Thank you for your writing. It's important to see the perspectives of others. Now imagine giving birth to a person who no longer acknowledges your existence because of politics. Yeah, when you think about it, for all its promise and glory, life also delivers to us a series of betrayals. I'm older than you and have come to realize that letting go of our past accomplishments makes room to expand our consciousness. And expansion of consciousness is the greatest gift given to us by Life.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Best wishes.
Thank you for this. I hear the weight of what you’re saying, especially that particular kind of loss that doesn’t come with a funeral, only a silence.
You’re right. For all its promise, life also hands us betrayals, some of them so intimate they reorder us. Politics may be the surface, but the fracture runs deeper than that, into identity, belonging, and love.
What you say about letting go of past accomplishments feels true to me. Not as erasure, but as release. Making room for a wider consciousness may be the last real work we’re given, and perhaps the most difficult.
I’m grateful you shared this perspective. It’s generous, hard-won, and it stays with me.
I’m a woman, a black woman 10yrs younger than you and the depression is real. Our country has changed and feels so badly broken. Point of no return. Looking back and knowing what we now know, I can see the many routes that lead us to where we are now and how the consequences of the two faced nature of our country has come home to roost. Didn’t think we needed to rebuild completely but there was a lot of rot that we ignored, accepted, didn’t question but after seeing the extent of the exposed rot, I choose to believe it’s ultimately for the best.
I absolutely LOVE your writing. You remind me of the America I grew up believing in, in spite of the hateful nature of some of our fellow Americans. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you remind me of honest goodness. That’s what I miss most collectively but I am beyond grateful that in spite of these heavy and turbulent days, voices like yours break through. Thank you.🙏🏾 ❤️
Thislittlelight….the math tells me we are about the same age. I just want to share a little observation….it is the women, especially black women like yourself, who are leading the charge to save this country. The likes of Jasmine Crockett, Tara Setmayer, Danielle Moodie, and others providing fresh, youthful energy and intelligence is inspiring. This average, aging, midwestern white dude is totally here for it and doing what I can to support them all. Seeing this energy unleashed and gaining well deserved recognition gives me hope for the future and gets me through some of the dark nights Tom has written about so honestly.
As a generalization (as fraught as such statements can be), black women have been the most reliable, most pragmatic rock of our voting public. I can only imagine that being a woman and being black, one has a better perspective of and appreciation for what there is to lose, because the struggle to attain it was so brutal and long. As a 42 yr old white guy, I had the luxury of not seeing everything for what it was and to take it all for granted.
The debt our society owes black women cannot be understated.
Wow. Thank you. I’m also from the Midwest, born and raised in Chicago. You’ve inspired some swirling thoughts for me that I hope to capture about how different regions of the country shape us. Thank you so much for sharing your light.
Thank you so much for this. It means more than I can say.
You’re right, the depression is real, and so is the reckoning. Seeing the rot clearly hurts, but I respect your choice to believe that exposure is a necessary step toward something better. That takes strength.
Your words about honest goodness really landed with me. If my writing carries even a trace of the country you hoped for, then it’s worth continuing. I’m grateful for your voice too, and for the clarity and grace you bring to this moment. ❤️
Your writing is so so so worth continuing. Life doesn’t just expose rot, it also exposes the truth of what is real and always exists; the light of love. We can take as many detours as humans as we want but the essence of who we are can never be eradicated. Too many souls like you, perhaps weary for sure, manage to gather up all the fragments of life and alchemize them into something somehow more than worth the pain of living. Makes others more willing to help pick up the pieces too especially when we have examples that stand steady and true and are willing to rise, time and time again. ❤️
Thank you. That means more than I can say. Weariness does not erase the core, and sometimes all we can do is keep standing and tell the truth of what we see. If that helps someone else gather a few pieces, then the effort was worth it.
A fellow midwestern Tom here (KS). I happily just stumbled upon your writing. Excellent and important work to share during these challenging times. Thank you.
Thank you for this. Some of are reading your words and taking a certain nourishment from them. There have been too many times I felt that I was the lone observer of the degradation of this country. It helps to know I’m not. I’m not some old guy who’s fading.
Some of my friends find me too intense. It’s harder for them to be around me because I keep wanting to warn them and inform them. I might as well be that caricature of the grizzled wild eyed dude warning everyone that the end is nigh.
I’m becoming more comfortable with that image. And I will keep my intensity.
You’re not fading. What you’re describing is what it feels like to stay awake in a culture that rewards not looking too closely. That kind of awareness can feel lonely, especially when others call it “too intense” because it unsettles their need for things to feel fine.
The grizzled, wild-eyed warning figure isn’t a joke. It’s a role that shows up in every unraveling society. In the moment, those people are inconvenient. Later, they’re called prescient.
There are more of us than it seems, reading each other quietly, taking nourishment where we can. Keep the intensity. Not as performance, but as witness. Noticing, and refusing to look away, still matters.
It's amazing how much one can feel so alone in a sea of people.
I've been mourning something profound, almost entirely alone. Refusing to budge, to give in to the lie, to seek comfort in turning a blind eye, it's all very lonely. My wife is the only person in my life that shares my perspective. Nobody else is willing to look it in the eye and call it what is is. Whether it's protecting their egos or titillating their erogenous zones, they've found a peace with things and can't understand why I haven't, or why I can't.
It's not just loneliness, either. I've had my identity ripped away. Belief in our previously-espoused values was the closest thing to a religion I had. I'm not sure where things go from here, but it's hard to imagine the future anymore. It's all so unclear and unrecognizable.
There’s a special kind of loneliness that comes from refusing to look away. When you won’t accept the lie or numb yourself for comfort, you end up isolated,even in a crowd. That’s not weakness; it’s clarity, and clarity often comes at a cost.
Losing belief in shared values is real grief. It strips away identity and orientation, like losing a faith. Most people patch that loss with distraction or denial. You didn’t, and that’s why it hurts.
The fact that your wife sees it with you matters more than it may feel right now. Even one shared witness keeps the truth from disappearing entirely.
You’re not broken. You’re having a sane response to something deeply disorienting,and you’re not as alone as it seems.
Thank you for saying this. You’re absolutely right about DRGs and what they did to care and to the people who tried to practice it with integrity. It takes a toll when you realize the system values money over patients, yet you stayed and did the work anyway. That matters.
Please know your words about my sister mean a great deal. I’ll pass them on. And thank you for the reminder that none of us are alone. Cheers back to you.
Registered nurse 40+ years. Lost 300k in my IRA in 2008 at 50 . No time left in my career to replace it. I try to comfort myself that it wouldn’t have been enough anyway. But it was mine. I went without to save and invest it. It was stolen. And the thieves were not held accountable.
Threw me into clinical depression. Never recovered.
At 60 this nightmare of Dump and Co. got rolling. A decade of my life at the end of my life has been deformed and I have never felt this badly about the good ole USA. I don’t recognize my country. I have never hated anyone and now the list is long.
