Hello,
Recently, I've started taking pictures of things that make me feel like an outsider to this world. From tube advertisements telling me to START TRADING or INVESTING the money I certainly don't have TODAY, to beautiful houses I can't afford, to all sorts of colourful rubbish littering natural landscapes, to shops proudly selling royal family merchandise; it all feels like bullshit. Who is this city that I'm living in made for?
Is this what crazy feels like? When you are adamant it isn’t you but everyone else around you who has gone insane? The growing sense of alienation can even be found in the mundanity of the every day, in something like the ballooning price of a pack of oats or cycling past a motorcade of SUVs. I don't know if it's because living in the UK is particularly depressing, but with each waking day, I feel like a passenger in a surrealist landscape. What the hell is happening? And how long will we passively accept it?
The world as we know it is collapsing. In my personal life, this is coming up in both small and big ways. The digital media landscape has folded in on itself, meaning that the publications I usually write for no longer exist or are about to go bankrupt. Looking more broadly, AI is coming for many jobs, not just writing ones. Authoritarianism is rising almost everywhere, directly threatening our right to protest and stopping people from seeking refuge from neighbouring countries. Parts of the world are running out of food due to “unseasonal weather” aka. the climate crisis. Oil companies swim in billions as they continue to pollute the planet and climb down on their ambitions of a green transition. On top of it all, the UK is coronating a “landlord king” in 2023! While the leaders of the only viable opposition party (in a FPTP system) continue to offer no hope. If I think about this too much, I start to disassociate, which is a body’s natural response to disorder and disaster. All of this combined makes for a terrible tomorrow.
Last week I wrote about attempts to find connection, but this week, I am thinking about disconnection, how its fostered and how quickly it can descend into doom. I am a catastrophiser, that much I'm aware of, but I can't CBT myself out of this reality. I can barely bring myself to read the news anymore because the world's latest developments feel like continuous gut punches.
Pretending that everything is ok is the bit that makes me feel most alienated. When I get lost in my thoughts, my partner often asks me if something is wrong. "Nothing", I reply, smiling to throw off suspicions. Then I hug him, to at least appreciate an intimate moment. That feeling of dread shrinks, but it never truly goes away.
“We weren’t meant to live like this!”, a voice shouts inside me.
'Doom' has become a taboo word in progressive circles. I get it; it's dangerous because if you get stuck with it, it often corners you into panic and inaction. Though I don't think we should shame ourselves for feeling disconnected and be reduced to suffering alone. Channelling the pain is a route back to self-connection. Voicing genuine concerns can help locate people with similar worries; together, we can connect through our wider disconnection and build something better or devise a plan to resist.
Being silent about our fears and battling them alone only makes us more vulnerable to looking for quick fixes, which are ultimately worse. See: drinking to numb pain, aspiring to become a landlord to compensate for a measly state pension, joining a MLM scheme to get out of debt etc. etc.
I only started a climate book club with my friend last year because we didn't know what else to do with our overwhelming sense of doom. Now, something beautiful and potentially far more effective has been birthed from it. (Or so I’d like to think)
Reading back on what I’ve just written, I don’t think I am going crazy. Besides, what does “crazy” even mean? That feels like a word used by someone who refuses to understand or acknowledge other people’s pain. Maybe on some level, they refuse to acknowledge their own.
Here’s a thought: If someone calls you crazy, does it say more about them than it does about you?
Thanks for reading, and I promise to write something more uplifting next week!
What I’ve enjoyed this week:
I watched Close on MUBI last week, and it was a beautiful film about male friendship and the violent confines of the patriarchy. Grab some tissues if you decide to watch it.
I’m reading The Years by Annie Ernaux at the minute, and I just love the dreamy quality of her writing. Also learning quite a bit about the French.
I finished reading a detective novel called Desert Star by Michael Connelly. It was one I picked up in the airport. Copaganda aside, it’s nice to be gripped by an easy novel. A perfect holiday read.