Signing Off

I’ve been asking people the same question for years now: what’s the point?

I made myself a promise a long time ago…if someone could give me an answer that actually made sense, one that felt real enough to hold onto, I’d stay. It’s been almost ten years, and I still haven’t heard one.

So I keep coming back to it.

What is the point?

For me, life has mostly felt like the same exhausting cycle on repeat. Wake up. Work. Pretend. Recover just enough to do it again. I’m tired of being tired. Tired of fighting so hard just to function. Tired of spending every ounce of energy trying to convince people that I’m ok...just as ok as they are.

And before anyone starts suggesting box breathing, manifestation, long walks, magnesium supplements, sunlight, hydration, mindfulness apps, or “have you tried journaling?” let me save us both the time: you don’t survive this long without already trying to save yourself.

I’m tired of the meds. The side effects. The additional meds prescribed to counteract the first set of side effects. I’m tired of dishes and laundry somehow reproducing overnight even though I barely eat and hardly leave my apartment. I’m tired of cold offices and fluorescent lights and pretending to be a version of myself that’s professionally acceptable.

Eight hours a day of carefully managed expressions. Not too emotional. Not too quiet. Not too honest. Everyone instinctively performing the same strange corporate theater:
“How was your weekend?” on Monday and “Anything fun planned this weekend?” on Friday.
Meetings about meetings. Acronyms multiplying like bacteria. Coffee machine small talk delivered with the enthusiasm of hostages reading cue cards.

And the terrifying thing is how normal all of it feels.

Sometimes I wonder if anybody is actually happy, or if we’re all just surviving with slightly different decorations around the misery. Maybe happiness is just a series of brief interruptions between obligations. Little sparks. A laugh. A vacation photo framed on a desk. A drink on a beach six years ago that somehow becomes proof your life meant something.

Then Monday comes again.

Alarms. Emails. Performance reviews written in language so sanitized it barely qualifies as human communication anymore. I was recently told (with a completely straight face)  that I’m underperforming because I work too hard and stay too late. Imagine hearing that sentence out loud and trying not to laugh directly into the void.

I’ve actually lived quite a bit in this life. More than some people ever get the chance to. I’ve traveled, helped people, survived things that should have destroyed me. I’ve loved deeply, laughed hard, and cried even harder. I know what resilience looks like because I’ve had to become it. And I know what it means to give everything you have just as intimately as I know what it feels like to lose it all anyway.

But eventually you run out of places inside yourself to keep storing disappointment.

That’s the part nobody talks about.

People always promise they’ll be different. Friends. Family. Partners. Jobs. Entire communities. They swear they understand you. That they’ll stay. That they see you.

Until they really do.

Until they look past the surface and realize there’s damage underneath that isn’t poetic or beautiful or temporary. Just heavy. Just exhausting. And then you watch it happen,  that tiny shift in someone’s face when concern quietly becomes distance.

Honestly, I don’t even blame anyone anymore. We’re all trying our best with whatever broken tools we were handed.

But God, life can feel so painfully performative.

I remember when Elmo asked “How is everybody doing?” online and droves of people commented, answering honestly and as it turns out, none of us are ok. Everyone joked about it later, but underneath the humor was something horrifying: people are desperate to tell the truth. We’re starving for honesty.

Imagine if we actually answered each other honestly.
Not the polished version.
Not the “hanging in there.”
The real version.

Imagine if someone at work asked how you were doing and genuinely meant it.

Not because HR mandated a wellness initiative.
Not because there’s a mental health webinar next Thursday.
Just because they cared.

I think people would feel less alone.

I know I would.

Because at the end of the day, despite all the bullshit, we all want the same things. We want someone to love us. We want to feel understood. We want somebody to notice.

I would stop everything for someone who told me the truth. I really would. I’d leave the Zoom meeting. Turn my chair toward them. Listen. Check on them later that night. Sit with them in the discomfort instead of trying to fix it in under fifty minutes with a copay and a prescription. The next day, I would look forward to hearing their truth again. and again. and again. Knowing that they knew that someone gave a shit. Because I would. And I would like to think you would, too. If we would all just be brave enough to close out the fucking deck and ask “what is it that we are all doing here?” I want people to be people. Laugh in meetings because they are pointless. Wear jeans on Thursday (oh the horror!), leave the office when you’re done working and show up when you’ve actually slept. Prioritize your fucking kids and dare to put your phone on silent.

once again, though… I come back to caring. I come back to listening.

That’s the kind of world I wish existed.

One where honesty wasn’t treated like instability.
One where people actually gave a shit about each other.

Because most of this, the endless routines, the fake urgency, the corporate language, the social scripts, feels completely absurd when you really look at it.

We all spend Sunday “getting ready for the week.” We binge true crime before bed and sign birthday cards for coworkers we barely know because nobody wants to be the one person who refuses the pen.

Life is weird. Painfully weird.

And maybe that’s the cruelest part:
everybody feels it, but almost nobody says it out loud.