I ended a 50+ year since high school friendship when the ICE crap first started. I was talking to this person about it. I was angry and appalled. When I finished she said, “ as long as nothing happens to my family “ I said to her, “ that is exactly the problem “
Sometime after Thanksgiving this year I cannot remember which atrocity had occurred I was suicidal. I told my family and saying it out loud broke the dam. I felt relief. I had to scare my family to live. They did not understand but stood by me. I am forever grateful they love me that much. At the same time I will never ever hurt them in that way again.
My hope is this loss of the America I believed in will not come close to defeating me again.
I have felt better since then. I cry at unpredictable times unashamedly. I am no longer trying to wake anyone the hell up. I handle Dump and co. by knowing they will do the worst thing in every instance.
I feel prepared now. I am more comfortable in the knowing. I observe and laugh at any opportunity. I read and am more selective.
My world day to day is small. I protect myself now. I try to let go of regrets.
I was unmanageable too and would not want to have been any other way. I review and think I did a good job. I was myself.
I am overdrawn by over 600 bux this month! I have some debt. I am toying with using my high credit rating and just running up those cards to the max and not paying any of it back. What can they take? All I have is a 2012 Prius and a cat. Not decided yet about that scheme.
Thank you for this beautiful essay.
You are not alone . Your friend is not alone and your wife is not alone.
My sister is a nurse educator and has been going through some hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. When your entire education, based on actual evidence, is being questioned by some bubbas in the state legislature, it makes one want to give up. She’s like me though: stubborn and refusing to give into ignorant bullshit.
In the 90’s DRG’s came into effect. Diagnosis Related Groups which meant insurance companies gave a certain amount of money for example for all gallbladder surgeries. As you know not all surgeries of any kind turn out the same way nor on the same timetable. This meant hospitals pushed patients out when their “ time was up “. This was often disastrous not to mention immoral. That was when it all went truly to shit. I stayed . I was an excellent nurse. All my patients and colleagues said so. Hah! I was changed because I came to know it was not about patients but money. Always the money. I can only imagine how much worse it has gotten since I retired in 2016.
Greetings to your sister. Tell her my hat is off to her. And tell her she is not alone.
Thanks for listening. Oh and you are not alone . Cheers.
If you are going to buy things, but things that will help with long term survival, skill building, and community building.
I recommend the you tube page "The Offended Outcast " written by an elderly disabled gentleman.
And I recommend the book
"How To Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round". They do a good job of breaking down gardening skills and setups for beginners, pictures of sample setups, including the use of GROW LIGHTS and how to tell which will work for you.
I am really glad you found your way here. What you wrote feels familiar to a lot of us, even if most people do not say it out loud. It can feel lonely carrying those thoughts while the world insists on business as usual.
I think you are right that we grew up in a rare pocket of relative calm, and realizing that can be unsettling, especially when you look at your kids and want to protect them from the weight of it. There is a quiet love in choosing to keep things lighter with them, even while you do your own reading and thinking in private.
Thank you for taking the time to read and to write this. It means more than you might think to know the words land with someone who is paying attention. Peace to you as well.
I hear you. Seeing it early doesn’t make you powerful, it just makes you lonely. Eventually you learn the limits, not just of what you can change, but of what people are willing to hear.
The cavalry fantasy dies hard. Admitting no one is coming means admitting it was always on us. Most people avoid that until they can’t.
What stays with me is your steadiness. Caring without despair is its own kind of courage. And choosing beauty, daily, isn’t escape. It’s how something human survives.
Others will carry on. Often quietly. Often without knowing who showed them how.
I was the intense wild-eyed young dude who figured out what was coming along about 45 years ago. Told everybody. No one listened (or they pretended not to); no one cared, near as I could tell. So I gave up. Probly made me a better person 'cause I learned a little about myself, like limits.
The things happening now are well within the bounds of what I envisioned back in the olden days, and I am constantly amused by people who are fulla consternations day by day. They are certain the cavalry will still come to the rescue even tho I know there is no cavalry.
I'm old. I do not care what happens to me, and I'm cheerful about that (it's my nature, I guess, and a gift from my parents). I care mightily about this nation and its people but I do not let it drive me to despair.
There is still beauty in the world, and I seek it every day. Keeps me going. I just hope others will carry on when I can't.
Happy to come across this. I am 68 and in New York and trying to come to grips with our failing country. I try to keep my thoughts to myself as best I can because most people seem happy to carry on assuming things will return to normal. So I read and think and now believe we grew up in a freakishly peaceful time which is now being destroyed. Willfully, deliberately destroyed. I worry about my kids’ future but I try to keep it light with them, they are adults and don’t need or want my “realism”.
I just found your writing and appreciate it. Thinking deeply and writing are great skills. You obviously have both. Thanks for your words. Peace.
I'm not a man on a front porch, but a woman on the back patio smoking cigarettes--I quit once for five years and another time for eight. I just turned 65, I've been invisible for a while. My son was diagnosed with ALS a little over two years ago, about a year after he retired from the Air Force, and moved almost down the street from me with his wife and my grandkids. He did three tours in Afghanistan. That was scary. ALS is worse. At least in war odds are you'll make it home in one piece and still breathing.
If feels like the world has ALS. At least, in this country it does and the entitled assholes who never gave anything to it, but extract everything from it are cutting off funding for medical research and telling us to buy fewer fucking dolls. All while they rape and pillage everything and everyone they can lay their filthy hands on.
Anyway, I've got the antidepressants. If I didn't I wouldn't be here. The cigarettes are a slow kind of suicide, I guess. Maybe, I'll die before my son does and before WWIII breaks out. I don't know. I don't want to wish myself dead. My best friend of over 36 years wished herself dead and one morning she was. Just died in her sleep.
I just wanted to thank you for sharing this. We're not alone. You wrote exactly what I feel and obviously what many others feel. It helps, a lot. Being unmanageable has a lot of advantages, you know, because while we can express the horror, sadness, and disbelief at what is happening to our country and what is being done in our name, we still have a lot of fucking fight left in us. No 80 year old, traitorous, orange piece of pedophilic shit is going to steal our grandchildren's future or the history laid down by those who came before us. It's our turn to fight in whatever way we can. We have to. Even if it's with words nobody will read. The sky will read them and the wind will carry them. They will have been written. They will have been said. Peace to you and enjoy your cigars. It's a time to take pleasure wherever we find it.
I hear you. What you said about your son hit me deep. Watching someone you love face something like ALS after giving so much of themselves already, it is a kind of helplessness that never really leaves you. The fear, the rage, the exhaustion,it makes every day feel heavy.
Being invisible is not nothing. It carries weight, but it also carries clarity. You see the theft, the entitlement, the way people take and take while giving nothing back. It is infuriating, and it is sad, and it is real. And still, here you are, speaking anyway, being present anyway, holding space for the truth. That is fight. That is resistance.
I am glad you have the antidepressants. I am glad you are here. I hear you on the cigarettes too. They are not weakness. They are a human way of coping with a world that can feel unbearable. Wanting to keep going, to keep moving through grief and fear, that is courage too.
