Hopeless

When the world around you seems to be falling apart, and the future is filled with darkness, it's hard to find hope and harder still to find a sense of stability. Life seems to have gone from one catastrophe to another in recent years with no end to the relentless flow of negativity. Each individual cause for concern fails to reach any point of closure. If you've ever had a bad breakup where you never gained a sense of closure then you'll know that mentality takes years to process and move on from.

I've always been of the opinion that every emotion is valid, both positive and negative, and that when those feelings surface, you should not try and repress them but rather allow yourself to feel them in totality in order to process them fully and be able to move on. The problem is that this mentality requires the source or the stimulus for those emotions to be finite. When that source is never-ending, the only thing you achieve is to mainline negativity like injecting a drug right into an artery - which is a very bad idea.

How then do you defend yourself against the relentless flow of negativity? Using denial as a defence mechanism is something that is somewhat taboo because of the association it has with repression. When we think of denial we tend to think of it as repressing emotions that originate within us - people denying their sexuality for example - and we tend to think of it as something inherently harmful psychologically. We don't think as much about denial in terms of the rejection of outside stimuli, except in the cases where we judge people who have seemingly lost touch with reality who live constantly oblivious to the world around them or who have accepted a view of reality that has become so entrenched that no amount of logic and reason will convince them otherwise.

In its extreme application, the use of denial as a defence mechanism can lead to isolation, where we actively seclude, cutting ourselves off from interactions with others becoming increasingly reclusive until the only contact and sources of information we receive are those we have vetted. That in itself is also harmful and the reasons why should be obvious.

So if living in a state of denial is toxic, and living in a state of awareness is also proving toxic, what choice is left? The middle way of moderation is not an easy choice to make either, for the simple reason that it requires you to consent to receiving negativity - you actively, albeit reluctantly, agree to invite negativity into your life. You acknowledge that it will be a part of your life, that you can't remove it completely, and that you aren't going to make an effort to try and do so. Your focus then shifts to mitigating the effects rather than eliminating the source, like accepting a disease as endemic such as the cold or flu and choosing instead to live with it.

I realise this has parallels with the pandemic, especially in the literal sense that many governments are now pursuing a 'Living with Covid' strategy where their focus is no longer the eradication of the virus but the mitigation of its effects. People are being told to accept Covid as just another thing that could possibly kill you and live your life as normal, the same way you accept the risk of getting Cancer, or being in a Road Traffic Accident, or being the victim of violent crime. Like I said above though, there is no sense of closure going from one catastrophe to the next. The pandemic is not yet at its end but already we have other things to worry about in its place. I live in the UK and I like many others am acutely aware of the situation in Ukraine with Russia's declaration of war and increasing hostility.

Right now the cognitive dissonance caused by the desire to be informed and the desire for respite from relentless negativity is proving impossible to resolve. In the end the only outcome is paralysis, lost in a stupor, frozen in place wondering at what point you should care, care too much, or give up hope. I do realise the privilege in being in a position where the impact for the most part still remains theoretical and distant, I am not literally running for my life right now, fleeing across the country to a border desperate for sanctuary, that is the reality for many others. I'm deeply ashamed and disgusted by the UK government and it's indifference throughout this onslaught, outright rejecting those fleeing the war, and even when the government was forced to make concessions because of public outcry, the changes we made are still pathetic, the exceptions and exclusions have made UK efforts to help those in need almost completely pointless. Meanwhile our neighbours in the European Union have waived visas and opened their borders, perhaps because the memories of World War 2 are engrained in the scars it left across Europe.

I don't know what to think and I don't know what to feel right now. I haven't had any sense of certainty in years and every attempt to create it is countermanded. The pandemic was draining and destroyed any lingering sense of creativity I still had, my productivity died and throughout lockdowns and quarantine, social distancing and general mental and emotional exhaustion I have filled my time with distraction after distraction. Even in a state of isolation and disconnection, a family member was diagnosed with Cancer and that bubble of protection and sense of security was sorely popped. I was left in a state of mind where I had to admit that I was completely powerless to evade negativity, even when all I had was all that I loved, still there was no escape.

My personal life has somewhat stabilised now, the long road to recovery is what lies before them, but I have no idea where I go from here. I know that I am needed to an extent, but I also know that they would survive without me. Do I attempt to rebuild a life for myself after years of my own sickness with Sarcoidosis, the pandemic, their diagnosis, climate change, and now in the shadow of a world that to be quite honest seems completely fucked. The literal threat of Nuclear War was always something joked about in gallows humour never quite taken seriously but that is where we are, that's not sensationalism, it's not hyperbole, it's not rhetoric, it is the reality of what is happening. Even without Nuclear Weapons being used, the risk of a Nuclear accident also poses a threat, yesterday Russia shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe at fifteen times the size of Chernobyl in the very same country that still lives with the aftermath - which in itself is also now uncertain as Russia seized control of the Chernobyl site.

Do you just say fuck it all and live for today not caring about tomorrow? How far do you take that mentality, and how much can you really do when you're still not completely healthy, still reeling financially, and still restricted by risk? How do you plan for a future when you can't see yourself living to see it, whilst stopping yourself from being completely reckless and leaving yourself with no sense of security if by some miracle you do live to see it?

The idea that you're not the only one thinking these things or that other people are in the same boat is of no consolation either. We are all born alone and we all die alone - okay you could argue twins or triplets etc aren't born alone but still. This is the problem, even in an entirely hypothetical situation you're still left to postulate and rationalise a world that you could argue never truly was rational itself. We like to think everything is in decline and that the past was "better" or dealt with things in a more constructive way but it really didn't. I grew up in Northern Ireland at the tail end of the Troubles, the final decade was my childhood, I did not see the worst of it first hand but I saw enough and heard enough in vivid detail from those who did. I became aware of politics at a very young age, I was 6 years old when I learned what the word 'ceasefire' meant. Still I know that most politicians were just as inept decades ago as they are today. Diplomatic solutions are always slow and unfortunately people die while others sit around discussing it in a committee.

I'm not writing this post to share some great insight or revelation but simply to say I'm still here, I'm still alive, and I don't know what else to say or do right now other than go through the motions. Every time I try to organise my thoughts into something coherent I spiral and have to bring myself back to reality. This post is a peek into the inner workings of my mind right now, and perhaps it will answer the question of why there's zero creative output coming from me, and probably won't be for some time yet.