Hunted..

 

"Over and Done With" Nikon D800 Lensbaby Composer Double Glass Optic f/5.6 ring Lightroom Silver F/X pro     A former colleague asked me a few weeks ago how retirement is going. I never answered him directly because I ended up vacating that chat server..    His question made me think, though.   I was never really retired in the formal sense of the word. I didn't make it to 65 and there were a couple years there back in the teens where I was without a paying gig. I was let go from the Joe Big Ass Corp because I was old - and - even more - because I did not endear myself to what passed for Senior Managers at JBAC. December 31st 2019 was my last day.    And then - three months later - COVID hit. I am not like my male siblings. Where they coolly and analytically assess situations and then carry on in a business-like fashion, I was an emotional wreck.    Early in the pandemic lockdown, I would wake up every morning to about, oh, say, 30 seconds of peace only to be overrun by suffocating dread, that I was going to die or someone close to me was going to die, or that I wouldn't get to see my children again, and on and on and on.. The amount of cheap politicization surrounding the plague ended up costing a million US lives.    I swam in despair..   The stock market tanked during the plague as did my retirement savings. It's come back - but only just.. Inflation takes a big bite out my funds.. A couple bags of groceries at Trader Joe's cost over fifty dollars..    I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes in February of 2023. Seventeen months later I no longer have diabetes or any of the other metabolic system problems that were looming thanks to Intermittent Fasting and low-carb calorie-deficit food intake.    Coming off food and alcohol has left me without the drugs of choice for self-medication. And so - I felt - and still do feel raw.. like - road rash raw. I am even more emotional than I was when I was fat. Or - maybe I am the same but with no shield to protect me from the rage and despair.    The last seventeen months has been a time of paring back, not only of food and drink, but relationships as well. I have even fewer friends now than I did before all this health shit started..    When I look at what Christians are doing to the country and how so many fellow citizens are just wrapping their arms around Christianity's sneering disapproval of science, gay folks, women's reproductive rights, literature, and their eager embrace of a man so clearly unfit for public office - I don't just dog-paddle in despair - I sound - like a humpback whale - thousands of meters down into icy pitch-black despair.   So - at this point - I'd have to say that in retirement I feel hunted - by Christians, by insurance companies, by drug companies, by the medical industry in general, by the specter of all the damage I've (probably) done to this body by decades of self-medication with food, by inflation, by the possibility of the empire descending into civil war or, more broadly the globe being set alight by a third world war..    And let's not forget about H5N1...    Why not try an anti-depressant? you may ask. No thanks. I've seen first-hand too many cases where they made things worse.. And - what about talk therapy? you may follow with.. Again - thanks but no thanks. I've lost the trust required to allow another person inside my head. I'll get by with what often keeps me going - the Dharma and the steadfast disbelief in happy endings...         ~