You are right. We have fight left. We still get to speak, to write, to refuse to hand over our children’s future. Even if nobody reads the words, even if the world seems deaf, the sky reads them. The wind carries them. They exist. They matter.
Peace to you. Take pleasure where you can. The small victories, the breaths, the moments of being unmanageable, they are proof that we are still here. That we still matter.
Thank you for trusting me with all of this. Truly. What you wrote carries the weight of a whole life lived with conscience, discipline, and care and then watching the rules break only for those who were never meant to follow them.
You are right to name it plainly. What happened in 2008 was theft. Not metaphorical. Actual. You did everything you were told to do. Went without. Saved. Planned. And the people who engineered that collapse walked away intact. Anyone who tells you that kind of injury should not leave scars has never been paying attention. Depression, in that context, is not weakness. It is a sane response to betrayal.
What struck me most is the moment you told your family the truth. Saying it out loud did not end your life. It saved it. That takes courage most people never have. You did not traumatize them. You gave them a chance to show up. And they did. That matters. A lot.
Your clarity now. The acceptance that they will do the worst thing in every instance. The decision to stop trying to wake people up. The shrinking of your daily world to something you can protect. None of that sounds like defeat. It sounds like hard-won adaptation. You are not numb. You are still crying. Still laughing when you can. Still reading selectively. That is not giving up. That is choosing where to place your remaining energy.
On the credit card idea. I hear the exhaustion underneath it. The what do I really have left to lose feeling is real. But I want to say this carefully and honestly. Going down that road often creates a new kind of fear that lingers longer than the temporary relief. Collection stress. Legal noise. The sense of being hunted by systems that never forget. It can shrink your world further in ways you do not deserve. You have already carried enough weight. If you want, I can help you think through safer options that preserve your peace as much as possible without judgment or moral lectures.
Brutally honest articulation of something most men won't admit. The line about depression being 'a rational response to accurate perception' rather than chemical imbalance captures something essential. I've seen this in policy circles, where older experts with decades of knowlege get sidelined not for incompetence but for daring to remember how things used to actually work.
Absolutely. That’s the core of it,what many call “depression” in men, especially older men, is often not a malfunction but a clear-eyed, painful assessment of reality. We’re trained to hide it, to medicate it away, or to call it “chemical imbalance,” because admitting that the world looks bleak,or that we’ve been sidelined despite decades of knowledge,is socially unacceptable. The isolation, the silence, the sense of irrelevance: these aren’t failures of the individual; they are rational responses to being ignored, dismissed, or rendered obsolete in systems that once depended on our insight.
It’s the truth most men won’t say aloud: sometimes, the world has actually gotten that hard, and noticing it is what makes us “depressed.”
This was powerful, meaningful and moving. All of your writings are, but this....
Men and women's worlds in retirement are similar yet different. I heard you in talking about your father, your brother, you. So many passages I would like to engage in but that's not for me to do - it was for me to read.
But "When you’re young and invincible, you think you’ll always matter. That the world will always need what you know. Then you hit sixty-something and realize: the world still needs what you know. It just doesn’t need it from you.". I quit believing in 2021. I don't smoke cigars, or drink whiskey, but maybe I should start. And sit with your words
What you pulled out there is the quiet center of it, the moment when the illusion isn’t that we mattered when we were young, but that the world ever promised to keep asking us. The knowledge doesn’t evaporate. The need doesn’t disappear. Only the invitation does.
Your line about quitting believing in 2021 landed hard. Many of us have a year like that, when the scaffolding comes down and we’re left standing with clear eyes and no script. You don’t need cigars or whiskey for that. Sitting with the words, letting them keep you company, is its own kind of ritual.
I’m grateful you read so carefully, and with such restraint. That kind of attention is rare, and it’s the reason I keep putting the words out there at all.
Your words matter. You still matter. I know, easy for me to say, but I’m not bullshitting you, I promise.
I’d very much like to sit with you and your wife on your porch in Nebraska, and we could just be with each other. I’d bring my own libation, from my own neighborhood. Danville Crack, the snooty call it. I choose this “sad wine” for its ability to gently smooth the rough edges like the finest sandpaper. I haul it out for difficult times. Holidays and other reflective occasions that bring up pain and loss. I don’t drink it to forget, but to recall. A glass of courage that doesn’t depress somehow. Keep writing, Tom. It is a far better catharsis than the gars and amber liquid, and it touches us deeply.
Thank you. Truly. I don’t hear any bullshit in this, only kindness and recognition, and that carries real weight for me.
That porch sounds just right. The wine too. Not for forgetting, but for remembering how to stay human with one another. I’m grateful for your words, and for the life you describe so plainly and honestly.
I’ll keep writing. Knowing someone like you is out there, reading with that kind of intention, makes it easier to do so.
I’m bleeding money myself. What trickles in from subscriptions and coffee isn’t quite filling the gaps yet. All pleasurable things cut. All monthlies paused. Now skipping meals so my dogs can eat and have their healthcare and so I can keep my house and car.
But reading things like this and doing my own writing is keeping me just within mental stability and only a toe over the line.
So until I can afford to, all I can do is like, comment, and share.
Thank you for this beautiful gift that is your writing. It’s not happy but it resonates and somehow still hits the dopamine.
I’m really glad you said this. I’m sorry you’re carrying that kind of pressure right now, and the fact that you’re still showing up for your dogs and keeping things afloat says a lot about your heart. That kind of quiet sacrifice rarely gets seen.
It means more than you know that the writing helps you stay steady, even just barely. Knowing it resonates and gives you something to hold onto makes the work feel worth it. Liking, commenting, sharing, that all matters more than you might think.
Thank you for being honest, and thank you for reading. I’m rooting for you.
As always, I thank you for what you write. I relate so well because my husband died of depression by putting a gun in his mouth and shooting himself, because I’m alone in my house with his ghost and when I speak my words, go into the empty night air too, no one hears because even though I’m not a man, I’m still slowly disappearing, being erased by time by age, by the world today that I can’t grasp or understand. I do go to therapy and it helps for a little while and then life comes back. Thank you for writing things I relate to. You’re one of the few I kept on my follow list today. I’m cutting back for my own sanity.
I’m so sorry. What you shared carries a depth of grief that never really leaves, it just changes shape. Living with that kind of loss, with the presence of someone who is gone but never really gone, is an ache most people cannot understand unless they have lived it.
I hear you when you say you feel yourself slowly disappearing too. That sense of being unseen, of speaking into the night and hearing nothing come back, is real and painful. It does not mean you do not exist or that your life has lost its value. It means you have been carrying more than anyone should have to carry alone.
I’m glad you are in therapy, even if the relief is temporary. Sometimes all it can do is give us a little air before life presses back in. And I’m honored that the writing gives you something to hold onto, even briefly. It matters that it reaches you.
Thank you for staying, for reading, for choosing what protects your sanity. You are not disappearing here. I see you, and I’m grateful you spoke.
