💾 Archived View for tilde.club › ~verdantmoss › tired-anger.gmi captured on 2024-05-10 at 11:11:00. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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i'm tired of being angry

There's... a lot to get angry about. We live in a world racked with injustice, from a global scale down to individuals, from systemic issues to individual assholes. We live in countries led by incompetent or hostile politicians. We kill each other, hate each other. We have passed through (still are in the middle of, really) a global pandemic which has caused immeasurable grief, but we cannot even be permitted to admit the scale of loss, and the scale of loss that could have been prevented were it not for the actions of a few individual politicians. The climate apocalypse marches ever closer and I cannot even grieve it.

I try to block out the big stuff. The injustice, war, and climate apocalypse. Sometimes the despair still creeps up on me, but I must block it out. If I don't, the weight of it would crush me. So it's the small things that weigh me down instead. A co-worker makes an odd comment. Is he homophobic? I see my friends endure being the victims of bigotry. I wish that I could help, but I often only hear about these things long after the fact: hushed whispers, "did you know X is sexist?". The institution I work for mistreats the staff. There are strikes, then nothing changes. Myself and my coworkers advocate for small, minuscule changes that would improve our experience. Nothing changes. I find out my work is being funded with "defence"[1] budget. I get angry. I keep working anyway. Nothing changes. It is rare that I talk to my friends and they advocate for something - a person, some media, whatever - and they do not insert some caveat. I sigh deeply, my opinion the only thing changed.

I'm tired. So tired. I feel that I try hard to block these things out, to ignore them. And I hate myself for doing that, because I shouldn't ignore them. I should organize and take action, those sorts of things. But I just... can't do it. Even when I block them out, the weight is unbearable. Things are bad. I get angry. Nothing changes. I feel like I am gazing out from behind bars. I can yell, maybe, if I'm lucky, affect the things right in front of me; but can't reach out any further. I must watch as the planet I live on falls apart and the world shifts ever rightward. I must listen to my friends experiences of bigotry. I get angry.

What am I to do? Do I pull on my bootstraps, stand tall, and try to take action? Do I stew in my anger, and let myself cry when it boils over? Do I try to block it out even more, engage in an act of supreme cognitive dissonance? I just don't know. I just... don't know.

[1]: As you read this, please imagine the appropriate amount of disgust with which you imagine I utter this word when I say it aloud.

last updated: 2023-05-24