Basically fucked, thanks. You?

I've spent my whole life being miserable: anxious, ashamed, confused, worried, terrified, frustrated, disappointed, depressed, angry.

When you ask me casually how I am it just pisses me off. How I am is the whole battle of my life. How dare you ask when it means nothing to you. Why is asking this a casual greeting?

What the fuck does anyone in my society or culture care?

After years and years of thinking that eventually I would get to a place where I could answer "Just fine" in good conscious, I am starting to realize that "Basically fucked" is really the only honest answer I could feel comfortable giving.

My family struggled for everything. My parents divorced when I was 8. I am rhe oldest of 4. My mother has always been cold and demanding - expecting creativity, but not being a creative problem-solver.

My father was warm and sentimental, but not responsible. He said things like "You can be anything - "follow your bliss" - but had no special knowledge of how to help us do that in any way.

I thought things would get better with Clinton. They did in some ways, but not for me.

I thought things would get better when I moved to Chicago, but I just fell into more debt.

I thought my life might turn around when I got medication for all my mental issues. Guess there were even more issues.

Year after year things didn't get better.

I met a wonderful man whom I later married. It seemed better, but we tried to save the world of local animals and we hoarded things we liked. We became overwhelmed.

There doesn't seem a way out for us. Between the crazy interest rates on our credit cards, our inability to get decent healthcare, and our lack of savings, we're basically fucked.

And nothing underscores the reality of there being no way out for us personally, and the country we live in generally, like the fact that we have a sociopathic narcissist as a president, and that many people in power worked hard to put him there.

It's not just me. Many people I know or whom I read or listen to feel fucked, too.

I don't understand why all people don't want to live in a country they can say is rich and healthy. Why isn't helping others a way of exhibiting power?

If you live in an upscale neighborhood and one household is struggling and looking kind of downtrodden, don't you want to help them out for their sake and yours? Doesn't the welfare of the one affect the welfare of the whole?

Is the US really so big that the welfare of a large population is of no concern to those who have the means to help?

I feel like wealthy conservatives really believe that they have what they have because they are special - not just lucky.

Poor people are much more likely to share what they have because they know what it's like to draw the short straw by chance, and how just a little help can often make a huge difference to someone in crisis.

Well, I just happened to be born an empathetic person. I save animals. I help suffering people. I believe helping others makes my neighborhood and my life better. I don't understand why other people don't.

But I do know that for whatever reason, I am living in a society that does not share my values as a whole, and that in living in this place in this time I am basically fucked.

So, just fucking don't ask me how I am or I might just tell you.