On many aspects, my experience couln't be farther from yours: I'm European, I'm still at work at sixty-five -- and just starting to notice my fading into irrelevance on the workplace (I'm still the problem-solver there, but ever more I see problems not being solved -- by choice or by sheer recklesness -- so my role wanes); I have children who will always need my support as they're both severely disabled, which means I'm necessarily in for the long distance; I live in a big city -- so no porch and big skies -- and I could go on.
Nonetheless, I can relate. No whiskey and no cigars -- never liked them, probably other, less visible ways to hurt myself; but this is exactly how I feel in the rare moments of honesty I allow myself: "We do not use words like “depressed.” We say we’re tired. We say we’re realistic. We pour another drink and light another smoke and tell ourselves we’re still in control of something. Men express depression through fatigue, irritability, loss of interest in things that used to matter. Through cigars and whiskey and silence."
The same feeling that what we learned -- what we did -- what we fought for is not real, is not relevant anymore. The sensation that we don't have anymore the right tools to *matter* in this world -- we still *see*, we probably understand what's coming better than younger people, but our knowledge, our lucidity is a useless tool. The climate has changed, Europe is weak, divided and plain stupid while formidable enemies are at work to destroy our lifestyle and our values: we see it, we see people around us sleepwalking into it -- and we can only feel Cassandra's despair.
Keep writing -- keep resisting -- also for those like me, who have lost the faith in their voice -- we are tired, we are silent -- but we are here -- for the long distance. Also because we have the livesaving luck of a loving partner with whom we're aging together.
You’re right, our lives are very different on the surface, and yet the interior landscape you describe is unmistakably familiar. That sense of still seeing clearly while realizing that clarity no longer grants influence is one of the quiet devastations of aging. Being the problem-solver while watching problems go unsolved by choice or recklessness is its own kind of erasure.
What you carry with your children adds a gravity most people never have to imagine. There is no opting out, no retreat into abstraction. That alone makes your endurance an act of resistance, whether it’s named that way or not.
The Cassandra feeling resonates deeply. Seeing the trajectory, understanding the stakes, and discovering that insight has lost its currency is profoundly disorienting. It isn’t that we stopped caring; it’s that the world changed the rules of relevance without telling us.
Your line about “the rare moments of honesty I allow myself” says everything. We learn to survive by staying functional, by translating despair into fatigue, irritability, silence. Different rituals, same ache.
I’m grateful you’re still here, still watching, still standing the long distance with a partner beside you. That matters more than the world currently admits. And I’ll keep writing, if only to leave a signal fire for those who no longer trust their own voice, but haven’t disappeared.
Incredibly human writing. I’ve felt invisible for quite some time. I’m still here though, so I’ll try to understand my own presence more. I’m very grateful for the beauty of your words.
“He never knew a world where you couldn’t talk to your brother-in-law because of politics. Never knew a world where facts themselves became partisan.”
How I envy those who never knew this current world. I’ve lost two sisters and a brother because of politics, and it’s so damn painful. I feel erased, both by my family and the world that decided I’m no longer important because I’m an older woman who is no longer working. And I happen to be one of those 12 million who have contemplated suicide because of the political climate that exists in our country today. It’s a daily struggle.
I’m so sorry. Losing family to politics is a particular kind of grief, because the people are still alive yet unreachable. That kind of loss keeps reopening the wound. What you’re describing makes sense, and it’s deeply painful.
Being made to feel erased because of age, or because you are no longer working, is another quiet cruelty of this moment. It does not mean you have lost your worth. It means the culture has lost its bearings. Older women carry history, memory, and hard earned clarity, even when the world pretends not to need it.
Thank you for saying out loud how heavy this has been. You are not weak for struggling with it. You are responding to a reality that has become harsh and disorienting. I hear you, and you matter more than this moment makes it seem.
You’re right, some depressions are earned, shaped by the world as it is, not just chemistry. I’m grateful you’re still here, still resisting the call, still holding space for love and memory. If my words can sit among the things you carry close, I’m honored.
Sometimes just writing is enough. Something that this world is missing is the fact that some things don’t need to be justified, to be validated by commercial interests. Great writers write because they have to…not because it’s going to be read, or sold, or even appreciated, but because it’s their form of therapy. Love your perspective on life and willingness to bear your soul, hopefully to help others understand that all we’re in this together. Thanks brother
Yes. Sometimes writing is the point, not the payoff. No audience, no market, no justification. Just the need to get the truth out of your own head and onto the page.
The writers who matter do it because they have to. It’s a kind of therapy, a way to stay honest. If it helps someone else feel less alone, that’s a gift, not the goal.
I appreciate the words, brother. We are in this together.
Little more of me in this than I expected to find. Last year, I was three years older than my grandpa when he died, and three years younger than my dad; in my own atheist way, it was time to get right with god. Sometimes, I figure a little self-destructiveness ain't so bad when the story only ends one way, anyway. But as you've reminded me, then there is her face, watching me. And like it or not, there's a reason to go for the long-distance.
I hear this. That moment when the math of age catches up to you is sobering in a way nothing else is. You start measuring yourself not against the future but against the dead, and suddenly the old metaphors don’t work anymore. Even for atheists, there’s a reckoning. Call it god, call it gravity, call it the bill coming due.
I get the flirtation with self‑destruction too. When the ending feels fixed, it’s tempting to burn a little on the way out, to mistake damage for honesty. But then there’s that face. The witness. The one person who collapses the abstraction and turns “one way anyway” into a lie we tell ourselves. Love is inconvenient that way. It insists on time. It argues for endurance.
So yes. Long-distance it is. Not because it’s noble, but because it’s necessary. Because staying alive and paying attention is its own kind of work.
And you’re right about that last part. We do have work to do.
The 2024 election hit me hard, because it feels very much like these terrible times are the logical endpoint of everything I've done in my adult life, and because I knew, that Wednesday morning, that I'll be dead before it's clear how this story ends. But then, I figured that if it's been really my whole adult life (I'm counting it from the War on Terror, when I worked for the Ctr. for Constitutional Rights), then this fight is really my home.
I take a lot of comfort in being in the third of my life that only ends one way, because I don't have time to fuck around trying to be better at what I suck at, only to do what I can do well, well. And since my primary vice is coffee, if I decide to fear death, I can choose to believe those occasional reports that say eight cups a day are good for longevity.
Sure would like to see how this all turns out, though.
Thank you for your writing. It's important to see the perspectives of others. Now imagine giving birth to a person who no longer acknowledges your existence because of politics. Yeah, when you think about it, for all its promise and glory, life also delivers to us a series of betrayals. I'm older than you and have come to realize that letting go of our past accomplishments makes room to expand our consciousness. And expansion of consciousness is the greatest gift given to us by Life.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Best wishes.
Thank you for this. I hear the weight of what you’re saying, especially that particular kind of loss that doesn’t come with a funeral, only a silence.
You’re right. For all its promise, life also hands us betrayals, some of them so intimate they reorder us. Politics may be the surface, but the fracture runs deeper than that, into identity, belonging, and love.
