That phrase frightened me because it is reminiscent of the mentality of those who have harmed me.

Unfortunately, the way we have structured our society makes connection an obstacle to wealth — and wealth seems to be what motivates many of you when we look under the covers.

I need to leave you behind.

Some of us suffer. We suffer because we yearn for a society where people treat connection like it is the point of life. We suffer because we believe that everyone is each other and that understanding and love will stop the pain. It is very important to understand that many people do not feel that way. Or even more complicated, some people feel that way and act completely differently than you would.

It is important not to get paralyzed in the fear of that realization. You cannot get stuck in that ampitheatre. Looking around and watching faces turn into masks of violence and destruction. I repeat, you cannot get stuck there.

Because most people think they are “being good”. And for many, that is enough. We’ve become obsessed with goodness that we’ve treated it like a metric for justice. It is not.

Perhaps the step forward is to leave certain relationships. The ones that fundamentally do not understand how justice and connection are the point of life. Or, more complicatedly, the ones that do understand it but act differently than I would in their shoes.

I don’t need to leave with harshness, but I do need to leave.

And I’m scared that’s what people whom I don’t like have thought. And I think there is potential for them to be right in the idea, but so profoundly hurtful in the execution.

Contradictions are a part of life and so is evolution. Sometimes you are the one holding the knife and sometimes you find yourself at the other end. Some people get obsessed with stabbing and others with being stabbed. I want to leave the knife behind at the same time that I want to ram it into the top 5%.

Perhaps this form of thinking will change in the future but I cannot remain stagnant because of that chance.

Right now I am choosing the words I am choosing because they are what I believe.

Ultimately, I cannot continue to suffer in the way I have. I will not. Because if I do, I will die.

And I refuse to die now.

I refuse to die when we’re surpassing 1.5 ºC of global warming and more of y’all are concerned with your personal success than the continuation of the very life that sustains you.

I refuse to die when the adults aren’t reading to their kids, the kids all have dopamine addictions, and the first-gen college grads are compartmentalizing to the point they fail to realize they are begging for employment and recognition in a system that is killing their families.

I refuse to die when the rich are obsessed with pontificating about the problems of the world while stewing in their own inaction. A rotten kind of inaction that spills over into their fetishistic obsessions with culture and art that is produced by the very poor people they refuse to materially support.

I refuse to die when poor people work themselves to exhaustion while holding an accurate assessment of the world. A world that has been robbing them since before they were born. And a world that pushes them into substance abuse, suicide, or selling out. Because how could life be so cruel while the messaging around you says the opposite?

You either die or you wear the messaging on your skin like a face mask. You never take it off and it seeps in to your pores until you forget your sadness. Or you use your wit to make a living. But not to change anything. Yeah maybe forty years later you build a school or some bullshit. Right on top of the bones of all those you could have been on the ground helping while you were selling out.

Your skin whispers to you that everything can be a calculation. That you’ve suffered enough so you deserve the rest. But you’re resting on bones. And you will wake up one day with back pain.

I refuse to die before I understand what a life of sustaining vulnerability can be like. Not one where I scrape against a wall made of scraps of pedestalizing affection.

Selfishly, I refuse to die before I can build a community of like-minded people. One where we do not need to explain much but can get to work instead.

Lots of people die before they get that. Either metaphorically by selling out or literally because of chronic stress, cancer, liver failure, and what have you.

So what now?

First of all, welcome back madda. Secondly, hello to whoever is reading this, hope it made ya think. Thirdly and most complicatedly, I think the answer is to actually to talk to more people you don’t know, and stop talking to those you have assessed and don’t need to see more from. Just for a bit. Or maybe forever. Just move.