were ready to make the hire, both of which immediately rescinded due to extended pandemic fears.
I took on a couple of jobs during that time, but both failed miserably despite my best efforts - one one case, because of my best efforts. Leadership in both companies was far too arrogant to understand they were sinking and why. One no longer exists, the other is on serious life support.
So I gave up and decided to do the thing I honestly hate the most - independent consulting. I've been doing it since about 2022 and I am absolutely drowning financially. I should declare bankruptcy, but I am too stubborn and afraid of throwing myself at the mercy of people I now regard as monsters.
I am, like so many, just so, so, so burned out.
I was still going to developer-focused tech conferences for a while thanks to a client whose primary purpose was hosting them. But I watched as the conversations shifted from helping developers be their best toward AI to replace everything. It became very disillusioning, so I dropped the client.
The entire tech industry is completely consumed by AI now. Layoffs are constant. The payoff for all this investment is nowhere near in sight, and it looks likely the entire thing will implode any day and take the whole economy with it.
I fucking loathe being associated with it. It's technically still the tech industry I joined more than three decades ago, but I did not realize that then.
I thought tech would change the world for the better - it would connect us in ways that allowed best practices and other good knowledge to spread; it would automate grunt work, allowing us to step back and focus on the tasks we find fulfilling; it would even the playing field for so many people by democratizing content distribution, enabling independent small businesses to thrive, and creating new opportunities to improve every individual's lifestyle.
None of this came to fruition because the people who actually built this stuff let money perverts control the direction of our work.
The widening gap between those who have and those who don't; the distrust brewed during the pandemic and lockdowns; the power grabs of the wealthy and influential in order to protect their fortunes from those who are finally waking up to their levels of perversion; the desperation felt by those who have lost so much in so little time with no control over any of it...
I see all this and the anxiety it induces in every interaction, every news story, every meeting with every person. It's inescapable.
Politics has become unavoidable. I care less about the party you support and more about what your beliefs actually say about you as a person. Those who stand strong with their political leaders both directly and indirectly support every policy they promote - even when they say they don't.
In America, there are only two valid political parties, and I now find both odious, perverse, and corrupt beyond reform.
So do most people, if you listen to them, but they've been too conditioned to support one or the other, or to parrot the same tired bullshit their parents and grandparents said they believed, but never seemed to have the guts to actually fight for. The best we can hope for is to vote for "the lesser of two evils".
But I'm tired of voting for and supporting evil.
Aren't you?
As a student of history, I see in today's problems a perfect echo of every fight that has come before. Terrible people always rise to power because only terrible people are willing to ruthlessly exploit and manipulate people into believing they - or anyone - should be in power. The systems they build are equally terrible, even as they attempt to hide them behind curtains of "patriotism" or "liberalism".
I feel like everyone I speak with inherently understands this, but is afraid of admitting it because doing so would unravel their entire sense of reality.
I faced that fear and allowed my reality to unravel.
And now I feel more alone than ever.
I have tried to share these feelings, thoughts, and ideas with others, but almost all of them dismiss me, misunderstand me, or view me as crazy and ranting, even as they continue to complain about the problems for which I have presented clear and sane solutions.
The stress is all consuming now. It's all I have.
I have ceased to find joy in the things that used to bring me joy. My son remains my sole exception, but it's unfair to both of us for me to cling too hard to him, especially as he is about to step into adulthood and become his own man.
I don't want to impose myself on anyone anymore. I feel like I've become exhausting to too many people, myself included.
It's not like I don't try to push this stuff aside and try to find enjoyment. Occasionally I succeed. But all of that stress and darkness lay right beneath my surface, and all it takes is one small thing to set it off, allowing the darkness to rapidly nucleate, crystalize, and consume me like the saturated salt solution you find in chemical hand warmers.
It seems to be driving the people closest to me to madness, which makes all of this infinitely more difficult. It put my wife in a mental hospital for more than a month and stuck me with the bill.
I don't want to find a support group where others are experiencing the same things - why the fuck would anyone want that? To be around other miserable sons of bitches all sharing their misery?
The experiences my wife has had over the decades with the mental health industry has completely eliminated any trust I may have ever had in them - their insistence on keeping her drugged to the gills is part of what drove her to the mental hospital to begin with. Their treatment of me during that whole time - as well as the last time, when she checked herself into an eating disorder program shortly after our son was born - was about as fucking inhumane and uncaring as you can get.
"Men will do anything other than see a therapist", is the "joke". But I don't understand why - knowing how foul and corrupt the mental health and entire healthcare industries are - anyone would think they have any solutions to anything. I have plenty of first hand experience to demonstrate this now.
I have an overwhelming sense of futility about everything.
Why put the effort into anything when some selfish pervert can completely upend it with a social media post?
Why try to make money to pay off my debts when I'll just keep racking up more?
Why try to make friends when they're just as likely to move away because the cost of living in California keeps going up?
And why should I be forced to leave my home of 20+ years, in the area I've lived in since I was 18 years old, in the state I've lived in since birth, so some rich dickhole from back east or South Africa or wherever can come here and drive up the prices on everything?
Why should I keep voting for people who refuse to take care of the people they claim to represent?
