Sometimes I wonder whether it's truly possible at all to take one setback after another and come out unscathed at the other end. There seems to be plenty of gushing advice from people around one about how one should 'just keep it up' and 'things will soon improve'. Others will gleefully inform you that you aren't doing enough and you're sure to fail horribly if you insist on continuing on this course.
Do I know what the right course in life is? Of course I do not. And so does nobody else. We all got our own experiences and expectations to deal with, and are basing presumptions and dreams on those. People like me just happen to have more experiences and far fewer expectations than the average person.
From having one's innocence and trust in adults crushed as a young child, to a seemingly endless torture session by psychologists and doctors - who kept trying to force this whole horrific 'you're transgender' thing on me - to losing one's home and finding oneself moving from place to place, all the time worrying about finances and a place to sleep.
At this point I'm ignoring the very likely medical issue of ascites [1] and whatever underlying cause may be responsible, because doctors have ruined practically every chance that I can ever trust them again, and because it's something that's simply less urgent than not becoming homeless and running out of money.
As a freelancer I'm still struggling to establish myself, not helped by me not doing any freelancing for half a decade and struggling with severe depression and associated PTSD, all the while worrying whether I'll be able to find a new apartment or house or anything to move into before I have to leave the temporary accommodation which I'm staying at until the second week of next month.
Then getting told that one should 'try harder' to find a new place, even as one works 15+ hour days to try and get some income going. That's not helping. It's just another reminder of the setbacks I have had to endure almost constantly for years now.
Just another thing which won't work out. And another one. Another glimmer of hope that got brutally crushed. Another lead that led to nowhere. A sudden change that should have brought a great improvement, but just turned into another hell. Yet another legal case which drags on for years, without any fault of my own. Having my belongings stolen. Having money stolen with credit card fraud.
And still no prospect of anything improving any time soon. Honestly, why do I even keep trying? Isn't half my life of bashing my head against this same brick wall sufficient? It's not like it's suddenly going to topple over. Why can't I just admit that my life just never was going to work out? That I screwed it up beyond repair, or that the deck was always going to be stacked against me?
Of course, that's just whining. I should just 'man up', grow a pair, find hidden sources of immense physical and mental energy, ignore the medical problems and the chronic sleep-deprivation on account of only being able to sleep six hours or less each night.
Just keep smiling and do all the things, even as ignoring yourself is causing irreparable damage. There shall be no rest, no respite. No time to think of one's health or work on getting some rest and proper sleep. There will be time for those luxuries once I have spent the next few weeks working 15+ hours a day, looked at 1-2 apartments a day, scored a dozen new customers and solved world hunger.
Because to be human is to be weak. To show weakness means that the tribe will turn on you.
To expect empathy and respite from the endless hell that is society is the kind of naivity that will get one killed.
On the bright side, being homeless isn't nearly as bad now that it's almost Summer. Should be comfortable sleeping underneath a bridge somewhere.
Maya
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascites
Sunday 21 April 2019
Thursday 18 April 2019
On not having a place in this world
Imagine, you're standing on this hill, surrounded by trees which are filled with blossom, as Spring moves towards Summer. You can smell the wildflowers on the air as the sound of birds and other critters mixes with the gentle rustling of the tree leaves in the breeze. As you close your eyes and lift your face towards the sky you can feel the warm sunlight caressing your skin.
This is the moment when you realise that you're in a place where you're home. Where it's safe and everything is all right. Where in a moment you'll return to the house where you live alone or with others, but it's all because that's the way which works for everyone.
It was around the beginning of this century, probably around 2001 or thereabouts, that I last still felt somewhat like that. After that my parents began to grow cold towards each other and the atmosphere in the house changed. Not long after that my parents divorced and first together with my mother, then alone it was a continuous journey from one house and apartment to another, in search of a home.
At this point I'm staying in a temporary apartment, trying to figure out what to do next as the last weeks at this place come and go. My grand plans of moving to the Alsace region of France have run into the harsh reality of supply and demand. How will this continue? I do not know. I wish I knew.
Similarly, my struggle to get a job last year and early this year didn't result in anything. Supply and demand, I guess. In the end it's not about you as a human being after all. It's just capitalistic reality. Essentially it's about us being merely the cells in this organism called 'Society'.
