A Flaw in Human Design: No "Off" Button

[mallorys_camera]

I’ve been sad since I got back from the Southern Tier.

Very, very sad.

Maybe even depressed.

Is there a difference? I think there is. Sad would seem to be connected to a precipitating event in one’s own personal life; depressed seems more like a systemic clamp down, what John Barth once described as “without weather.”

It just seems to me that my life is singularly irrelevant and meaningless – no, scratch that “singularly”: All lives are irrelevant and meaningless.

So what’s the point the point of being alive?

I don’t really have a whole lot to contribute to the collective experience of Life on This Planet.

###

Of course, the proximal cause of the feelings is that sense of total abandonment kicked up by B.

I’m hardwired to respond to abandonment.

Plus I haven’t been “abandoned” because B and I have not been an item for eight years now.

If I never replaced B, that’s entirely on me. I’ve had opportunities. I just didn’t work them. It seems to me I don’t have very much to offer: I’m a woman in her 60s, attractive for my age with the most interesting personality you’d ever hope to meet, but I have nothing in the way of dowry, no financial security.

And really, I don’t want a lover or a husband. I want friends with whom I can have long, interesting conversations about art, politics, economic geography, and the meaning of life on this planet.

I suppose what it is, then, is that I feel invisible. I hold up my hand, and I can see straight through it.

Also, I’m lonely. I crave other voices in my inner dialogue. LiveJournal used to be good for that at least, but these days it’s radio silence.

###

And then there’s politics. Politics nauseates me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah – Trump is a cancer. Andrew Johnson’s ghost is breathing a huge sigh of relief: Thank Gawd: I wasn’t the worst President ever! Ditto Warren Harding, John Tyler, William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan.

But the thing is Trump isn’t entirely the creation of rightwing racists.

Trump just as much a creation of big news media – on both sides of the political spectrum. There would be no Trump without the 24/7 news cycle. Right-tilting media may be drumming up Trump enthusiasm in support of a racist agenda, but left-tilting media is drumming up Trump paranoia because then we’ll feel the need to be hypervigilent - and hypervigilence translates into lots and lots of eyeballs and lots and lots of $$$$.

I don't know what the answer is. I really don't.

I only know that I feel like I'm being had.

###

I’m trying not to let too many things circle round the black drain. I’m exercising. I’m balancing my checkbook. I’m avoiding alcohol.

But honestly, if I had an “Off” button, I’d push it.

Comments

[pritkiy_kaban]

With third-hand understanding of politics in US, I am hardly in position to assess; still, my impression is that throughout electoral rigmarole, Democratic party did all (well, a lot) to aid their opponent.

Had Clinton and her staff backed off just a wee bit on some issues, they would have had excellent chances. Instead, they tried, don't know how to put it - to over-trump Trump?

I have to admit that we here watched the whole process with (morbid) interest. To people accustomed to having almost no political choice at all, the very idea of US choosing between two singularly mediocre prospects, and choosing one of type more familiar to us, was...intriguing. All more because we have a lot of Trumps here; there are politicians who are around for more than 30 years, whose whole career was built around playing Trump type (Zhirinovsky is a textbook case).

Nauseating is a mild word to describe it all.

[mallorys_camera]

From my perspective, you seem to have an excellent understanding. :-)

[bb_lurks]

I thought William Styron's appropriation from Milton apt as a description of depression. "Darkness visible"

[mallorys_camera]

"Darkness visible" is good, but it's not what I'm feeling.

The John Barth two-worder - "without weather" - is a better description because it's a neater description of affectlessness. :-)