New

“This made me tear up. I stopped applying it to video games. I read the news of investigative journalism, I listen to podcasts that uncover legitimate scams of products I thought were innocuous or even a net positive. The more I learn about politics and backrooms, the less I want to know.

When I left for college, I thought everything was going to be fine for my siblings. A year later, my dad showed up to pick up my little brother from an event drunk. To our knowledge, he had never had alcohol before. He had been drinking hard liquor on his way home and covering it with breath mints for decades, & got worse after the recession. I guess it explains a lot about his anger. Neither of them were allowed to drive home that night.

Last year I gave a eulogy for my grandfather, and wrote one in secret for my aunt who died 2 months prior. A year before that I was pallbearer for my great grandfather and my great uncle. When I remember things and people from my childhood, I don’t even remember them like I used to. Half of them, if not more are dead. Friends have all gone to who knows where. I remember feeling things when I remembered people, I remembered how happy, sad, angry, they made me feel. I remembered what they did. Now it’s hard for me to remember them in any other way except for the loss that their absence brings.

I played the original Sonic the Hedgehog as a kid, on a hand-me-down Sega Genesis from my cousin. I loved it, I always wanted to play more as a kid. It’s boring now. As a kid I loved my dad, then I hated him. Now I pity him.

I feel like I was born into a world on its deathbed and made to look like it’s in the prime of its life. I feel like I was told to expect things, not things that will never be, but to expect reasonable consistency from an environment that apparently changes so much, so fast. Is it just me? Have I changed? Did I set unrealistic expectations? Maybe. But those dead people aren’t me. Those riots aren’t me. Those homeless aren’t me. I didn’t make them up in my head, and they were alive when I remember them. I’m not crazy, I didn’t rig the market. I didn’t bribe lawmakers. I didn’t give those people cancer. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I feel like a dumber person would be happier. I wish I could see things with fresh eyes again too. I can’t even imagine”