How do you cope with a world that is, honestly, mostly bad?

As a kid you assume the world is generally good with some anomalous bad stuff in it, because otherwise what would be the point of being alive, right?

Then you grow up and realize, no, it’s actually bad with some anomalous good stuff. Like love, cake, and kittens. But the gist of the world, for every species, runs on exploitation, inequality, oppression, greed, competition, selfishness, pain, fear, and the constant struggle just to survive.

Even things you love, like Disney, are rooted in capitalism and commercialism. Every purchase we make is making some filthy rich executive richer, while the employees at the bottom make pennies.

In every corner of the globe, women are oppressed to some degree or another. In every culture, animals are tortured and murdered for taste buds. Our beautiful planet is being destroyed by greed.

How do I just… brush that off? How can I find enough reason to get up every day and keep participating in it?

I’ve tried. I’ve tried to make connections within various communities, all with the end result of feeling isolated and disappointed… something always feeling not right. I don’t think I’m striving for perfection, but I still haven’t found a place I feel comfortable. I’m not vegan enough to fit in with the ~Vegans~. I no longer qualify as gay enough to belong with the gays, and certainly not bi enough to feel any connection with typical “bi” people who are all but shunned in the LGB world. I guess fitting in shouldn’t matter to me but we’re social creatures and it’s human nature, it’s a need and it matters.

How do I face this? How much more of my life will be spent in anger and fear and longing?

I’m so anxious… all the time… and scared and sad and just not right.

Will it ever be okay again? Will I ever be able to let go of the past and find peace with everything that is now, in contrast to everything I let myself lose?

Will I ever be able to stop what-ifing?

Will I ever feel at peace with my own existence, or feel a connection to anything – any culture, place, community, goal, dream, anything? Every time I travel I’m reminded of the fact that nowhere in the world feels comfortable to me, except the one stupid, random place I live that’s become familiar simply through time. Am I just going to feel like a loner and a drifter forever? Will I ever be able to stop looking at a sign, reading a book, seeing a play, talking to someone, watching a movie, and thinking, “this is The Rest of the World and I am me and I will never feel a connection to this, never fully relate to this, never feel a part of this or anything else, never feel like I belong anywhere.”

Will I ever feel like I have a safe, secure place again? Should I just give up on that because Life Is Unpredictable And Change Is Inevitable?

I’m so exhausted living every day in the fear that someday, suddenly, I’m going to lose it all.

Sometimes… it’s just… overwhelming… that nearly everyone on this planet is a mindless idiot.

I mean. Nothing personal. But. Between the selfish breeding and the sexism and the religion and the meat-eating and the gender roles and the capitalism and just. Almost no one… seems to notice… how bad it is? And like… it’s so bad. Everywhere. There are tiny subtle Bads and big obvious Bads and lots of in between but even the big ones, people hardly notice, or choose to ignore.

I mean, I’m not fucking perfect. I could do better. I could start composting everything and only shop at thrift stores and buy a tiny little eco house and quit my job and get rid of my car and ride a bike and all that shit. And I don’t, because I like my world-escaping comforts. A lot.

But like… there’s so much more to it than that. And… everyone else just seems… braindead. It feels like I’m the only conscious mind in a virtual simulation. That’s how it feels… day to day, once I leave my house. Like I’m the only one who’s alive.

Fighting with the ones I love makes me want to fucking kill myself.

What the fuck even are relationships? How can you yell at someone over the stupidest fucking thing after telling them you love them 100 times a day? Why the fuck do human beings fucking exist? I hope we all die out soon and spare the universe all this fucking misery.

It hurts. It just fucking hurts.

I often fantasize about how much easier and more appealing existence would be if I could just… like baseball. Eat steaks. Go to church. Breed some brats. Be heterocentric. Settle into some pathetic ideal of upper middle class suburban life. Imagine having an entire culture of people just like you… I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. It sounds so fulfilling, even if the life itself is empty and pathetically normative.

I’d rather feel like I fit in the world than feel complex and aware. In a fucking heartbeat I’d pick ignorant bliss over ~woke and depressed. Why even fight for this world… for any of its causes? If all the idiots would stop breeding we wouldn’t have problems anymore. We could just die out quietly, long overdue.

Don’t get attached to anything. It all changes. Life, circumstances, thoughts, goals, people. Nothing is exempt from change, even the things you believe in and cling to most tightly. Stop trying to freeze it in place, just let it fucking go.