Am I just depressed or is the world ending?

[UNLOCKED] bonus 018 - 13th October, 2019

i

All I do lately is sleep. In bed by 8pm, asleep by nine, awake at 8am. Sometimes, after 12 hours of sleep the night before, I take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day. When I am awake, I drag myself through the day, hauling my sodden, heavy limbs along behind me. My oversleep causes lethargy, which causes me to oversleep… I’m a very tired ouroboros, in an endless fatigued cycle. Everything hurts. My low back screams. My arms, leaden. My legs thump with a deep, endless ache that causes them to writhe endlessly as if that will help. It doesn’t, but I don’t stop.

I’ve never felt this terrible before.

I need to go to the doctor, to watch them try to fill their vials. Whenever they take my blood, even it can’t be bothered, the veins slipping out of reach like, nah. When they hit one, the blood flows out slow and hesitant, in stops and starts.

I kind of want something to be wrong with me. It’s easier than facing what I think is the truth:

the world is ending and I am depressed.

ii

I can’t go on the internet anymore. It’s too stressful. Everyone is just linking doom and fucking gloom.

The lungs of the earth are burning, though that was a few weeks ago and everyone seems to have forgotten, moved on to the next awful thing. Microplastics are in everything. I read in a linked article that teabags leach millions of microscopic plastic particles into the water of your cup. Not even tea is safe, but I don’t stop drinking it. What’s the point? My body is 80% water and 20% plastic. I’m just waiting for my cancer, almost excited to find out which one will grab me. What kind do you think you’ll get?

And it looks like they’re starting a new war? I can’t work it out anymore. Are the old wars over?

I mute ‘microplastics’. I mute ‘war’. ‘Bolsonaro’, and of course, ‘Trump’, and ‘Pence’ and ‘Kavanaugh’, and ‘Scott Morrison’ and ‘Tony Abbott’ and ‘Mark Latham’ and the names of every other politician I can think of. I mute ‘guns’ and ‘active shooter’ and ‘rape’ and ‘sexual assault’. It would take me ten minutes to scroll through the list of words I’ve muted, but they still get through. I mute Twitter completely by closing the tab. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

I know I need to know this shit. But fuck me, ignorance is bliss. Or for me, ignorance is just regular depression and not coupled with despair at the state of the world.

iii

Plastic straws are cancelled. We can’t have them anymore. They are bad for the planet! I liked straws because I have sensitive teeth and used them in cold drinks. Disabled people need straws for much more important reasons! But straws are now the cause of the world’s problems. No more straws for anyone.

Saving the environment is up to everyone. We all have to do our bit to reduce waste and curb emissions and turn off lights when we’re not using them. Think of the planet!

Except my bread comes wrapped in plastic. No one has cancelled bread bags. My yogurt is in a plastic tub. Yogurt is not canceled. I buy a coke from the servo in a plastic bottle, I watch lights burn in office buildings all night when I pass by, trucks spew diesel as they carry our shit from place to place. Coke and offices and trucks are not cancelled. One person going strawless when they get a cocktail in a bar, or a disabled person using one so they can drink comfortably and easily isn’t going to save the world when the system is set up to generate so much waste. When huge corps let their subsidiaries spew toxic shit and C02 into the atmosphere. The straw in my Dark and Stormy doesn’t make one fucking lick of difference when the government of Australia is actively promoting more coal. Stop trying to make me think it will.

Mega corps aren’t going to stop destroying the world in the name of profit, no matter how many straws you do not buy.

iv

Society will collapse in 3-5 years, says a boomer in an article in the Guardian. Lucky he can make millions in profit selling his house and retire to a bolthole down south when civilization ceases. I roll over in my bed in my room of my overpriced rental house, the pressure of my body on my bones making a deep ache and I throw my phone across the room.

‘What do you think about that?’ my friend asks when I tell her about it.

‘I’m just happy I won’t have to pay off my HECS debt.’

I’m at the point where I can’t see a point in doing anything because the world’s ending and what’s the point? Why bother spending a year trying to write a book? Why bother to retrain in a new career field that might have some money in it? Is there even money in anything anymore? And will money even help me?

My plans for the future are to starve to death when it all comes tumbling down. Or die of thirst. I haven’t decided yet.

***

v

I wrote the above when I was in a super dark place. Then, not long ago, two-thirds through a Saturday, I realised I hadn’t thought about flinging myself into the sun for the whole day. That’s the first time in at least a year that I’d gone a day without utter despair. I can actually say that I am feeling good at the moment. I don’t know what caused my depression to lift, though I’m glad it has.

But…

the world is still ending. I’m aware our way of life is going to drastically shift, and soon, and I’m in mourning for that, for all that we will lose. It’s just that my grief is no longer coupled with the chemical drain of a depressive episode.

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know how we can stop the world from ending, or even if we can. I just know that for the moment my brain is letting me have a little peace, to love the people I love and enjoy the comfort of my 21st-century lifestyle while it’s still here.

I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. However long that it.