why are so many people dying

yet another phone call i make to a next of kin
who screams to me
“i can't handle any more f***ing death” 

i am silent to hold space but
join the club 
there are no prizes.

she asked me why, 
after telling me on a hurricane evening, 
that one of my closest friends had committed suicide 

why are they dead but i’m still alive? 

the last time we talked 
only two months ago 
another one of our own had died.
they seem to all fall down like clockwork, 
as if the reaper is trying to meet a 
quota. 


she asked me, 
referring to her son and my 
former fiance 
who died three years ago 
almost to the day, 

“why did he have to die and you lived?”

as if the 30 seconds of wailing grief which immediately switched to 
sheer rage, 
the winds from hurricane helene did not shatter my windows 
but i nearly smashed them all out with a lamp because
they are all dying --
as if that wasn't enough,

let's just remind you that 
you are not supposed to be here either. 

almost everyone from home is gone. 
and the everything about the way we live 
fails everyone all the time. 

no one cares. 

no one has the bandwidth to provide support to those who need it 
because best case scenario 
they’re fighting with everything they have 
to pull themselves out of the mud, 

and then you have the other sector of the population 
who simply prefers bread and circuses 
and does not care. 

and i am tired 
of not screaming about this 
because none of this is normal. 


she asked me, 
after finding her body, 
why did he have to die, but you lived? 
as if i am guilty by existence. 

whenever we talk about a new death, the old ones get brought up. 
it seems like thats the only time we talk anymore. 


Hi. I’m 35 years old. I’ve lost more loved ones to murder, suicide and drugs than years I’ve been on the earth. And it hasn’t slowed down, it’s sped up. Especially the suicides. 

I told her I dont fucking know why I’m still alive and they aren’t, as if somehow its my fault and im some walking reminder of: 

“everyone else is dead, so maybe me being dead would make things seem more, whats everyones favorite word lately, EQUITABLE?”

referring to 
why did i get sober 15 years ago 
and why didn't he, 
and why did he die 
and why didn't i 

sorry that im still alive, 
ive tried to adjust that fact several times myself, 

i dont think she understood how much that stung 
especially after yet another one, 
yet another one, 
yet another one, 
is fucking gone

yet another phone call i make to a next of kin
who screams to me
“i cant handle any more fucking death” 
i am silent to hold space but
join the club 
there are no prizes

i told her,

“i have no idea why im still alive and mostly everyone i grew up with is fucking dead, i’d love to know myself, but i dont!”

i had to make calls to let others know, 
one call, 
two calls, 
three calls, 
four, 
all varying levels of 
anguish and dissociation, 
because all would ask, 

why is this happening so much? 
why is everyone dying? 
what is happening to 
us? 


its very hard to not disconnect entirely - 
you’re never really connected in the first place when everything you’ve known is gone, 
a level nobody understands except the few who have survived too, 
but we all have our own ways of adapting, 
and there’s really no functional way to adapt to that 


knowing how cruel and careless people are, knowing how little people give a shit about one another, 
a “fair weather” culture we’ve created at best —
its hard for me to believe that any of you are good anymore. 

and that must make me wretched too 
for i am still in human form, and, 
i can’t carry everyone either. 
i cant technically carry anybody. 

i learned long ago not to reach out for help because it has the opposite effect, 
people run the other way, 
so, 

i learned to keep to myself and fight with everything i have to survive, 
for what exactly sometimes i don’t know, 
but this is why i say survival mode is contagious, 
as are one sided relations, 

if everyone is thrown into survival mode because 
the last few years especially 
nobody can be truly turned to for anything, 
then all of your energy is used for your own survival and maintenance, 
thus you have little to spare for others, 
and so it goes. 

and every time i hear about another death, 
every time, 
the root cause, if it was suicide or overdose, 
was loneliness. 

is this the world all of you want to live in? 

the world where none of you give a fuck when a hurricane hits millions of people, but you're happy to point and laugh at death and suffering of the ones who weren't able to evacuate, or who don't vote like you? 

the world where none of you give a fuck when people kill themselves, are murdered or go missing, overdose, but you're happy to publicly trash "those damn degenerates"?

the world where all of you seem to very much give a fuck when it comes to arguing over political ACTORS and rooting for your favorite fake gladiator team - with a special sociopathic twist, as a decent portion of you wish death on perceived opponents, 

is this what makes sense to you? 
is this what you’ll continue funding with your life force? 

because anything you do not change, you choose. 

likely no one will change anything in the realm of deciding to be a better human being from reading this; i’d imagine not. 

but i for one am fucking tired of not screaming this - you’re lucky this is something you’re only reading on a screen. 

funny how that shields you from reality - until it’s at your door. 


flashing back to those words 

why did you survive 
as if i am somehow guilty 
that others did not.

how dare you live. 

what a familiar message. 


there’s no telling how i’ll meet my end, perhaps it’ll be the same as them. 
My story isn’t done yet. 
Be careful what the fuck you pontificate and speculate on, 
you just might get the resolve that answers that question. 


now what to do. another person is dead and yet another storm has come through showing true colors of far too many, 
combining the two has me nearly ejected from the web of life 


this keeps happening 
yet were all supposed to act like its normal
my entire community/place of upbringing is decimated 
and im out here “starting my life over” in my mid thirties 
wondering why my life doesn’t look like everyone elses — 

how the fuck do you explain that everything you once knew is dead 
when your hometown isn’t Fallujah? 

people are emotionally retarded. i mean that in the literal sense. they are stunted. there’s something wrong with them, truly. 
and ive about had it.

