sumerian stresses
By: M A Ý A
Tags: Pain, Ancient History, Sumeria, Rat Race, Stress

Contrary to popular American belief, and the consciousness of children, whenever one leaves their home they enter a war zone. Nowhere as egregious as Iraq, 1990s Yugoslavia or present day South-Side Chicago but the reality lives in the minds of all. Advertisements that claim your two year old car is archaic with pronounced chrome grills and bigger, brighter Bluetooth-screens to prove your salary meager and insufficient. After defeating this materialistic farce, FM tunes enter your vehicle exclaiming promises of contentment if you simply buy this facial cream, gardening tool or entertainment package. Then we reach our jobs, saturated in politics and budget cuts and bosses who occasionally trip on power dynamics that trigger our sensitive performance anxiety. Thoughts of independent work schedules juxtaposed against a beach in some foreign land fills our heads and creates an emptiness in our reality.

12:39 PM

Time for lunch at some corporatized restaurant, with greasy and high-fat foods greeting our dissatisfied hearts with temporary comfort. Swipe left, tap twice, lower brightness and re-watch the 15 second clip. Repeat. And Repeat once more before returning to work.

5:47 PM

Home. The kids and pets escape into their own corners, while we fight the mental exhaustion. Something is wrong. Everything feels so bad and misplaced but we subscribed to the status quo, the plan that was supposed to bring joy and security. Put on the TV and become uncomfortable with the prisoners on MSNBC, noticing that our uniform is just as orange, the warden looks like our boss’ kid, the bars are made from the same company as our desk and the food is just as disgusting as whatever we shoved down our throat earlier. CNN proclaims mass incarceration is on the rise, articles display the statistics, while we try to find ourselves in between the pixelated images. The ugliness and condemnation of the common prisoner seems so familiar, so relatable but only if we had the strength to confront it, whatever that “it” maybe.

10:32 PM

Hands still in the cookie jar with lukewarm milk beside your arm chair, wondering “how did this happen?”. Years ago, thoughts of freedom, vanity and sexual liberation flooded your mind and today all you have are fears delivered from mainstream news. Cyclic images of destruction, wildfires, wailing women looking for safety and fathers shipped to fight corporatized wars — major anxiety attack. Terror envelopes your myopic vision and your kids are at the center. Another brown, black or just poor child left on the street killed in some financially polarized urban center. These little things you live for, are all you have, they are your connection to a better you, the life line to love that you’d lost in early adulthood.

And if there is no justice for that poor lifeless body on the cement, then what hope is there for your child? What makes that father different than you? What did he do in his years to deserve such cruelty and how can you avoid this sad reality?

don’t think, just consume.

Death will never find its way to you. You will be young forever. These cookies will have no effect on your health. Money will always be available. And you and your children don’t live on this obsolete spinning rock, you live in an utopia ruled by your illusions.

But deep down you know this isn’t the truth. Every night you awake to the reality of this pain. A feeling of pressure finds its way to your neck, determined to remove any feelings of comfort from this fragile reality.

Your kids sleep, not caring but sensing such things, just like their parents.

Where does this weakness stem? Who planted the seed for mediocrity, worrisome simplicity and the mendacious house of cards? The origin could be found in the Judeo-Christian story of Adam and Eve, it could be analyzed from the imperfect balance of energy and its counterparts, or maybe sourced in the sociological structure of government. Regardless, the effect on the average American is tragic and debates with who to blame and why. At what point does the lies that one lives in and worships become their own creation versus a simple inheritance?

Everybody, good or bad, wealthy or poor, smart or dumb, is susceptible to the pain of these questions. And if religion was so great, why hasn’t it figured it out. Or what about the most influential people of the day, why hasn’t Oprah or Joel Olsteen told me a way to live? But to be completely honest, why would I listen to any of them? They don’t understand what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck or to see your kids faces of disappointment when they realize that you can’t protect them. Their lives are pampered by the veil of celebrity, fame, and fortune; three things a regular obscure human will never have. There may be talk of greatness by these pillars of society, but many of them were fed their grandiosity as youth and protected from the demons that overtook the many more. These assholes were lucky at the expense of the mediocre prisoners of American exceptionalism and insatiable prosperity.

3:33 AM

A psychic warned us of the repeated threes. In youth, there is stamina to outpace the consequences of time and misfortune. It seems like the partying, escaping, and general delusion will pass the event horizon of the universe and leave you free from the pitfalls of the generations before. Then, there is a realization of the weight gain from a slowed metabolism, less hair upon the scalp, and a wish to reverse back to the time of freedom and eternal youth. Oh how we long for that blessed time, when worries centered on narcissistic desires and we were simply phantoms of existential concerns. Religion had no purpose, sex was purely physical, and money could only be minimal.

silence.

3:56 AM

In this life there are traps of unhappiness waiting to devour souls wandering along the landscape of life. Their screams of terror can be heard in the silence of college dorms, the teacher’s lounge of the impoverished school, and within each movement of the ill-advised champion athlete. There is a unity to the pain that attempts to muster the last of our will and hope to become better than we were yesterday. However, so much time is spent trying to run away from this unpleasant truth. There are movies with cloying narratives, claiming love will prevail over the most rudimentary of human emotions. Sex ridden spaces promising affection and attention that only a lonely, undesired man could really pay for. Pixelated screens mirroring the reality we wished to see in front of us, losing our sense of ourselves as we scroll through each topic, each celeb, and each ad. The cars we drive, the meaningless conversations we hold, the aimless sex we could wish to feel in order to feel anything, and the money we all hope to have is all stupid and means nothing. Did we not hear Solomons cry of meaninglessness? Why have we forgotten and discarded the wisest words from this man, in exchange for temporary folly and lifelong mistakes? The answers lies within, in our minds and our hearts! As cliched and hyperbolic this answer, the reality is such. Only we know the reality of our lives. Our parents, friends, ex-lovers, co-workers, shallow television hosts, try to tell us who and what we are but where has the agency escaped to? When did we let others begin to tell us who and what we were? And who are we to blame for so foolishly taking the advice of those so far removed from the pains that terrorize ourselves — even families — every night!

too much

*take another shot of oblivion and denial*