October Frustrations
I've lived a life marred by ideations, plans, and attempts of the most horrible type. Its been a true, life-long obsession since my father drove his car straight to hell without leaving the garage when I was 14. In my journey of healing and gaining perspective, I've closed many of the paths that can lead me into the abyss, but the one that seemingly will never leave my gaze is the existentialism.
My most destructive and closest attempt was at Christmas 2019, and it wasn't until then than saw my desire for life through the darkness. What followed was the angriest I've ever been. Imagine choosing to live, only to be thrust into a new world defined by paranoia, defiance, and opposition. I barely made it through the pandemic, and I'm one of the lucky few. The rage that I began to embody was so all-encompassing I nearly burned all my bridges to ash.
Since then, I've had fewer and fewer crises of confidence. Fewer and fewer moments where my self worth is so low that I think about leaving. But in replacement I've been angrier at the world than I've ever been.
While I've dealt with that anger now, I can see so many people in that volatile headspace that creates justification for Crusades. I was locked in a cycle of crusading for years. And currently, I'm dealing with it professionally, a blind crusade that threatened to burn down an entire organization that was started purely because people weren't willing to collaborate, they instead jumped to admonishment.
Even now, looking at people talking about the teachers strike and the proposed Back To Work legislation, people's opinions on this matter make me not want to live on this planet, not live at all. So many people today are just willing to talk out of their asses with full confidence, as if they're the first people to come up with an idea, or to think about something.
It's so pervasive in my life, my work environment, and the culture at large that I have to hold onto my friends with white knuckles to remind myself that good people can be reasonable. I'm faced with a collection of wonderful people that are being unreasonable in so many places, because no one seems to remove themselves from a situation and look at the bigger picture. The teachers aren't on strike because they want more money, they need support at work.
But when something is "a job," even like in my circumstances, people like to assume they know everything that's going on and everything that a job entails. It leads to so many one sided conversations where one party is just waiting for the ignorant passion to calm down so they can explain that these things are bigger than what's being talked about. Or that all these revolutionary ideas have been tried before and are on stage three, when you're standing here thinking you're the first person to say anything.
The fact that so many people are unwilling to collaborate to solve problems in service of something bigger, but would rather stroke their own egos through rhetoric is the most disgusting part of our world and makes me think about ole Ted.
The fact I'm not alone in understanding the headspace of the Unabomber in 2025 is a scary thing. Google Ken Chan who died in Edmonton in 2019.
I think about Ken nearly weekly because of all of the things happening in Alberta, I recognize, even through this news story, the headspace that Ken was in when he died. The crusading headspace. That really good documentary about Anthony Bourdain shows the exact same thing for the last 20 minutes. He made his partners trauma into his crusade, and I firmly believe that it is what created the mental environment for him to kill himself. I know because I've been there. That movie was traumatic to me because of how similar I have behaved and acted without the tragic end that Anthony Bourdain had.
And now, to see the state of my life, my community, and my province, I feel all the pulls to crusade. But because of time and work, my trauma response to toxic anger is complete shutdown now. I don't explode anymore, I implode. I can't crusade, all I can do is cry myself to sleep and live in executive dysfunction. But the keyword is live, so it's A-OK with me.
