Talking to myself and feeling old

Sometimes I’d like to quit. Nothing ever seems to fit.

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Woke up today feeling dispirited. In 2025, we know things about humans, people, our families, our countrymen, that we didn’t truly know before the past 5-10 years. Some of you reading will say, “I knew those things,” and if you did, OK. I’m one of the people who learned them more recently.

Human beings can be convinced to believe in, and act upon, absolutely anything. There are no limits. There isn’t a bottom. There is nothing so obviously evil that it cannot be repackaged and made into something that “good” people will support or enforce.

Millions of people were easily convinced that there is no such thing as biological sex, and that it’s normal and natural to be “born in the wrong body” and to “need” mutilating surgery. They were easily convinced that this applied to children. Many of these people wept tears of happiness watching children’s bodies be mutilated in the name of “care.”

Millions of allegedly freedom-loving Americans were instantly convinced to give up their constitutional rights to assembly, travel, commerce, and bodily integrity, in front of a goddamned cold virus. Our own families and friends ratted us out to Covid snitch lines. Our own families publicly excommunicated us as “public health threats.”

I don’t know how to convey to others how deep the horror of this goes for me. It’s destabilizing; it makes me feel like the world isn’t real, or like gravity suddenly stopped working.

I thought I’d get a better grip on this considering what I’ve been through. After all, I think to myself, I had to accept what was for me the worst truth of all, the one I thought would completely break me. I had to accept that my own mother is a wicked woman who did not love her children, and who hurt them on purpose, and who took enjoyment from hurting them. That’s real, as awful as it is. But I did finally accept it, and that knowledge, awful as it is, helped me to see the rest of the world more clearly. While not “enjoying” this, I’m nevertheless grateful for the experience.

But there’s no solace to be had in the greater world of other humans outside the family, either. It’s not as if I escaped my poisonous, abusive family to some other, different place. I now know that “good” people can be made to believe and to agitate for the most wicked, insane, cruel, and immoral laws and behaviors.

To anyone older or more experienced, this may sound like a naive complaint, and maybe it is. Maybe in 10 years I’ll be able to accept this about humans the way I accepted the truth about my family. But right now, it still feels like staring over the edge of a chasm with no guardrail.

What I’ve got they used to call the blues. Nothing is really wrong; feeling like I don’t belong.

It’s not a rainy day, and it isn’t Monday, but it feels that way.

Tomorrow will feel different.