portraits perspectives and proclamations
Halfway through 2025, and we’ve been on a six flags rollercoaster that has magnificently malfunctioned. Getting curb stomped in my mid-twenties was an anticipated but highly underestimated experience. I have been racking my brain and trying to acknowledge the slow implosion of society while maintaining my ever waning sanity.
We are the embodiment of the dog sitting in the room on fire meme. “This is fine.” We say as the scenery warps around us. It is truly a schizophrenic reality. The lack of control over how turbulent everything is sets off the highest levels of anxiety in my psyche. How do you cope with internalizing that all of your efforts are being diminished and devalued right in front of you? The expectations of success slipping away, blipping into nothingness. Pivoting from one dream to another, having to grasp the reality that the journey’s detours will get tougher and more war torn. I have been cycling between mental breakdowns, touching grass, and throwing whatever self-soothing techniques can stick to the wall the best.
My job has gone through “restructuring” aka mass layoffs and reorganizations. Every month of this year has been a Russian Roulette of keeping your livelihood versus being dumped into the ever-demoralizing job market and demolished economy. Morale has been decimated (of course!), for how can anyone life laugh love in these conditions? How can I contribute my best to a company that has complied in advance with fascism, lost funding anyways, and laid off its most loyal? I have never been attached to the belief that a employer cares about my wellbeing, regardless if it is a non-profit or corporate. We operate in capitalism, and it will always be profits over people; however, it is oxymoronic to have a mission rooted in improving the human condition while conceding to a fascist government and not acknowledging a genocide we are complicit in. Coupled with the wide adoption of AI and rampant pandemic that never went away, I feel insane trying to grasp for some stability. Being extremely burnt out, overworked and overwhelmed (and underpaid!) got me questioning if I am receiving my father’s cosmic karma?!
At every turn, it seems as though every rule or play about mastering adulthood we’ve been taught has become obsolete. (I now see how millennials feel!) Majority of us are engaging in humiliation rituals to prove we deserve to live while others disassociate from reality completely. The reversal to conservatism, anti-blackness and anti-poor people rhetoric leeching to capitalism in blind allegiance got me doing heavy side-eying. We are seeing in real time the instability of our society. As Zora Neale Hurston has said, “There are years that question and years that answer.” I believe we are now in the “finding out” phase. I just hope that retrograde doesn’t take me out of there before we get the answers.
