It’s becoming increasingly clear I need to run. The only problem? There’s nowhere left to go.
I’ve run to the farthest corners of my lifetime plan, reached my goal and have landed where I’m supposed to be. I’m honoring ancestors, I’m in Nature. Yet somehow I don’t belong.
Am I here to be the protector of the property, peaceful with my ambient surroundings? Or have I just made a series of bad life choices and ran out of viable options for living?
There’s also the biggest question of all: If not here, then where? And how?
We’re on the edge of societal collapse. Housing costs are skyrocketed, and I’m not longer in the income bracket that can afford them. To start over, it would require walking away from what remains of my assets. I couldn’t afford these things 5 years ago, let alone now. I need a car, too. (And yes, this is a requirement for rural folks. This is not debatable.)
If I suddenly began to make better life choices and achieved these things, would I be any happier? Would I live more comfortably, or would there be new problems to contend with?
I’m a firm believer in life is what you make it. That you must seek happiness and positive aspects to be happy. And still I feel something suffocating about my current living situation. An anchor, pulling me into depths I cannot handle. People trapped on a property, forced to cosplay a family that does not function as a unit.
There is no simple solution to this problem. No communicating, no lecturing, no leadership can turn around this sinking ship. The urge to jump off and swim to shore grows stronger by the day.
I run to a job, but there’s that dreaded round trip that makes your heart sink. That feeling most people have when they begrudgingly head to work, except a whole lot sadder. The worst part? This is not the first time in my life that I’ve felt this heaviness on a home commute.
Luckily this time around I have a good job that I like escaping to, but that feeling is started to linger. It follows, like a cloud over my head, as I’m driving down the road. Constantly hovering, waiting for my reaction, my solution.
There’s nothing to do in this broken world except wait for the pieces to fall, for there to be no options other than cooperation for survival.
We can’t go on like this forever.
View of the west on a stormy night.