Hardening
TRIGGER WARNING: depression, frustration, hopelessness
This text talks from the perspective of a dark place - feelings of frustration, hopelessness and a sense of being trapped.
The link in the text goes to a quote that can be felt as life-negating.
If you’re in a bad place right now, maybe skip this post.
a feeling of i’m running around like a madman. mad as in angry, stressed, peeved, annoyed. am i running from something? i woke up at 3am with indigestion, i think. it made me feel hot and queasy - and not in a good way.. dark shit churning in my stomach. a hole with no hope, no visions. i am disturbed realizing that i’ve trapped myself.
a sense of i will get a job. i really WANT to get a job. well, i WILL want to job. i MUST get a job. there is no other way. I don’t want to stay poor and i’m not gonna start stealing cars at 34.
trappedtrappedtrappedtrappedtrhahahaahahahahahahaaappedtrappedtrappedtrappedtrappedtrapped
part of me wants to go out on foot and walk Jacob’s path to Santiago de Compostela. leave my phone and give a giant fuck you to the world. i’m just gonna be walking by myself for a while and you can shove your expectations up your ass. in my life plans i’m either a bum or a rich techie, whatever gets me the farthest away from humanity.
the thing is, i don’t even feel a longing for nature. i can’t relax enough, maybe. i just want to get out of this shithole and i need money for that. so i focus my energies: networking, writing applications, getting shit done. another project completed enough to put on my cv. dump some more ‘professional experience’ on everybody. polish thyself, even if you’re german. move things along, reply to emails, scheduled relaxation, no time for fun.
and i feel myself hardening. and after a few weeks of this i even start to think: maybe it’s good for me to harden a little. maybe i was too soft. but then it crosses my mind that maybe this is the dark side. not some clear choice where i say yes, I choose the evil thing! maybe it’s simply me struggling at the edge of frustration telling myself that this is the way, the inevitable. shutting out more and more the love and care that just don’t seem to jibe with this hussle. each day a little more focused, eyes fixed on a far away goal as the horizon grows narrower and narrower. maybe i’ll even get really good at it. always ‘moving forward’. ‘goal oriented’. proud of my dedication.
and as I commit to this struggle, because whatever options and dreams of alternatives there might have been have long since faded away (a powerful illusion), I become entangled… enveloped… and as I look down one day to see my skin as thick and hard as the bark of a tree, I barely give myself enough time to think huh, when did that happen. it didn’t even hurt, before staring into the dimming light again, just disturbed enough to notice the wind touch the treetops on the slope before me.