You want a pretty little bow on top of everything as a consumer, thats part of why we’re in this mess. fuck you. 
fuck us all, apparently. 

fuck me if i live and survive though insane shit because for some reason theres something in me that wont extinguish 
even when i try to take myself out - 
so far it has not worked. 

and do not misunderstand this, i am NOT suicidal, but i certainly have been, for easily half the time i’ve been on this earth, maybe more. it comes and goes. 

so i must be the asshole if i survive. 
and yet if i succumb to it
im also the asshole. 
how about fuck you entirely 
because there is no pleasing literally any of you. 

we have all failed each other. 

survival mode is a contagion, as are trauma bonds, as is being a fucking parasite, but that’s reserved for special “cluster B” types that can all be put underground.

you cant lean on people when you need help. 
most people will watch you burn because they’re too hypnotized or comatose to notice anything out of sorts, 
or they flat out don’t care. 

then there’s the other side of things, and i know im guilty of this fully. 
people are so overloaded with everything that their capacity to be a support system for others is unbelievably debilitated - compared to what it was say, ten years ago. 

or IDK, maybe just any time before 2020, because let’s be honest, everyone has been lobotomized since then by way of propaganda, EMF, and all sorts of other shit. 

so now we all live on planet retard and a lot of people are committing suicide. 

there are no adequate ways to help people who are severely fucked, and i’ve been one of those severely fucked people before. 

i remember trying to reach out for help and people backing away because it was too much for them. so i learned not to reach out for help anymore. 

somehow i survived, and fuck you, i will not apologize for that, but the fact that i felt guilty about my own ability to survive is sickening. 

that is how WEIRD it is if you are from where im from, 
in my peer group and still alive, 
its almost as if you are cause for 
some sort of 
suspicion. 

maybe you’re guilty of witchcraft 
because every time you got close to death you chose otherwise 
and you fought like fucking hell to get to where you needed to go, 
even if that meant perpetual suffering, mostly in silence, for years on end. 

yes, i am aware that most people who are REALLY down and out do NOT have that much will left in them to fight that hard, nor should they have to. 
no one should. 
but is life fair? 
no. 

and there are a lot of us who have to do that and are still breathing, 
and there are a lot of us who tried to do it and are not breathing. 

i am not the arbiter of who lives and dies. i do not have the magical cure-all answer. 

i still fight every day, thats why i dont have the capacity to carry the world on my fucking back, though i have tried countless times. 
it takes everything to carry myself, and this is what we are all dealing with, 
best case scenario. 

no, it is not healthy. not at all. 

somehow im still here. one day i wont be. 
my friend was here recently.
six hours ago they found her lifeless body. 
and so it goes. 

its fucking horrible, really. 
there are things we can do to assist the departed.
so that will be done. 

the living are wretched 
and i know i am wretched too 
but i will no longer be silent about the godforsaken fucking warzone that everyone loves to sweep under the rug 

i go through photos of “the good days” 
you know, when people were alive, 
to see massive community photos of 30 to 50 people and most of them gone, 
they were only taken a handful of years ago.

what do you expect?


i am not like you. i will never make sense to you because you lack basic skills of empathy - throwing out your own garbage filter for two seconds to imagine someone elses shoes:

im pretty sure the whole “everyone and everything dies” phase of life is typically something that takes place when you’re old, not between the ages of 21 and 35, particularly between 25 and 35, and holy shit don’t get me started on the deaths in the last three years alone. i have lost count for JUST THE LAST THREE YEARS. 

apparently the reaper has a quota. 


people are so burnt out they cant support each other 
they cant even process death 
none of us can anymore

but at least theres some comfort when we can talk to one another 
from 3000 miles away 
because at least we know the truth 
we’ve watched them all fall down

we know. but, there’s only so much we can say. at some point we just… almost seem like we ourselves have no reaction. 

i’ll just say this before i die
let none of you try and take credit for being more than whatever you were when i was alive. 
if you were a piece of shit who stood by and watched the fire burn and wore a mask of deception and indifference, sit the fuck down and shut up. 


i hope to god my death comes naturally 
and not concluded with a suicide note

i hope to god my death comes naturally 
and not concluded by someone else’s will

i hope to god my death comes naturally 
and not concluded by the screams of agony from 
yet another
overdose

i hope to god that we never say 
dying of the above mentioned 
is now a death of 
natural causes 
due to the social agreements we’ve all 
silently made 

rage
because im tired of playing this game 
rage
because no one sees us 
rage
because everyone keeps dying 

do not tell me you understand
you don’t
unless you are my exact age and have lost an uncountable amount of people, your closest people, watched the rest of the world give NO fucks, and watched everything you knew turn to nothingness more than once, no, you know nothing. 
nothing of this, at least. 

if you did 
i doubt you’d live how you do. 
if you are one of those people
so hypnotized by 
you.