Finding Utopia in the Collapsing Shit Factory
Authors: Bennett Melanie 
Published: June 2023

I’m naked, lying on my back on the fifteenth floor of an apartment full of stink and people in a city of a million other citizens. I’m at the centre of this booming metropolis and yet I’m ENTIRELY ALONE. I hate my life, my job, the city I live in and this screwed-up world that continues to disengage itself from me. I spend the next four hours staring at the water-stained stucco ceiling imagining ways to “off” myself. I don’t have the stomach or the courage for suicide, so the time is wasted. I kill (pardon the pun) another hour being angry that I threw away precious hours on something I never intended on carrying out. Is this what a breakdown feels like? Should I see a shrink to get some prescription drugs to numb me? But of course, I don’t trust doctors and the only drugs I’ve ever managed to digest are Vicks cough drops. I reach for the remote and turn the television on. There’s an Oprah feature about her new Leadership Academy for young girls in South Africa. I weep so hard I get hiccups as two young girls talk about how their father shot their mother and then himself in front of them. From my upside down position on the carpet, I see the girls emerge from their dirt floor to enter the dangerous streets of their community with hope. They study, read, dream, thank God for their blessings and find ways to play childhood games without the luxury of Nintendo Wii. I begin to feel a glimmer of relief that we’re not living in the apocalypse, but the glimmer is soon washed away by an overwhelming wave of guilt. I live in one of the most prosperous, safe countries on the globe, with the added luxury of studying my love/hate of performance, and I can’t even get myself off the floor to get dressed. Oprah’s girls remind me that I am a pathetic, self-indulgent, self-pitying western idiot. I remember the words of dead people. Kierkegaard tells me the “sickness unto death” I’m experiencing is “despair.” St. John of the Cross reassures me that a “dark night of the soul” is a journey to enlightenment. Camus reminds me that life is both “meaningless” and “important.” To hell with the philosophy of corpses, I need a live person to talk to. My brother, a cog in the Microsoft wheel, is on a conference call with a dozen other cogs. The most I can hope from my husband is a “cheer up,” since he is working one of his three jobs to pay for this overpriced dump. I telephone my best friend, and he’s wading through his own meaningless bullshit and brushes me off, but not before saying, “I’m miserable too.” Finally, my retired dad tells me he’ll call me back, since he’s “in the middle of driving terminal cancer patients around.” Did he just say that in front of them? I feel like a prick for even calling him. It’s bloody Sunday for God’s sake! Is there no one who has time to talk? Or is this world turning us all into selfish assholes who don’t care about each other anymore? Where’s the community? If I were honest, I’d admit to not trying very hard to find it. We bitch about the bubbles we’re in, but we’re too damned afraid to see what’s outside of them. I hate feeling cynical, self-absorbed, nihilistic and whiney, but I can’t help wondering if my symptoms are a result of something wrong in the wider social realm. I can’t worry about that now. Everyone else is working in their bubbles and so should I. I have six enormous papers to write, two performances to prepare for and endless reading to do – all of which is due within the next six weeks. And still, I cannot get myself off the floor. One of my tasks: ’finish book review for CTR.“ So, I decide to tackle that first, only because the subtitle of the book has the word ”suicide“ in it AND I’m a big fan of the author. Still lying on my back, I read the opening sentence, ”The world is a collapsing shit factory“ (11). Ah, ok. So, I’m not alone in my misery.