will zoloft help me to outlive the US empire?
It feels like I am stuck in a perpetual limbo ever since covid. We are trapped in stasis and the end of the end of history. At the end of the end of history lies the beginning of a new history.
The condition of the later millennial is that of broken optimism. Or perhaps more aptly, it's a sobering up from a narcissistic, saccharine naivete. A generation that comes of age in a post-soviet pre-twin-towers purgatory internalizes the fiction that is an eternal Pax Americana. It's an artifice of stability, presented as universal fact, when in reality it is a highly unusual moment of history that teeters on an unstable foundation. The correct default setting of American society is not peace, it is violence and death.
The sensation that most accurately describes my day-to-day experience of living inside American society is that of a frog that knows he is being boiled alive. I am reminded of a quote from Hyperobjects where he says: "The idea that we are embedded in a phenomenological lifeworld, tucked up like little hobbits into the safety of our burrow, has been exposed as a fiction." There's a low, slowly escalating buzz of mortal anxiety underpinning daily life. I don't know if it's just because I'm mentally ill or if everyone feels this way. Or maybe it's a spectrum. But that's how I feel. It's like I know that I'm about to run off the edge of the cliff at 60 miles per hour and I can't stop. Or actually, I think we have already run off the edge like a collective Will-E-Coyote, and I have already decided to look down and see that we're fucked, and most of my social peers and community seem to not be so spooked about that fact. So I don't know if they simply haven't looked down, or if I'm more worried than I should be.
I do think that I am more worried than the average person. I definitely have some sort of mental issues. I recently discovered that there is a much higher incidence of mental illness in my extended family on my maternal side than I was previously aware. I even already knew that there was some mental illness, but it's so common that I realized that I must be predisposed. Addictions, depression, anxiety, eating disorders. Now, my paternal side doesn't seem to have any classical mental illness, but there's a more explicit thread of intergenerational trauma, since my dad's dad was a war refugee.
That's all to say that I decided I need to try taking psych meds, which I've never done before. It's been almost a month since I started on the lowest dose of Zoloft. I don't know if it's doing anything yet. But I find myself genuinely hopeful and excited that it will do something to help. The most important part is that it's free, aka covered by Medicaid. Last year, I spent probably around 5 grand on therapy out of pocket because I was so convinced I needed to try therapy with someone who used Internal Family Systems. IFS was kind of amazing in that it allowed me to access some deeper, stuck emotions of grief that were obscured by so many layers of protection from having to live my life for two decades without having once addressed the core childhood traumas. However, because it was so expensive, it also made me way more anxious, so unfortunately it didn't feel like a net-benefit.
I'm cautiously hopeful that the meds will help me to look at things from a more generous angle. The revolutionary optimism that is necessary in a transitional historical moment. It's a fact that we are in the middle of a turning point. Power is turning hands. The USA, which has been the cause of most of the world's human suffering since 1945, is now facing a come-to-Jesus moment like no other. The rest of the world has materially advanced, and the USA has declined, to such a degree that this imperial violence can no longer be directed outward without ramifications. As a result, the edge of the spear returns inward to slice us instead. In the grand scheme of things, this is a good thing. I celebrate the downfall of the US empire. I still need to take care of my body and my mind in the midst of its collapse though.
The form that my optimism takes is one of clarity. I take solace in a hard-earned and painstaking understanding of reality, one that underlies the pretenses of not just "American culture", but of a deeper thread of "Western" epistemology from which it descends. The reality is that we are the earth's self awareness. We are subjects of the kingdom of animals. Whether you call it a Gaian Consciousness or the Laws of Physics, we are bound to it and subordinate to it. The delusion of colonialist thought lies in the reversal of this truth. The settler tried to shackle Mother Earth and now he is facing the bitter consequence of that insolence.
It does bring me a sense of relief and forward motion to know this, but old beliefs don't seem to go without a fight. There's a dimension of my mental illness that seems to be related to that. I don't know if that's legit. But I mean, it makes sense to think of it that way. If I'm mentally ill because I was a traumatized child, subject to a type of imperial violence by virtue of war, division, displacement, passed down through blood, then to survive inside of the actual imperial core must have necessitated downloading the program. In other words, some part of me had to believe that because I am a chink and I am a faggot, I have to abide by the rules here to survive.
Here's to hoping that the Zoloft helps me to fully shed some of those last beliefs. I mean, does that sound like a crazy hope? I don't know. I'm honestly just throwing the whole fucking kitchen sink at the wall now to see what sticks. I feel fucking crazy and ridiculous for trying to tabula rasa my brain at the age of 32. It's absolutely insane that it's taking me three decades to unravel myself enough to actually start moving in the direction of me. But I suppose it really is a better late than never. Woof.