Oof... Oooooof oof oof. I, um... I have this very bittersweet feeling of seeing someone I know at the top of this terrible peak, but my guts are in a knot as we both watch our heavy rocks roll back down in the distance. This is a peak no one should ever have to climb. I'm glad you're here. I wish you didn't end up here too. They lied. The view is sh*t!
So, yeah, a lot of this resonates with me, even if it's obvious that we didn't reach the peak from the same side and took a different path around it, but -- what a great analogy you have here -- no matter how you climb it, you end up in the same place in the end. It seems like you picked up more wisdom pebbles along the way as I'd never quite thought of childhood and the school curriculum like this. Or rather, I'd never allowed myself to realize that it was also part of the same overall issue, maybe?
I love/hate how you've coated things with all this... work culture? *Capitalism* culture? (Are they one and the same? I'm still learning)
I love how cleverly you reused formats, concepts, visuals and tools as a medium to tell your story and send that cry for help.
I hate how *true* it all feels. Why does life (as I recently remember it, at least) fit so well into these templates of pain? If it feels true, but it still doesn't feel *right* to me.
"Happiness (...)"
How, Mr Therapist, how does one maintain their House when it keeps being battered by the angry waves? Covered by the salt and the dust? Repeatedly and constantly weathered, if not outright broken by the world around it? And how do you keep at it when it's not the weather, but *people*, taking off lovingly placed bricks and planks, puncturing holes a little bit everywhere?
(ouhhh, that bit makes me mad so I'll hold back... but ouuuhhhh!!)
Also much resonance about the "something died in here" part. It took all of mid and higher education and 2,5 jobs, and it was such a slow death that realizing something was gone was not a moment in time but years of my life. Then some more to understand *what* had been killed.
OK, um... something positive again maybe? The creativity is there. It's obvious everywhere in this. And all that black goopy negative stuff can cover it all it wants and try to pretend it's The Real Thing and That Inevitable Thing Holding It All Together, I can tell you that you're still shining through and *you* are the Truth.
So let's keep shining. Even if only a bit goes through, it's enough for others to see that there are some out there still trying. Let's all be beacons to each other so that we don't feel alone in the dark.