Dear Diary: How Do I Tell my Friends That I Want to Talk About Collapse Instead of Playing Badminton?
Where are all the others who can't pretend that everything is ok?
Watching the receding backs of my friends
Blenheim, Aotearoa NZ
Feeling…lonely, confused, not normal and not sporty. Is sporty a feeling? I’ll come back to that
Dear Diary
I do not want to be 'normal' or do 'normal' things. 'Normal' is different now. To behave as 'normal' feels...not normal. It feels weird, odd, clunky, strange.
By 'normal', I mean behaving in the orthodox Western fashion: living in a tightening spiral of work, productive leisure, consumption, complaining about being tired, adding a new productive hobby, going for a promotion, pretending everything is OK to the point where you believe it, etc.
I cannot do that. I cannot be normal and do normal things. Normal is weird. And not weird in a good way.
"Do you want to come and play badminton with us?" my friends ask.
"No, I do not want to play badminton! I want to talk to you about the collapse of everything we've ever known. I want to share fears and hopes and regrets and ideas, and lean in and hug, and have reverence for a world that is disintegrating around us all!"
"Huh? I can’t hear you. Are you coming?"
"No, thanks. Have fun."
Now that I know about the Unravelling of Practically Everything, I feel like I have moved into another realm of existence. I'm reminded of the double-doored vestibule at Auckland airport - you leave customs, and the doors close behind you. You need to wait in the empty rectangle before the next set of doors open, and you are released into Arrivals. I'm in the empty rectangle, and both sets of doors are shut.
The life I once knew, left behind, snapped shut. The life that awaits, yet to jerkily swing open.
"Oh, please, would you stop being so dramatic and get on with it"
I'm struggling to find anyone else to hang with in the liminal space of the rectangular vestibule where 'normal' feels clunky and fake, and badminton seems unfulfilling and pointless.
Where is everyone? Where are all the people like me?
"Why do they have to be people like you, huh? Isn't there enough People Like You already? Your People got us into this big sodding mess. You were complaining last week that globalisation and the attempted wholesale homogenisation of cultures to make People Like You is part of the many reasons that Practically Everything is Unravelling, weren’t you? You are a hypocrite, you are shit and you shouldn't exist"
By 'people like me', I mean those encountering the full scope of the breakdown of the biosphere, ecosystems, and socio-political, cultural, and spiritual systems for the first time.
The newly horrified. The freshly appalled. The recently aghast.
By 'people like me', I mean those spending long moments in any combination of incandescent shock, rage, despair, hopelessness, and/or guilt after being confronted by another aspect of our planetary crisis they were previously unaware of (or realising, as I did recently that collapse was always inevitable)
By 'people like me', I mean those who aren't already experts, or even a little bit knowledgeable or informed about the collapse of All The Things.
I mean those for whom the Unravelling of Practically Everything is new, surprising, horrifying, shocking, utterly dumbfounding —
"All those words basically mean the same thing. You suck"
—and they are gripped by dread, terror, and disbelief.
By 'people like me' I mean those who aren't already steeped in environmentalism, research, activism, advocacy, academia, journalism, teaching, art or any other field who have been living with, sharing, advising, navigating, or otherwise helping with all of...this.
By 'people like me' I mean those who didn't already have a relationship, history or affiliation with some of the main themes, threads, industries and fields that contribute to the Unravelling of Practically Everything.
I mean people who are just coming across all of this, people who had little knowledge, interest or exposure before now.
People who didn't really know much of anything outside of their own capitalist-informed hostage bubble, because they didn't have time or energy.... their days a blur of packed commutes, corporate politics, interest rates, school admissions, car payments...taking their daily dose of the progress myth while booking the dog into doggy daycare because he was supposed to bring the family together but no one has time to walk him and he ruined the carpet and now your husband is mad at you and he might be having an affair anyway because you just cannot keep up with the gym as well as everything else, just trying to get that next promotion, because everything will be ok then, won't it, please God, won't it?
Those people, whose days were like that, until they (probably involuntarily) realised the world's infrastructure—environmental, social, political, cultural—is crumbling, and they can no longer take part once they see it was always a superficially grand illusion.
I mean people who didn't have the imprint of nature growing up, who had to navigate life with any notion of the sacredness of trees and plants and other beings quickly stamped out by the school system and the Gospel of Science.
I mean people whose parents did their best but their mum was ill and died young and their dad was working or at the pub…a lot.
I mean people who, as kids, caught a butterfly, fascinated by its beauty, and wanted to keep it as a pet so they put it in a little box and when they opened the box the next morning the butterfly was dead, and they were surprised, sad, and so confused.
I mean people who loved to play outside as kids but would be scolded terribly for getting dirty.
I mean people who later didn't want to go outside because it might mess up their hair and then boys wouldn't like them and wasn't that the most important thing?
I mean people who, between adolescence and their thirties, were too distracted by eating disorders, codependent relationships, alcohol, drugs, YouTube, the furtive pursuit of self-help, trying to create an online business, consuming content while thinking that 'consuming content’ sounded icky but not knowing why, contemplating suicide now and then, downloading and deleting dating apps, and buying things without a second thought from well-known fast fashion retailers, not necessarily in that order, to contemplate for a moment what was going in the world.
People, who, in their own way, were muddling through. Until their picture of the world, themselves, their future, and everything else was pulverised into oblivion by, probably, a set of realisations or a chain of epiphanies, which revealed the stories they had built their lives on to be made of nothing but the vacuous promises of a society that told many lies about what it means to be a human on this earth.
"You are unnecessarily dramatic today. Go and play badminton with your friends and stop being such a loser"
People like me.
Dear Diary....are they out there?*
XOXO
*It would take me two years to learn they are all on Substack