Why should I pay their taxes or follow their laws?
Why should I participate in a "society" most of us recognize as corrupt, broken, exploitative, and murderous, built and ruled over by cheaters, thieves, liars, murderers, rapists and pedophiles?
And how can I comfortably socialize with anyone who would dare support these terrible people in any way - including voting for them, worshiping with them, or working for and with them?
That's why I have isolated myself - I can't trust anyone for too long before their conditioning kicks in and I find they support some of the same terrible ideas that keep us in this perpetual state of stress and misery.
But I desperately need community.
I desperately need to find others who feel as I do and want to figure out real and lasting ways to build peace and stability - people who are willing to cast off their conditioning to get to the heart of the matter and make radical, non-violent moves to improve their lives and those of the people around them.
We can't do any of this through the current conventional means.
Every government, charity, religion, corporation, union, and other modern organization is designed to reinforce and keep supporting a vicious centralized hierarchy that keeps us enmiserated. We are allowed no control over our lives beyond what the people in power permit for us.
We don't own anything - at least 75% of us either carry a mortgage or pay rent for our homes. A consistent home where we feel safe and secure is central to a sense of stability, both for individuals and for the communities to which we belong.
A whopping 3/4 of us don't even have that basic stability.
We don't own our lives - money is the gatekeeper to every single thing, including basic human rights like housing, food, clothing, and companionship.
We're required to sell our lives - a minimum of 40 hours a week on average - to a relative handful of perverts who feel they have the right to control us.
We do all the work - we design, build, deploy, maintain, and service everything in the economy - while they collect the majority of the proceeds. They direct our work to their benefit - not the benefit of us and our communities, but the benefit of their wallets and sense of power.
I don't know a soul that's not been battered. I don't have a friend who feels at ease. I don't know a dream that's not been shattered and driven to its knees. It's bad and it keeps getting worse.
The solution is to stop working for them, to stop allowing their money to control our lives.
We can do this by leaving them and forming cooperatives that are equally owned by the people working for them, with the work and proceeds being as evenly divided as possible among them.
The solution is to take back our lives, stop working for wealthy perverts we'll never meet, ensconced in mansions scattered in places we'll never visit, and start working for one another - for the communities that matter to us.
And when I say this, a lot of folks say, "Yeah! Let's do it!"
And nothing happens. Everyone is waiting for someone else to organize it.
But that won't work. We need to decide as individuals to make this commitment, then get to it. We need to then convince the folks around us to do the same.
But they don't trust any of this because it's so foreign. Our histories tell us unions and politics and centralized organizing are the solutions to the perversions cast on us by state governments, but conveniently leave out the parts where those "solutions" not only allow the problems to persist, but actually validate their existence.
We don't eliminate perverse leaders - we merely establish organizations that resemble theirs but purport to stand in opposition to their perversions.
Until even those organizations eventually become perverse and corrupt themselves. And we're right back where we started.
The centralization of power is the cause of such perversion and corruption - not human nature.
It's an all but impossible feat trying to convince people of that when the media, intelligentsia, religion, etc. depend on those centralized hierarchies persisting and use their noisy influence to normalize their perversions.
I'm tired of ignoring the contradictions and hypocrisy. I'm tired of hearing everyone express misery, then reject all rational solutions to ending it.
My mind is no longer the safe retreat it once was. I can't even meditate anymore.
As a "knowledge worker", it's affecting my ability to do my job. I can barely think or even see straight most days.
There's no escaping any of this, and it has made me desperate and despondent. I have more bad days than good, and it's not even close anymore.
This is usually the part of the piece where I try to turn it around and look for some light to follow.
Honestly... I can't see the light anymore.
I'm only lightly touching on everything here - I can only discuss certain things in so much detail. I do need to consider the thoughts and concerns of others, even if they're not capable of doing the same for me.
This iceberg of misery runs very, very deep.
I don't really feel I have anyone to talk to and open up with about any of this in a way that I think would be helpful. Even the folks who I think are or would be receptive are going through their own shit - and I neither want to add to their burdens, nor invite the comparisons and inevitable competitions ("You think YOU have it bad, listen to this...").
I desperately need a break.
But I can't afford to take one.
I can't disappear to a mental health facility for a month - it would be the final nail in our financial coffin, tanking my family completely.
There's really no point in writing all of this out other than to get it out of my head and maybe let some folks understand what's going on with me.
This reads a lot like... a life ending letter.
All I can say is that, at the moment, it is not.
Thoughts of self harm piss me off. How DARE these perverse motherfuckers make me feel so desperate that it makes me want to take away the last thing - the ONLY thing - of value I have: my own life?
I can only hope I continue to feel that way.
And that maybe, eventually, someone will listen. And maybe we will finally revolt against all of this bullshit in a way that helps as many as possible without letting a few perverts run everything.
I feel we're both very close, but also more far away than ever.
My loneliness paradox is that I desperately do not want to be alone, but I also no longer feel I have anyone I can comfortably trust and be around. Internet strangers can never truly be a community of friends - I need real people around me with whom I can just connect and vibe on things I actually enjoy rather than pretend to care about popular, meaningless shit just so I'm not alone.
I haven't given up quite yet.
But I'm hanging by a thread.