If by “okay” you mean sane, happy, well adjusted, self-acceptably successful, and non-suicidal, then no. I am not okay. Are you?
And what do you mean by sane, understanding of the world one finds oneself in? No. I do not understand the world I find myself in. I do not understand why I am expected to go along with this madness of waking, peeing, brushing, checking; first bitcoin, then my face in the mirror, switch flipping, consuming; first processed food, then processed reality, pretending; first at productivity, then at that of others, ignoring; first this slight pain in my chest, then the fact that I’m in a white box staring at a grey one, hypnotized. No, I do not understand. I do not stand under these facts–not any longer.
And what do you mean by happy? Happy about my lot in life, as the consumer of the brands that compose my self-conception? Happy with my rank amongst my neighbor–with whom I do not speak–as measured by their twin Toyotas? Happy with the friends who cannot touch my hands or hug me because of the latest fear mongering they’ve absorbed from their handheld and personalized propaganda dispensaries? Happy with the icons and logos on my tennis shoes with which any of us rarely play the sport due to an obesity epidemic? Happy with the fact that not a person within ten square miles of me, in reading the previous sentence, will recognize the wholesale bastardization of those two words ‘icon’ and ‘logo’ for their origins? The stomachs of the Greeks would turn at the loss of knowledge. Why shouldn’t mine?
And what do you mean by well adjusted? Well-adjusted to what, my atomized existence? No, I would not call myself well-adjusted. I am not well adjusted to the sadness that overwhelms me at the loss of even the potential of real femininity in my life due to my complete inability to cohere with the ever encroaching expectations of masculine conformity to the feminized and Kafkaesque regulations that my peers seem to feel so at home with, nay, in reverence of, out of some grotesque sense of security they’ve outsourced to their wi-fi connected techno-surveillance-state-creating porch monitoring systems in place of reliance upon the brawn of their own backs and at the threat of their own knuckles. I am not well adjusted to the petro-chemically wrapped organic-but-(shhh)-not-really massively processed food I shovel into my mouth at an alarming rate in place of contemplating my own existence. I am not well-adjusted to these things despite my loudly pleading cohort of late-millennials, as desperate to convince me as they are themselves that ‘our’ version of existence is normal and sane, as an Amway salesman is of their impending success.
And what do you mean by acceptably successful? No. I do not find myself acceptably successful, not after having spent the no doubt healthiest decade of my life pursuing the game of capital accumulation at all costs–especially that of my own health–just to find that I’m compared to every other primate ineffectively smacking his betters with sticks while they’re not looking, then turning, eyes adrift when they look his way. I do not find myself acceptably successful when the new Gini Coefficient is so palpably visible and widely stretched via these wretched digital self-comparison mechanisms we call ‘social’ media, meant to measure my value in abstracted affirmations, tell me each second of my day via advertisement that what I have accumulated is not and will not be enough. What is a like? How weak an affirmation of the value of a human action. I ‘like’ that. You like what? My dance? My fingernails? Would you tell me in person or have our real-world social bonds so eroded that you’d na’er dare chance an awkward compliment unrequited? No, I do not feel as though I’m acceptably successful, and neither do you, because you’ll never stop comparing, nor can you extract yourself from the dopamine machines that induce such comparison, and their master black magicians extracting the data from your soul and selling it back to you at an attractive profit, nor perhaps do you want to.
And what do you mean by non-suicidal? Do I want to go on in this manner? Do you? Are you finding meaning in your boxed red wine at night, or escape? No, I am not non-suicidal. I am full on, full blown, suicidal! How could one be anything other than fascinated by a return to the bliss of unconsciousness–isn’t that what we’re striving for? Isn’t that what the pot is for, the microdosing? Aren’t we slaving away at backlit keyboards well into the night in order that we might achieve that fictitious glory awaiting us at the exit, the sale? Think about it: to exit a business –the dream of so many of us, possessed by the daemon, the bug obsessed with accumulating capital (that to say, the contrived right to the labor of others, by whom such a right is barely permissed and only out of self preservation)– only to leave, to exit, to return to a state of new want? Really, more want? That is our goal? No, I am fully suicidal and so art thou. I’m simply being honest about our comorbidity.
Thank you for asking.