Catastrophizing
well, I mean, it is an actual fucking catastrophe, so…
I’ve done a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is funny because not only do I think too much, but there’s another layer of thinking too much in which I think about my thinking.
There are many ways in which I paint my way into the trash with how I think, and this is not the time to make a bullet list or describe all of them. Honestly, that would be a book, not a blog post. I’m sure there are plenty of examples in various posts on here, and I think you should go read them all, honestly.
I’ve been told I catastrophize. I’ve been told this by qualified therapists, and trusted confidants who are uniquely qualified by how well they know me. I’ve watched my inner self do it, and I really try to work on it. Just push through it, Ev , it’s gonna work out.
To them I would say this:
“well, shit is a fucking catastrophe, though. so what now?”
I mean, on what level do I even start? Let’s start at the macro level.
I was without a phone for a while, and prior to that I was keeping the Instagram at a much further length then I have since i first started using it.
I was addicted to it. There’s just something about me that wants to document my experience and it’s a good set of tools for that, plus it’s designed to be addictive. There are very few things with addiction potential I have yet to get ensnared in.
I had been messing around with music and I wrote a few things here. I’d been unable to do either of those things for some time, so naturally I was thinking
“oh wow, i’d like to share these things”.
Perhaps a whole other complex to unravel, but I like an audience for the creative work I do.
So, I downloaded Instagram on my new phone. This was a terrible idea
I have followed politics since writing Bill Clinton letters of support and encouragement during his 1992 presidential campaign against Bush Sr. and the unforgettable (to me) third party guy Ross Perot. It just what we were into in my house growing up: MTV and the DNC.
I was six years old, a fan of Dana Carvey, who’s Perot impression was spot on, This is probably why I haven’t forgotten about that guy. I am still a huge Dana Carvey fan, by the way, I quote Garth Algar frequently.
With my life long political interest, and ten years of me being me into an algorithm designed to put me in feedback loops so that I never put the phone down, you can imagine what my little scroll was about today.
Hence the aforementioned completely unmitigated fucking catastrophe.
It’s not even the drunk texting national intelligence, and plans of air strikes to reporters, which put service members in harms way. it is that, sure but… ridiculously unqualified idiots in a trump cabinet were shocking in 2017, you know what you’re getting, nowadays.
It’s that dissenting academic voices are being rounded up by federal agents without due process and being disappeared. I’m not here to write a well sourced and researched paper, i’m here anecdotally noticing a trend. one of the trends, in a whole daily rush of really, really fucking bad trends.
THATS 3!
Once I entered my adolescence, and realized how much of everything was bullshit, I failed some classes. Shit, I failed a lot of classes, probably, and I was on LSD during frequent hours of public education in high school… so why don't you eat a couple hits and we’ll see if you do any better at algebra, there, fucko.
I never, ever failed history. I don’t think I ever got below a B in history. I went to college for a few years, majored in it, and maintained a 3.8. I mean I drank my way out, but you can see my point here.
Fascism. We are there. If you have children, and they have children…they are going to ask what it was like, and what you did….now, in the times in which we live, the times in which we scroll.
It’s starting with green card holders, because that’s a low hanging fruit for the fascists to test the waters of consent among the populace. If you think it’s going to stop there, I suggest that you go back to history class, because it isn’t.
Meanwhile, billionaires are gutting the social safety nets, and the department of education. You’re going to have desperate people, more desperate than even before, which is wild considering the struggles already. People who struggle to survive and are under-educated are easily manipulated by autocrats. They’ll be handed a bunch of scapegoats to blame their problems on, so that they never realize that it’s not really the wealthy who are fucking them over, and they'll go out and do the work of the wealthy for them under the guise of patriotism and nationalism.
This isn’t anything new, especially in the last 10–12 years, but it’s going to accelerate.
Those who resist will disappear.
Speaking of safety nets, now i’ll go to the micro level.
I’m OK. I’m way more OK than I've been in a while. But here’s the thing: I can’t get my bi-polar medication, due to something that’s going on with Medicaid. I call one 800 number, get transferred around a few times, and never get to the crux of it. Today they told me I was all set, so I went to the pharmacy where it’s been sitting since the 26th of last month, and they wouldn’t let it rock, there’s still a Medicaid
I’ve had to twice go to the emergency room where I can only get a 7 day supply. This shit isn’t like groundbreaking new drugs, either: it’s lithium and seroquel, one of which is one of the oldest mood stabilizer used, and literally, on the periodic table of elements.
This isn’t a problem in any other country!
This is the profit motive of capitalism in a sphere where it has no place. I’d argue that there’s no sphere in which it’s at all good for anything, but not now.
I have to go really far to see this psychiatrist on Monday, and it’s like: for what? why even bother?
I have 4 days of medication, presently.
I want to be well, I want to be available to those in my life who I care for, I want to even be bored by how uneventful life can get when you’re almost 40, your moods are balanced, you go to therapy and you don’t get all fucked up on drugs and booze as a coping mechanism or for whatever other reason. The reasons, by the way,I’m looking into still, with new insights all of the time.
If you think that I’m going to give up on trying then you don’t know who I am,and again, i’d have to recommend you go read all of the stories on this blog, but seriously: what the fuck?
I don’t really know.
The thing is, how do you figure out how much you can take?
I’m talking about information…just bad fucking news. I can’t live with just trying to ignore it, that to me seems like a dereliction of my civic duty and my upbringing.
How do I not burn out and shut down?
There’s new shit to be either outraged by, or that breaks your heart, every single day, even on weekends.
How do you figure out what you can do to help?
I go on instagram and feel guilty that i’m not knocking off CEOS on the street, or something similarly both severe, justified and morally correct.
For now, I feed people. I go a food pantry, and unload the truck.
This society, and the goals of those who seek to oppress the population for their own end, runs on apathy. It functions on ignoring those who are unable to take care of their own survival, and to let them go hungry.
After all they really should pull themselves up by the bootstraps. right?
I don’t have any of the answers. I just needed to write.
hey: you can help me out, if you want to: https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