What you say about letting go of past accomplishments feels true to me. Not as erasure, but as release. Making room for a wider consciousness may be the last real work we’re given, and perhaps the most difficult.
I’m grateful you shared this perspective. It’s generous, hard-won, and it stays with me.
I’m a woman, a black woman 10yrs younger than you and the depression is real. Our country has changed and feels so badly broken. Point of no return. Looking back and knowing what we now know, I can see the many routes that lead us to where we are now and how the consequences of the two faced nature of our country has come home to roost. Didn’t think we needed to rebuild completely but there was a lot of rot that we ignored, accepted, didn’t question but after seeing the extent of the exposed rot, I choose to believe it’s ultimately for the best.
I absolutely LOVE your writing. You remind me of the America I grew up believing in, in spite of the hateful nature of some of our fellow Americans. I guess what I’m trying to say is that you remind me of honest goodness. That’s what I miss most collectively but I am beyond grateful that in spite of these heavy and turbulent days, voices like yours break through. Thank you.🙏🏾 ❤️
Thislittlelight….the math tells me we are about the same age. I just want to share a little observation….it is the women, especially black women like yourself, who are leading the charge to save this country. The likes of Jasmine Crockett, Tara Setmayer, Danielle Moodie, and others providing fresh, youthful energy and intelligence is inspiring. This average, aging, midwestern white dude is totally here for it and doing what I can to support them all. Seeing this energy unleashed and gaining well deserved recognition gives me hope for the future and gets me through some of the dark nights Tom has written about so honestly.
As a generalization (as fraught as such statements can be), black women have been the most reliable, most pragmatic rock of our voting public. I can only imagine that being a woman and being black, one has a better perspective of and appreciation for what there is to lose, because the struggle to attain it was so brutal and long. As a 42 yr old white guy, I had the luxury of not seeing everything for what it was and to take it all for granted.
The debt our society owes black women cannot be understated.
so very true, thanks for your most relevant observation!!
Thanks for reading!!
Wow. Thank you. I’m also from the Midwest, born and raised in Chicago. You’ve inspired some swirling thoughts for me that I hope to capture about how different regions of the country shape us. Thank you so much for sharing your light.
Thank you. Take care.
Thank you!! I will.
Thank you so much for this. It means more than I can say.
You’re right, the depression is real, and so is the reckoning. Seeing the rot clearly hurts, but I respect your choice to believe that exposure is a necessary step toward something better. That takes strength.
Your words about honest goodness really landed with me. If my writing carries even a trace of the country you hoped for, then it’s worth continuing. I’m grateful for your voice too, and for the clarity and grace you bring to this moment. ❤️
Your writing is so so so worth continuing. Life doesn’t just expose rot, it also exposes the truth of what is real and always exists; the light of love. We can take as many detours as humans as we want but the essence of who we are can never be eradicated. Too many souls like you, perhaps weary for sure, manage to gather up all the fragments of life and alchemize them into something somehow more than worth the pain of living. Makes others more willing to help pick up the pieces too especially when we have examples that stand steady and true and are willing to rise, time and time again. ❤️
Thank you. That means more than I can say. Weariness does not erase the core, and sometimes all we can do is keep standing and tell the truth of what we see. If that helps someone else gather a few pieces, then the effort was worth it.
A fellow midwestern Tom here (KS). I happily just stumbled upon your writing. Excellent and important work to share during these challenging times. Thank you.
Thank you so much!!
Thank you for this. Some of are reading your words and taking a certain nourishment from them. There have been too many times I felt that I was the lone observer of the degradation of this country. It helps to know I’m not. I’m not some old guy who’s fading.
Some of my friends find me too intense. It’s harder for them to be around me because I keep wanting to warn them and inform them. I might as well be that caricature of the grizzled wild eyed dude warning everyone that the end is nigh.
I’m becoming more comfortable with that image. And I will keep my intensity.
You’re not fading. What you’re describing is what it feels like to stay awake in a culture that rewards not looking too closely. That kind of awareness can feel lonely, especially when others call it “too intense” because it unsettles their need for things to feel fine.
The grizzled, wild-eyed warning figure isn’t a joke. It’s a role that shows up in every unraveling society. In the moment, those people are inconvenient. Later, they’re called prescient.
There are more of us than it seems, reading each other quietly, taking nourishment where we can. Keep the intensity. Not as performance, but as witness. Noticing, and refusing to look away, still matters.
Thank you for this.
It's amazing how much one can feel so alone in a sea of people.
I've been mourning something profound, almost entirely alone. Refusing to budge, to give in to the lie, to seek comfort in turning a blind eye, it's all very lonely. My wife is the only person in my life that shares my perspective. Nobody else is willing to look it in the eye and call it what is is. Whether it's protecting their egos or titillating their erogenous zones, they've found a peace with things and can't understand why I haven't, or why I can't.
It's not just loneliness, either. I've had my identity ripped away. Belief in our previously-espoused values was the closest thing to a religion I had. I'm not sure where things go from here, but it's hard to imagine the future anymore. It's all so unclear and unrecognizable.
Thank you for saying this so honestly.
There’s a special kind of loneliness that comes from refusing to look away. When you won’t accept the lie or numb yourself for comfort, you end up isolated,even in a crowd. That’s not weakness; it’s clarity, and clarity often comes at a cost.
Losing belief in shared values is real grief. It strips away identity and orientation, like losing a faith. Most people patch that loss with distraction or denial. You didn’t, and that’s why it hurts.
The fact that your wife sees it with you matters more than it may feel right now. Even one shared witness keeps the truth from disappearing entirely.
You’re not broken. You’re having a sane response to something deeply disorienting,and you’re not as alone as it seems.
Inside, I know all of this; but sometimes you just need someone else to say it to you and validate your humanity.
Thank you for saying this. You’re absolutely right about DRGs and what they did to care and to the people who tried to practice it with integrity. It takes a toll when you realize the system values money over patients, yet you stayed and did the work anyway. That matters.
Please know your words about my sister mean a great deal. I’ll pass them on. And thank you for the reminder that none of us are alone. Cheers back to you.
Wow. The way you write!
Registered nurse 40+ years. Lost 300k in my IRA in 2008 at 50 . No time left in my career to replace it. I try to comfort myself that it wouldn’t have been enough anyway. But it was mine. I went without to save and invest it. It was stolen. And the thieves were not held accountable.
Threw me into clinical depression. Never recovered.
At 60 this nightmare of Dump and Co. got rolling. A decade of my life at the end of my life has been deformed and I have never felt this badly about the good ole USA. I don’t recognize my country. I have never hated anyone and now the list is long.
I ended a 50+ year since high school friendship when the ICE crap first started. I was talking to this person about it. I was angry and appalled. When I finished she said, “ as long as nothing happens to my family “ I said to her, “ that is exactly the problem “
Sometime after Thanksgiving this year I cannot remember which atrocity had occurred I was suicidal. I told my family and saying it out loud broke the dam. I felt relief. I had to scare my family to live. They did not understand but stood by me. I am forever grateful they love me that much. At the same time I will never ever hurt them in that way again.
