I am not doing well. Three weeks ago, I was ready to take on the world, everything seemed like it was going to be much better. I was on new meds, I had energy for days, I was making strides towards… somewhere. I wasn’t sure where but I was at least moving. And in the last few days everything seems to have fallen apart.
I am irritable. My sleep is constantly interrupted and I’m finding it harder and harder to keep my head above water. The very weather is oppressive, so hot in the shade that I’m constantly feeling the drips of sweat tickling my back. Hanging up the laundry ends up with me nursing a heat headache. I can’t find anything that keeps my attention, the thought of eating is making me nauseous. It’s painful watching the clock tick by and knowing I’m WASTING MY TIME even though I cannot summon the power to do anything about it.
Today I took my dogs for a walk with my mother-in-law and got into an altercation with a stupid, entitled white woman at the park. Her dog was off leash. We asked her to please leash her dog, for her dog’s safety and for ours. The park sign 5 meters away clearly states that dogs should be leashed.
Does this piece of shit not say that she’s been a “dog behaviorist for 20 years” and that we are in the wrong by stressing out our dogs by leashing them!
That was it. Weeks of just bile came tumbling out. I got into her face and told her to read the fucking sign. “I’m a state prosecutor and I know the sign isn’t for people who live in the area!” Excuse me?! I said how can she be so educated and not able to read a fucking pictogram on a sign. There is a fucking law quoted on the fucking sign. But no, apparently this doesn’t apply to this fucking shit-stain of a human.
We swore at each other. She was just so fucking arrogant, so entitled, I knew words wouldn’t breach her privilege and that this is a person who has never needed to face a consequence in their lives. A voice in my head screamed the only way this harpy will ever learn is if you put her on the ground right now, you have a weight and height advantage, you could make this bitch think twice before acting like she was untouchable. But then I would be in trouble. I would be the monster. Nothing I said from that point would matter. So I left. And as I left she called me a homophobic slur. That was it. Now I should just go back and fucking murder that human shit-stain and consequences be damned. One less piece of trash in the world.
But I didn’t. I’m not a monster. I can’t leave my partner alone because I’m in jail. I just did what I always do and gritted my teeth, moved on.
It ruined our walk. My mother-in-law said she had never seen me so angry before. I think she’s afraid of me now.
I’m not made for this world. Exercise doesn’t give me any dopamine and I get injured easily due to my crappy joints, so I’ve always struggled with my weight. I don’t enjoy running around in the heat, I don’t like sports, so I feel flabby and gross all the time because my default state is sitting behind a computer monitor.
I’ve also been diagnosed as ADHD-C and Autism Spectrum Disorder: I get overwhelmed by loud noises, auditory processing is a nightmare, as soon as I think I know the rules of a social situation I put my foot in my mouth because I said something too harsh or negative that spoils the mood. I can’t keep a job because I can’t keep anyone happy. I’m inconsistent and flighty and confrontational and I can’t abide idle conversations. Doing the same task over and over again is so physically and mentally painful I have meltdowns.
Living around other people is a nightmare. Their incessantly barking dogs they seem immune to, or their obnoxious motorbikes that they rev without end at 6am, cars cruising by playing music so loud our window frames rattle. Beggars that rile up our dogs to get our attention so that they can ask us for money in our own goddamn home.
I have practically shunned social media because everything is either explicitly bait to make me angry so that they can farm my engagement or a fucking advertisement of some sort. I can’t watch anything anymore without product placement being forced in my face, or having someone beg me to join their Patreon or by their merch. I’m left feeling used whenever I decide to try anything new, as it inevitably turns to someone clawing at my wallet one way or another.
And don’t get me started on the anhedonia. I get so fucking bored I want to cry, I have these spells where I carefully go through my 800+ games on Steam and I can’t find a single thing that gives me any pleasure. Where I once read about 3 books a week, now I get so frustrated by the second chapter that I just throw the book across the room. And when I get like this, I have a song looping in my head:
This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
I Can’t Feel At Home Any More (author unknown, but popularised by Jim Reeves)
I’ve tried drinking myself into oblivion, I’ve tried drugs, I’ve tried psychiatric help and religion. I don’t know what to do in order to survive in this world that is too bright, too loud, too confusing. Rules apply sometimes and then they don’t. Some people get all the suffering while others blissfully float through life with every comfort and pleasure they can think of. And all the while everyone insists that you just need to work hard and stay positive, you too can be one of the Chosen Few who get to go months without thinking about money.
And a thousand years ago, I would just fucking leave. Go into the woods, stake a claim, build me a cabin and never talk to anyone ever again. But I can’t fucking do that because THERE’S NOWHERE LEFT. Everything is owned! There are no more frontiers, no New Worlds, nowhere I can assert myself to be who I want to be. There’s no escape.
How can I live in this world where rules just don’t fucking matter unless I’m the one breaking them?! How can I do everything in my fucking power to be a good person and I suffer because other people weren’t brainwashed, beaten and abused as a child into being terrified of breaking even the smallest of rules.
If my wife eats a grape in the grocery store I tense up, expecting a swift knock to the head, the gestapo to arrest us, God himself to smite her down.
But everyone else just goes through life littering, skipping queues, not cleaning up after their dogs, just going on like nothing applies to them. The rich can’t get arrested because every sin is covered up with lawyers and shell companies. As soon as an individual comes up with a product or novelty that shows any sign of being profitable, big companies just swoop in and steal the design with no consequences, knowing you can’t afford the time off or the legal fees to bring them to justice.
There’s just no getting out of this hole.
I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.