For all my dreams and hopes I had as a child and beyond, the cruel reality is we humans have made for ourselves is that the value of a person - much like that of a cell in an organism - is determined by their contribution to the system. My situation isn't even the worst imaginable, and it pains me to imagine the situations others find themselves in. There's so much pain. So much unfairness and so much suffering that those affected try to ignore. Plastic smiles.
Are any of us truly happy by living in small, cramped, concrete or stone hovels, practically on top of each other? With small, grimy windows opening into an environment that is choking with the exhaust fumes from cars, trucks and buses, mixed with the acrid smells of cigarette smoke and stale beer.
Is this place where our children play on streets near traffic, breathing in polluted air and only ever seeing the blue skies when they look up at this small strip of sky between the towering buildings. Is this place 'home'?
This reality of 'making the best of things' isn't that different from that scene in George Orwell's famous novell 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' where this woman outside the main character's window is hanging up the laundry while singing one of those auto-generated tunes that play on the radio. Obviously poor, the woman finds a reason to sing even though she lives in a rundown building, in a state of abject poverty, just like practically everybody else.
Just like in that world which Orwell described back in 1948 in the midst of post-war reconstruction, there are the haves and have-nots. The reality is that the handful of people who have practically everything are perfectly happy with keeping things the way they are. They are doing fine, so why would they care? Why would they care about the rest of the population? Those just exist to do their duty. Like any good skin, liver or fat cell.
How many of us consider the impact that 'our' decisions have on the rest of our body? On the tissues that are suffering because we had to do that late-night party, that copious consumption of alcohol and the many cigarettes that got smoked. We do not pay them mind, because we expect them to bounce back. That's what they're there for, after all.
In that sense it's only natural for the rich and wealthy to not care about the have-nots, I guess.
Sometimes I think about what it would mean to me if suddenly I found myself among the rich and famous. It's something that could theoretically happen after all, depending on how well my upcoming autobiography (and the associated Patreon [1] ) do. Say, with the support of a legion of patrons I get my autobiography done and published, and it turns out to be an international best-seller.
Suddenly I find myself being flown around the world for talkshows in places I haven't been to yet, while the money comes pouring in. All of a sudden all of my worries about financial stability and a place to live evaporate. What would I do?
The answer to that is pretty much summed up by the first few paragraphs of this blog entry. I'd want nothing more than to have that happy home for myself, and everybody else. I'm beyond sick of this world in which human lives are essentially meaningless, merely feed for the machine, as relevant as a single skin cell that will reach the end of its lifespan and gets discarded.
I do not claim to know the answer to everything, but I do feel strongly that the world I want to see is one in which there can be room for actual happiness and self-exploration instead of this top-down enforcement of how we should be living our all too brief lives.
Because either life is precious, or it is not.
Maya
[1] https://www.patreon.com/MayaPosch
This is the moment when you realise that you're in a place where you're home. Where it's safe and everything is all right. Where in a moment you'll return to the house where you live alone or with others, but it's all because that's the way which works for everyone.
It was around the beginning of this century, probably around 2001 or thereabouts, that I last still felt somewhat like that. After that my parents began to grow cold towards each other and the atmosphere in the house changed. Not long after that my parents divorced and first together with my mother, then alone it was a continuous journey from one house and apartment to another, in search of a home.
At this point I'm staying in a temporary apartment, trying to figure out what to do next as the last weeks at this place come and go. My grand plans of moving to the Alsace region of France have run into the harsh reality of supply and demand. How will this continue? I do not know. I wish I knew.
Similarly, my struggle to get a job last year and early this year didn't result in anything. Supply and demand, I guess. In the end it's not about you as a human being after all. It's just capitalistic reality. Essentially it's about us being merely the cells in this organism called 'Society'.
For all my dreams and hopes I had as a child and beyond, the cruel reality is we humans have made for ourselves is that the value of a person - much like that of a cell in an organism - is determined by their contribution to the system. My situation isn't even the worst imaginable, and it pains me to imagine the situations others find themselves in. There's so much pain. So much unfairness and so much suffering that those affected try to ignore. Plastic smiles.