My hope is this loss of the America I believed in will not come close to defeating me again.
I have felt better since then. I cry at unpredictable times unashamedly. I am no longer trying to wake anyone the hell up. I handle Dump and co. by knowing they will do the worst thing in every instance.
I feel prepared now. I am more comfortable in the knowing. I observe and laugh at any opportunity. I read and am more selective.
My world day to day is small. I protect myself now. I try to let go of regrets.
I was unmanageable too and would not want to have been any other way. I review and think I did a good job. I was myself.
I am overdrawn by over 600 bux this month! I have some debt. I am toying with using my high credit rating and just running up those cards to the max and not paying any of it back. What can they take? All I have is a 2012 Prius and a cat. Not decided yet about that scheme.
Thank you for this beautiful essay.
You are not alone . Your friend is not alone and your wife is not alone.
I am with you.
My sister is a nurse educator and has been going through some hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. When your entire education, based on actual evidence, is being questioned by some bubbas in the state legislature, it makes one want to give up. She’s like me though: stubborn and refusing to give into ignorant bullshit.
Hang in there. You are definitely not alone
Thank you.
In the 90’s DRG’s came into effect. Diagnosis Related Groups which meant insurance companies gave a certain amount of money for example for all gallbladder surgeries. As you know not all surgeries of any kind turn out the same way nor on the same timetable. This meant hospitals pushed patients out when their “ time was up “. This was often disastrous not to mention immoral. That was when it all went truly to shit. I stayed . I was an excellent nurse. All my patients and colleagues said so. Hah! I was changed because I came to know it was not about patients but money. Always the money. I can only imagine how much worse it has gotten since I retired in 2016.
Greetings to your sister. Tell her my hat is off to her. And tell her she is not alone.
Thanks for listening. Oh and you are not alone . Cheers.
If you are going to buy things, but things that will help with long term survival, skill building, and community building.
I recommend the you tube page "The Offended Outcast " written by an elderly disabled gentleman.
And I recommend the book
"How To Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round". They do a good job of breaking down gardening skills and setups for beginners, pictures of sample setups, including the use of GROW LIGHTS and how to tell which will work for you.
I am really glad you found your way here. What you wrote feels familiar to a lot of us, even if most people do not say it out loud. It can feel lonely carrying those thoughts while the world insists on business as usual.
I think you are right that we grew up in a rare pocket of relative calm, and realizing that can be unsettling, especially when you look at your kids and want to protect them from the weight of it. There is a quiet love in choosing to keep things lighter with them, even while you do your own reading and thinking in private.
Thank you for taking the time to read and to write this. It means more than you might think to know the words land with someone who is paying attention. Peace to you as well.
I hear you. Seeing it early doesn’t make you powerful, it just makes you lonely. Eventually you learn the limits, not just of what you can change, but of what people are willing to hear.
The cavalry fantasy dies hard. Admitting no one is coming means admitting it was always on us. Most people avoid that until they can’t.
What stays with me is your steadiness. Caring without despair is its own kind of courage. And choosing beauty, daily, isn’t escape. It’s how something human survives.
Others will carry on. Often quietly. Often without knowing who showed them how.
I was the intense wild-eyed young dude who figured out what was coming along about 45 years ago. Told everybody. No one listened (or they pretended not to); no one cared, near as I could tell. So I gave up. Probly made me a better person 'cause I learned a little about myself, like limits.
The things happening now are well within the bounds of what I envisioned back in the olden days, and I am constantly amused by people who are fulla consternations day by day. They are certain the cavalry will still come to the rescue even tho I know there is no cavalry.
I'm old. I do not care what happens to me, and I'm cheerful about that (it's my nature, I guess, and a gift from my parents). I care mightily about this nation and its people but I do not let it drive me to despair.
There is still beauty in the world, and I seek it every day. Keeps me going. I just hope others will carry on when I can't.
Happy to come across this. I am 68 and in New York and trying to come to grips with our failing country. I try to keep my thoughts to myself as best I can because most people seem happy to carry on assuming things will return to normal. So I read and think and now believe we grew up in a freakishly peaceful time which is now being destroyed. Willfully, deliberately destroyed. I worry about my kids’ future but I try to keep it light with them, they are adults and don’t need or want my “realism”.
I just found your writing and appreciate it. Thinking deeply and writing are great skills. You obviously have both. Thanks for your words. Peace.
I'm not a man on a front porch, but a woman on the back patio smoking cigarettes--I quit once for five years and another time for eight. I just turned 65, I've been invisible for a while. My son was diagnosed with ALS a little over two years ago, about a year after he retired from the Air Force, and moved almost down the street from me with his wife and my grandkids. He did three tours in Afghanistan. That was scary. ALS is worse. At least in war odds are you'll make it home in one piece and still breathing.
If feels like the world has ALS. At least, in this country it does and the entitled assholes who never gave anything to it, but extract everything from it are cutting off funding for medical research and telling us to buy fewer fucking dolls. All while they rape and pillage everything and everyone they can lay their filthy hands on.
Anyway, I've got the antidepressants. If I didn't I wouldn't be here. The cigarettes are a slow kind of suicide, I guess. Maybe, I'll die before my son does and before WWIII breaks out. I don't know. I don't want to wish myself dead. My best friend of over 36 years wished herself dead and one morning she was. Just died in her sleep.
I just wanted to thank you for sharing this. We're not alone. You wrote exactly what I feel and obviously what many others feel. It helps, a lot. Being unmanageable has a lot of advantages, you know, because while we can express the horror, sadness, and disbelief at what is happening to our country and what is being done in our name, we still have a lot of fucking fight left in us. No 80 year old, traitorous, orange piece of pedophilic shit is going to steal our grandchildren's future or the history laid down by those who came before us. It's our turn to fight in whatever way we can. We have to. Even if it's with words nobody will read. The sky will read them and the wind will carry them. They will have been written. They will have been said. Peace to you and enjoy your cigars. It's a time to take pleasure wherever we find it.
I hear you. What you said about your son hit me deep. Watching someone you love face something like ALS after giving so much of themselves already, it is a kind of helplessness that never really leaves you. The fear, the rage, the exhaustion,it makes every day feel heavy.
Being invisible is not nothing. It carries weight, but it also carries clarity. You see the theft, the entitlement, the way people take and take while giving nothing back. It is infuriating, and it is sad, and it is real. And still, here you are, speaking anyway, being present anyway, holding space for the truth. That is fight. That is resistance.
I am glad you have the antidepressants. I am glad you are here. I hear you on the cigarettes too. They are not weakness. They are a human way of coping with a world that can feel unbearable. Wanting to keep going, to keep moving through grief and fear, that is courage too.
You are right. We have fight left. We still get to speak, to write, to refuse to hand over our children’s future. Even if nobody reads the words, even if the world seems deaf, the sky reads them. The wind carries them. They exist. They matter.
