Notes From the Wasteland No. 13 ‘I have just about had enough’

I’ve reached that point again where most things, most ordinary things, those ordinary things like work and home and the day to day of our lives, all these things are piling up to pull me down once more. This is not a dramatic cry for help, rather a quieter acknowledgement that the default position I tend to occupy is one of resignation. I am resigned to the fact that today, at this time, as I write, I am at the edge of my tolerance with everything. I’ll carry on, I always do, I always have done, but that doesn’t mean that my carrying on should be seen as accepting defeat, because it isn’t and I am not. It simply means that I still need to live and to work and to go about my daily business, because my daily business is all I have to go about – it is my business after all. There have been times when I have felt determined to carry on, and that that determination has been tiring, wearying, crushing, numbing; a fight in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, obstruction, provocation, or just simple difficulty. There are other times when the need to continue is still the same need but the impulse to continue is less pronounced and more one of gentle effort. But everything is always a fight. Everything. This is especially true when I look out my window to consider the absolute darkness fo the world right now. As I see the awful view of anger and pestilence and ignorance and more anger, the terrible ache of ignorance as it gnaws at people and causes them to rage and fight and kill. When I see grinning, grotesque faces urging harm and hurt on others. Or others clutched by complacency, gripped by indifference and only fuelled by personal desire, making decisions that suit themselves first and others last, if at all. Outside my window, through the glass, out into the world, it is dark and dangerous place to be right now. I am safe right now, that’s true, and I am separate. I am loved by people and feel protected by this. I am wanted by some but, sadly, not by others. These are the basic dimensions of my existence, the current coordinates that locate me in the spaces of my world. And, in defiance of all that I have outlined previously, I won’t be pulled down today.

I simply won’t.