Are any of us truly happy by living in small, cramped, concrete or stone hovels, practically on top of each other? With small, grimy windows opening into an environment that is choking with the exhaust fumes from cars, trucks and buses, mixed with the acrid smells of cigarette smoke and stale beer.
Is this place where our children play on streets near traffic, breathing in polluted air and only ever seeing the blue skies when they look up at this small strip of sky between the towering buildings. Is this place 'home'?
This reality of 'making the best of things' isn't that different from that scene in George Orwell's famous novell 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' where this woman outside the main character's window is hanging up the laundry while singing one of those auto-generated tunes that play on the radio. Obviously poor, the woman finds a reason to sing even though she lives in a rundown building, in a state of abject poverty, just like practically everybody else.
Just like in that world which Orwell described back in 1948 in the midst of post-war reconstruction, there are the haves and have-nots. The reality is that the handful of people who have practically everything are perfectly happy with keeping things the way they are. They are doing fine, so why would they care? Why would they care about the rest of the population? Those just exist to do their duty. Like any good skin, liver or fat cell.
How many of us consider the impact that 'our' decisions have on the rest of our body? On the tissues that are suffering because we had to do that late-night party, that copious consumption of alcohol and the many cigarettes that got smoked. We do not pay them mind, because we expect them to bounce back. That's what they're there for, after all.
In that sense it's only natural for the rich and wealthy to not care about the have-nots, I guess.
Sometimes I think about what it would mean to me if suddenly I found myself among the rich and famous. It's something that could theoretically happen after all, depending on how well my upcoming autobiography (and the associated Patreon [1] ) do. Say, with the support of a legion of patrons I get my autobiography done and published, and it turns out to be an international best-seller.
Suddenly I find myself being flown around the world for talkshows in places I haven't been to yet, while the money comes pouring in. All of a sudden all of my worries about financial stability and a place to live evaporate. What would I do?
The answer to that is pretty much summed up by the first few paragraphs of this blog entry. I'd want nothing more than to have that happy home for myself, and everybody else. I'm beyond sick of this world in which human lives are essentially meaningless, merely feed for the machine, as relevant as a single skin cell that will reach the end of its lifespan and gets discarded.
I do not claim to know the answer to everything, but I do feel strongly that the world I want to see is one in which there can be room for actual happiness and self-exploration instead of this top-down enforcement of how we should be living our all too brief lives.
Because either life is precious, or it is not.
Maya
[1] https://www.patreon.com/MayaPosch
Tuesday 16 April 2019
That uncertain future
So where I'm at now is that the old apartment has been handed back to the slumlord, with just the final bills and such to be settled. This means that other than some potential financial fallout the direct and immediate threat from that place should be over with.
That leaves me with the two other, more immediate issues. One is to get that financial stability, as I saw myself pushed into becoming freelancer after a year of unsuccessful job interviews. Not that being a freelancer is that horrible, mind you. It seems that at this point I'm mostly doing the writing of articles for websites such as Hackaday and soon Hackster.io, which provides me with some income.
In addition to this, there's also the pressing issue of finding a place to live. I still got about a month until I have to leave the current apartment where I'm temporarily staying. At this point I have abandoned the thought of renting a house in the Alsace region of France as the possibility of that working out was painted too optimistically. Now it's back to looking for apartments in that same region. Hopefully that will work out better.
What will be next for me? I'm not sure. I'll just have to keep trying and see what happens.
Maya
That leaves me with the two other, more immediate issues. One is to get that financial stability, as I saw myself pushed into becoming freelancer after a year of unsuccessful job interviews. Not that being a freelancer is that horrible, mind you. It seems that at this point I'm mostly doing the writing of articles for websites such as Hackaday and soon Hackster.io, which provides me with some income.
In addition to this, there's also the pressing issue of finding a place to live. I still got about a month until I have to leave the current apartment where I'm temporarily staying. At this point I have abandoned the thought of renting a house in the Alsace region of France as the possibility of that working out was painted too optimistically. Now it's back to looking for apartments in that same region. Hopefully that will work out better.
What will be next for me? I'm not sure. I'll just have to keep trying and see what happens.
Maya
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