Peace to you. Take pleasure where you can. The small victories, the breaths, the moments of being unmanageable, they are proof that we are still here. That we still matter.
Thank you for trusting me with all of this. Truly. What you wrote carries the weight of a whole life lived with conscience, discipline, and care and then watching the rules break only for those who were never meant to follow them.
You are right to name it plainly. What happened in 2008 was theft. Not metaphorical. Actual. You did everything you were told to do. Went without. Saved. Planned. And the people who engineered that collapse walked away intact. Anyone who tells you that kind of injury should not leave scars has never been paying attention. Depression, in that context, is not weakness. It is a sane response to betrayal.
What struck me most is the moment you told your family the truth. Saying it out loud did not end your life. It saved it. That takes courage most people never have. You did not traumatize them. You gave them a chance to show up. And they did. That matters. A lot.
Your clarity now. The acceptance that they will do the worst thing in every instance. The decision to stop trying to wake people up. The shrinking of your daily world to something you can protect. None of that sounds like defeat. It sounds like hard-won adaptation. You are not numb. You are still crying. Still laughing when you can. Still reading selectively. That is not giving up. That is choosing where to place your remaining energy.
On the credit card idea. I hear the exhaustion underneath it. The what do I really have left to lose feeling is real. But I want to say this carefully and honestly. Going down that road often creates a new kind of fear that lingers longer than the temporary relief. Collection stress. Legal noise. The sense of being hunted by systems that never forget. It can shrink your world further in ways you do not deserve. You have already carried enough weight. If you want, I can help you think through safer options that preserve your peace as much as possible without judgment or moral lectures.
Brutally honest articulation of something most men won't admit. The line about depression being 'a rational response to accurate perception' rather than chemical imbalance captures something essential. I've seen this in policy circles, where older experts with decades of knowlege get sidelined not for incompetence but for daring to remember how things used to actually work.
Absolutely. That’s the core of it,what many call “depression” in men, especially older men, is often not a malfunction but a clear-eyed, painful assessment of reality. We’re trained to hide it, to medicate it away, or to call it “chemical imbalance,” because admitting that the world looks bleak,or that we’ve been sidelined despite decades of knowledge,is socially unacceptable. The isolation, the silence, the sense of irrelevance: these aren’t failures of the individual; they are rational responses to being ignored, dismissed, or rendered obsolete in systems that once depended on our insight.
It’s the truth most men won’t say aloud: sometimes, the world has actually gotten that hard, and noticing it is what makes us “depressed.”
This was powerful, meaningful and moving. All of your writings are, but this....
Men and women's worlds in retirement are similar yet different. I heard you in talking about your father, your brother, you. So many passages I would like to engage in but that's not for me to do - it was for me to read.
But "When you’re young and invincible, you think you’ll always matter. That the world will always need what you know. Then you hit sixty-something and realize: the world still needs what you know. It just doesn’t need it from you.". I quit believing in 2021. I don't smoke cigars, or drink whiskey, but maybe I should start. And sit with your words
Thank you for all you do.
Thank you. This means a great deal to me.
What you pulled out there is the quiet center of it, the moment when the illusion isn’t that we mattered when we were young, but that the world ever promised to keep asking us. The knowledge doesn’t evaporate. The need doesn’t disappear. Only the invitation does.
Your line about quitting believing in 2021 landed hard. Many of us have a year like that, when the scaffolding comes down and we’re left standing with clear eyes and no script. You don’t need cigars or whiskey for that. Sitting with the words, letting them keep you company, is its own kind of ritual.
I’m grateful you read so carefully, and with such restraint. That kind of attention is rare, and it’s the reason I keep putting the words out there at all.
Your words matter. You still matter. I know, easy for me to say, but I’m not bullshitting you, I promise.
I’d very much like to sit with you and your wife on your porch in Nebraska, and we could just be with each other. I’d bring my own libation, from my own neighborhood. Danville Crack, the snooty call it. I choose this “sad wine” for its ability to gently smooth the rough edges like the finest sandpaper. I haul it out for difficult times. Holidays and other reflective occasions that bring up pain and loss. I don’t drink it to forget, but to recall. A glass of courage that doesn’t depress somehow. Keep writing, Tom. It is a far better catharsis than the gars and amber liquid, and it touches us deeply.
Thank you. Truly. I don’t hear any bullshit in this, only kindness and recognition, and that carries real weight for me.
That porch sounds just right. The wine too. Not for forgetting, but for remembering how to stay human with one another. I’m grateful for your words, and for the life you describe so plainly and honestly.
I’ll keep writing. Knowing someone like you is out there, reading with that kind of intention, makes it easier to do so.
I’m bleeding money myself. What trickles in from subscriptions and coffee isn’t quite filling the gaps yet. All pleasurable things cut. All monthlies paused. Now skipping meals so my dogs can eat and have their healthcare and so I can keep my house and car.
But reading things like this and doing my own writing is keeping me just within mental stability and only a toe over the line.
So until I can afford to, all I can do is like, comment, and share.
Thank you for this beautiful gift that is your writing. It’s not happy but it resonates and somehow still hits the dopamine.
I’m really glad you said this. I’m sorry you’re carrying that kind of pressure right now, and the fact that you’re still showing up for your dogs and keeping things afloat says a lot about your heart. That kind of quiet sacrifice rarely gets seen.
It means more than you know that the writing helps you stay steady, even just barely. Knowing it resonates and gives you something to hold onto makes the work feel worth it. Liking, commenting, sharing, that all matters more than you might think.
Thank you for being honest, and thank you for reading. I’m rooting for you.
Thank you 🫶
Honestly, that’s why I write too. Well, partly it’s therapeutic but also a few people dig it for some reason. ☺️
As always, I thank you for what you write. I relate so well because my husband died of depression by putting a gun in his mouth and shooting himself, because I’m alone in my house with his ghost and when I speak my words, go into the empty night air too, no one hears because even though I’m not a man, I’m still slowly disappearing, being erased by time by age, by the world today that I can’t grasp or understand. I do go to therapy and it helps for a little while and then life comes back. Thank you for writing things I relate to. You’re one of the few I kept on my follow list today. I’m cutting back for my own sanity.
I’m so sorry. What you shared carries a depth of grief that never really leaves, it just changes shape. Living with that kind of loss, with the presence of someone who is gone but never really gone, is an ache most people cannot understand unless they have lived it.
I hear you when you say you feel yourself slowly disappearing too. That sense of being unseen, of speaking into the night and hearing nothing come back, is real and painful. It does not mean you do not exist or that your life has lost its value. It means you have been carrying more than anyone should have to carry alone.
I’m glad you are in therapy, even if the relief is temporary. Sometimes all it can do is give us a little air before life presses back in. And I’m honored that the writing gives you something to hold onto, even briefly. It matters that it reaches you.
Thank you for staying, for reading, for choosing what protects your sanity. You are not disappearing here. I see you, and I’m grateful you spoke.
