I Still Fucking Love You Babe

 I think sometimes I mourn things that haven't happened. I often get anxious about the things that might happen. And I cry at the losses that will eventually occur.

My head is filled with disaster.

I read a lot now. I spend a lot of time reading about things that are just generally fucked up with no where to put this information. To list a few things this week I read about American war crimes, male rape during war conflicts, deadly FBI shoot-outs, cults, musicians who committed statutory rape, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. No one really wants to talk about the military coup in Myanmar and the historical precedent for it. Who would want to delve into genocide and the ramifications of embracing someone that later goes on to argue in favor of atrocities? It's not like it's the first time the United States supported a leader who ended up being disastrous for the country they held office in...

I talk a lot, but I think I end up sitting on a lot of information that just dies in me. There's only so much you can subject your friends and partner to if they don't want to engage.

So I spend time reading about white women who pretended to be black and cops in Chicago who beat suspects into submitting false confessions but got to keep their retirement pensions. 

I read too many articles about the events at the Capitol on January 6th.

I am predictably afraid of everything.

I understand conspiracy theories less because there's so many real things to be concerned with.

I don't watch a lot of TV anymore because I spend all day reading about serial killers and reflections on old action films. I used to spend so much time watching TV. 

I should be spending all my time reading for class, but I put it off to read about people in Austin being upset about taxes and hotels used to house the homeless. My textbooks are all about how capitalism is the best economic structure. Somehow it bothers me more to know that my classmates are learning they need to stratify people based on productivity and fire the low performers. I wonder if anyone ever thinks about where those low performers go? Does anyone care that there will always be lower performers to fire if you're enforcing a structure where there has to be high performers, exceptionally high performers, and people that are "just clocking in to get a check"? Do people not deserve to be able to support themselves if they just want to do a job and go home?

I wonder if maybe the problem is that no one knows that business students are being taught to market by cost-cutting benefits? Maybe the way people approach business would be different if they knew that the most expensive cost is often labor. 

My international business course argues that paying people 48 cents in a developing nation instead of paying someone in the United States 9 dollars helps that developing nation build their economy. There's no mention of the millions the CEOs of companies that do this earn.

I chose the wrong field.

But there's no turning back.

I think I sometimes mourn a more ignorant version of myself. I'm sad for the people this system I'm literally buying into hurts. I'm sad for myself for finding out anti-labor practices are learned and not the result of a few greedy people. I guess it makes sense that all the big problems are systemic. 

All of this makes me feel very alone.

I know that I'm not.

But I also know I'm making myself less and less relateable by fixating on things no one else wants to talk about. Whether it's having only a head full of bad news for my friends, or making arguments against U.S. economic policy to my classmates- I'm not making myself a sympathetic character.

So I've been listening to the same song over and over while I put-off classwork.

I tap into the moody teenage energy I find more relateable than I should.

I think about the sense of loss that drives this kind of song. The earth-shattering end of something you were so sure of. Something you found security in.

I think I feel like February 2020 to February 2021 was a long breakup with the world I knew. I'm trying to move on. Grow. I think we're all changed. A lot of the problems we had were not new. I don't think I was shocked by where we ended up, but I also don't think I was acknowledging enough of the problems we had. 

I think we're still meant to be.

I know we're not perfect, World. There's so much to work on. But I still fucking love you, babe.