People are Trash

This is the antithesis of all my years of therapeutic brainwashing.

This is the antithesis of all of Eastern Philosophy and Western bastardization of Eastern Philosophy that tells us to have loving compassion for all others.

This is a declaration that I’ve learned nothing from all of it, and yes, my anger, my bitterness, my resentment, yes it all makes me a bad awful person and I’m totally fine with that… because People are Trash so why do I give a fuck about rising above their bullshit? Has that universal compassion and empathy for everyone’s shortcomings given me any sense of comfort over the years —- honestly never.

I feel much more zen, repeating the mantra that People are Trash.

Here’s my ounce of compassion: people are weak and blind. They believe themselves to have certain values and prod along pathways assured they are prioritizing and behaving in ways that should command praise, and often they receive the praise, so that never once, not for a second, do they engage in deeper self reflection of examination of their lives. In fact the positive reinforcement ensures they never will. So they believe in their generosity, they believe in the higher purpose of their parenting, that they’ve put the needs of someone else over others, and they believe a career devoted to social justice, a career where they work 24/7 on call is the ultimate demonstration of their virtues. They are weak and blind and incentivized by a society they love to criticize but whose capitalistic and neoliberalist rewards feed them deeply and their self-righteousness is enough to keep them moving forward. So even if they are not horrible people, they are trash because they can’t take a stance against the powerful incentives of society, but worst of all is that they are hypocrites and ignorant, and that — is where they inflict damage all of us wounded, dispossessed, and on the short end of the stick. They ignore us, they alienate us, when our lives are too messy and filled with pain and hurt, they turn their backs on us, telling us we are too much, telling us to consider ourselves lucky we aren’t stricken with their problems, they inquire about our well-being only to greet the answers with uncomfortable silence and a desire to change the subject and whitewash all the aspects of our souls we laid bare upon their request.

I entertained the thought for a second – that because of 2020 – that the collective trauma of everyone facing hardships in a parallel path during the pandemic, no one untouched and living “their best life” in the middle of it, while details of challenges would differ, a sense of shared struggle would foster a greater sense of unity and collectivism – but it has not. People who never made the energy or time to really appreciate the struggles of others beyond ways it may boost their own savior-complex, are now so absorbed in their own stress and suffering and without any of the tools we all have been taught through our therapeutic brainwashing to understand how their emotions impact their actions. They justify own habits as what they need to survive. They never got force-fed this compassion talk at the mental hospital, they might not say nasty things b/c they know it will reflect poorly on them, but not expressing forceful judgment of others is not compassion. So I am supposed to understand that people are trash, that they’ll be trash when life is good for them, when life is bad for them, and that maybe, and only maybe, if some sort of karmic retribution serves them the same platter of bullshit and struggles that they’ll come around? Fuck that. There’s no justice in this world. We should all collectively acknowledge that after 2020.

Pre-pandemic my life so heavily incorporated social interactions, those interpersonal relationships were built into every aspect of my life and yes, I did derive a lot of joy from them and shared intimacy with many. But during the pandemic, a rift has been born, and although I do not want to dwell on the way the objective stressors of having financial, housing, health and access to healthcare insecurity — or how I was actually physically sick and incapacitated for a whole year, — or that I nearly hung myself and was detained and treated by a criminal by the police for being suicidal….. I don’t actually want to talk about these things. But if you ask — but then don’t want to actually listen, well fuck you. Why do I let people, people who are trash, why do I give them a piece of myself to them, to offer my vulnerability in vain hopes of a shared intimacy, of building community, a community of reciprocal support, for them to just make me feel like nothing. Invisible. I feel fine when I’m alone. I feel more alone when I talk to people who are trash. I’ve forgotten the lifestyle filled with people. I fill my life now with trees and coastlines and books… they never make me feel like shit.

People are trash. They don’t deserve me in their lives. If there are people, who I meet in real life, who make me laugh, who are engaging in story-telling, where that banter, that magic of fun that I use to bring to real-life interactions, if that happens — that’s great. But that’s all. I will not offer any more of myself to anyone. People are trash. They will never see me, and what happens, is that when they reach out only to ignore me, to disregard everything from their hyper ableist point of view, to assert the superiority of their life’s approach – how they’ve stood strong among their own struggles, I remember. I remember how day after day, I only had one good hour in the day, where I had to take care of all my needs. I remember the desperation, the incapacitation, the dismissive doctors, the rope around my neck and the freedom it promised me. I see the enormity of hardships my friends halfway across the world face, and that my friends here seem bored by – as these are just the natural normal hardships that brown bodies must endure, where loss of lives of others is just a hard fact,. They have progressive values that challenge that and acknowledge suffering of the oppressed, but they do not have personal relationships where they bear witness to it, that would give them any kind of heart-ache. They are living a higher purpose in their bastion of comfort. But they are trash.

I remember, I recall everything as some argument in my head to justify all the feelings I have that they will never see and validate or acknowledge. I argue that my experiences are real, that I didn’t make them up, that they aren’t the same as theirs, that they are unique in their own ways. I tell myself if they had experience the perpetual bad health and closed doors to medical access like I had, that their imagination doesn’t allow them to even visualize, they’d get it. But they probably won’t. Redemption is another lie I’ve held on too for too long. But if I don’t interact with people, if I don’t fucking get myself mucked up in all their trash, then I am safer and healthier. I give my energy to the things in life that lift me up.

Sure I am a person, and likely trash myself. But at least I know it, I can say it with straight face. You can tell me to meditate, you can tell me honor humanity, you can tell me that I will only make myself miserable if I fill my heart with anger and bitterness. And I can just say fuck off. I’ve tried living by values promoted by hypocrites and it has been nothing but misery.

By understanding that People are Trash, that seems far more promising way for me towards filling my life with joy and not flaming shit.