Thank you for your kindness
💙💙💙
On many aspects, my experience couln't be farther from yours: I'm European, I'm still at work at sixty-five -- and just starting to notice my fading into irrelevance on the workplace (I'm still the problem-solver there, but ever more I see problems not being solved -- by choice or by sheer recklesness -- so my role wanes); I have children who will always need my support as they're both severely disabled, which means I'm necessarily in for the long distance; I live in a big city -- so no porch and big skies -- and I could go on.
Nonetheless, I can relate. No whiskey and no cigars -- never liked them, probably other, less visible ways to hurt myself; but this is exactly how I feel in the rare moments of honesty I allow myself: "We do not use words like “depressed.” We say we’re tired. We say we’re realistic. We pour another drink and light another smoke and tell ourselves we’re still in control of something. Men express depression through fatigue, irritability, loss of interest in things that used to matter. Through cigars and whiskey and silence."
The same feeling that what we learned -- what we did -- what we fought for is not real, is not relevant anymore. The sensation that we don't have anymore the right tools to *matter* in this world -- we still *see*, we probably understand what's coming better than younger people, but our knowledge, our lucidity is a useless tool. The climate has changed, Europe is weak, divided and plain stupid while formidable enemies are at work to destroy our lifestyle and our values: we see it, we see people around us sleepwalking into it -- and we can only feel Cassandra's despair.
Keep writing -- keep resisting -- also for those like me, who have lost the faith in their voice -- we are tired, we are silent -- but we are here -- for the long distance. Also because we have the livesaving luck of a loving partner with whom we're aging together.
Thanks for your words.
Thank you for this. Truly.
You’re right, our lives are very different on the surface, and yet the interior landscape you describe is unmistakably familiar. That sense of still seeing clearly while realizing that clarity no longer grants influence is one of the quiet devastations of aging. Being the problem-solver while watching problems go unsolved by choice or recklessness is its own kind of erasure.
What you carry with your children adds a gravity most people never have to imagine. There is no opting out, no retreat into abstraction. That alone makes your endurance an act of resistance, whether it’s named that way or not.
The Cassandra feeling resonates deeply. Seeing the trajectory, understanding the stakes, and discovering that insight has lost its currency is profoundly disorienting. It isn’t that we stopped caring; it’s that the world changed the rules of relevance without telling us.
Your line about “the rare moments of honesty I allow myself” says everything. We learn to survive by staying functional, by translating despair into fatigue, irritability, silence. Different rituals, same ache.
I’m grateful you’re still here, still watching, still standing the long distance with a partner beside you. That matters more than the world currently admits. And I’ll keep writing, if only to leave a signal fire for those who no longer trust their own voice, but haven’t disappeared.
Incredibly human writing. I’ve felt invisible for quite some time. I’m still here though, so I’ll try to understand my own presence more. I’m very grateful for the beauty of your words.
Thank you!!!
“He never knew a world where you couldn’t talk to your brother-in-law because of politics. Never knew a world where facts themselves became partisan.”
How I envy those who never knew this current world. I’ve lost two sisters and a brother because of politics, and it’s so damn painful. I feel erased, both by my family and the world that decided I’m no longer important because I’m an older woman who is no longer working. And I happen to be one of those 12 million who have contemplated suicide because of the political climate that exists in our country today. It’s a daily struggle.
I’m so sorry. Losing family to politics is a particular kind of grief, because the people are still alive yet unreachable. That kind of loss keeps reopening the wound. What you’re describing makes sense, and it’s deeply painful.
Being made to feel erased because of age, or because you are no longer working, is another quiet cruelty of this moment. It does not mean you have lost your worth. It means the culture has lost its bearings. Older women carry history, memory, and hard earned clarity, even when the world pretends not to need it.
Thank you for saying out loud how heavy this has been. You are not weak for struggling with it. You are responding to a reality that has become harsh and disorienting. I hear you, and you matter more than this moment makes it seem.
Thank you for the kind words. You have no idea how much they mean to me.
This brought me to tears. I honor you and your father with a small token of my appreciation: a subscription. I see you.
Thank you 🙏
Thank you Karen for your support!!
What a gut punch. I feel this all though I gave up cheroots and drinking…they call to me too often of late.
And yes it is depression but not the purely chemically imbalanced kind. My therapist said when the world gets depressing well you know.
Keep writing, keep sitting with Frank. I’ll hold your words here about the two of you and your wife among the souvenirs of my heart.
Thank you. That means more than I can say.
You’re right, some depressions are earned, shaped by the world as it is, not just chemistry. I’m grateful you’re still here, still resisting the call, still holding space for love and memory. If my words can sit among the things you carry close, I’m honored.
Sometimes just writing is enough. Something that this world is missing is the fact that some things don’t need to be justified, to be validated by commercial interests. Great writers write because they have to…not because it’s going to be read, or sold, or even appreciated, but because it’s their form of therapy. Love your perspective on life and willingness to bear your soul, hopefully to help others understand that all we’re in this together. Thanks brother
Yes. Sometimes writing is the point, not the payoff. No audience, no market, no justification. Just the need to get the truth out of your own head and onto the page.
The writers who matter do it because they have to. It’s a kind of therapy, a way to stay honest. If it helps someone else feel less alone, that’s a gift, not the goal.
I appreciate the words, brother. We are in this together.
Little more of me in this than I expected to find. Last year, I was three years older than my grandpa when he died, and three years younger than my dad; in my own atheist way, it was time to get right with god. Sometimes, I figure a little self-destructiveness ain't so bad when the story only ends one way, anyway. But as you've reminded me, then there is her face, watching me. And like it or not, there's a reason to go for the long-distance.
Anyway, we have work to do.
I hear this. That moment when the math of age catches up to you is sobering in a way nothing else is. You start measuring yourself not against the future but against the dead, and suddenly the old metaphors don’t work anymore. Even for atheists, there’s a reckoning. Call it god, call it gravity, call it the bill coming due.
I get the flirtation with self‑destruction too. When the ending feels fixed, it’s tempting to burn a little on the way out, to mistake damage for honesty. But then there’s that face. The witness. The one person who collapses the abstraction and turns “one way anyway” into a lie we tell ourselves. Love is inconvenient that way. It insists on time. It argues for endurance.
So yes. Long-distance it is. Not because it’s noble, but because it’s necessary. Because staying alive and paying attention is its own kind of work.
And you’re right about that last part. We do have work to do.
The 2024 election hit me hard, because it feels very much like these terrible times are the logical endpoint of everything I've done in my adult life, and because I knew, that Wednesday morning, that I'll be dead before it's clear how this story ends. But then, I figured that if it's been really my whole adult life (I'm counting it from the War on Terror, when I worked for the Ctr. for Constitutional Rights), then this fight is really my home.
I take a lot of comfort in being in the third of my life that only ends one way, because I don't have time to fuck around trying to be better at what I suck at, only to do what I can do well, well. And since my primary vice is coffee, if I decide to fear death, I can choose to believe those occasional reports that say eight cups a day are good for longevity.
Sure would like to see how this all turns out, though.