So again, I ask: what is the point of all of this?

We spend eight hours a day sitting in buildings listening to bullshit so we can earn little pieces of paper that say:
“Congratulations. You may now spend the next four years paying for more bullshit.”

Then you graduate and get another piece of paper that says:
“Perfect. Now do this forever. Preferably in business casual”

Making just enough money for taco bell and the bare minimum paying for the bullshit that got you into khakis and meetings in the first place.

And trust me, I know the alternative too.

I know what it feels like to spend months emailing strangers your resume with just enough strategic lying to sound employable. Endless Indeed tabs. Gmail refreshes. Interview after interview where everyone speaks in corporate riddles while pretending any of this makes sense.

I swear to God, I don’t even know what my actual job title is anymore.

That’s how absurd this all is.

So get your cardigans ready, ladies… those emails aren’t going to type themselves.

Before long, you’re sitting in one of two offices:
HR because you acted like a human being,
or
a white man’s office getting praised for pretending like you aren’t.

Pick your poison. Both options suck.

Honestly, I probably would stay if life felt more honest.

If there was more to it than squeezing six exhausted hours of “freedom” in between sixty hours of dread, tension headaches, Teams notifications, and carpal tunnel.

And it feels good to be able to type the list of things I will absolutely never have to do again:

• Make an appointment.

• Put on a bra.

• Join another dating app.

• Tell two truths and a lie.

• Explain my childhood like it’s a podcast episode.

• Buy coffee creamer.

• Pretend not to panic when my boss’s name appears in my inbox.

• Hear about a meeting I wasn’t invited to.

  • Accept a meeting I was invited to.

    • Schedule a meeting about another meeting that came from an email starting with “Hey team!”

• Check my Chase app to see which autopayments assassinated my account overnight.

• Learn one more thing about excel

• Watch another documentary about a missing white blonde woman.

• Hit snooze as if nine more minutes will save my spirit.

• Go through another empty relationship.

• Go through another empty breakup. 

• Check my email…any of them

• Do the thing with the paragraphs of texts back and forth.

• The grocery store.

• Doom scrolling through: Uber Eats, Apple TV, TikTok, Facebook Reels, Instagram etc.

• Watch someone else’s ‘genius find’ on Uber Eats, Apple TV, TikTok, Facebook Reels or Instagram.

• Small talk.

• Hit ‘forgot password’

• Buy more shit, any of it, all of it.

• Whatever 3 more that you can come up with… those too. 

And for the love of God, I absolutely REFUSE to deal with another Suzy, Melanie, or Sharon. Women old enough to qualify for senior discounts still acting like emotionally unstable teenagers in an office environment.

Especially the aggressively “Christian” ones. No really, either stop being a cunt, or take the crosses out of your office. 

Fair deal, no?

You can’t have the body of christ and eat it, too! 

Truthfully, I’ve been dealt a pretty brutal hand in life. Not in a “woe is me” way. I’m not comparing suffering or asking for pity. I just mean objectively…statistically, emotionally, psychologically… it’s honestly impressive I made it this far.

My parents and sister emotionally beat the hell out of me for years. Enough that if a plate shatters in a restaurant, my nervous system launches into orbit. Enough that even my own doctor looked at my medication list and said,
“Wow… that’s a lot of pills.”

Which is incredible considering he was the one prescribing them.

That has to qualify as a warning sign somewhere. A funny one, but one nonetheless.

Honestly, life gets weird when things become simultaneously devastating and hilarious.

Like the other day, I was sitting in rush hour traffic trying to make it home in time for therapy when my Kia dashboard lit up with:
“Consider Taking a Break ☕”

I genuinely thought I was hallucinating.

Imagine being so visibly unwell that your own car needs to have a chat with you.

And the worst part? It really is a thing!

No shit, a feature called “Driver Attention Warning, a system designed to detect exhaustion and suggest rest.”

Which means even my Kia is telling me ‘bitch, get off the ride’ 

That is objectively funny.

And honestly, that’s life in a nutshell:
you laugh, cry, and then your gas light comes on.

Families come and go.
Partners come and go.
Work “families” definitely come and go.

And building any relationship as an adult? friendships included?
Jesus Christ.

Ask anyone over thirty how easy it is to make real friends. Everyone’s exhausted. Everyone’s traumatized. We’ve all been hurt enough that trust becomes something reserved for people grandfathered in before the damage fully settled.

And somehow we all walk around pretending this level of emotional isolation is normal.

“Trust issues.”
Another phrase that’s become so universal it practically belongs on a Hallmark card.

Michelle Wolf once said:
“Blogs are conversations nobody wanted to have with you. Even your own computer is like ‘I hate this, I hope I die”

Honestly? Fair. I would imagine that some of you are feeling the pain of that sentiment right now. Sorry about that. 

And if you’re exhausted reading this, imagine living inside my brain.

But here’s the thing: this isn’t a blog or even a letter, really. It’s just everything I’ve got left to say.

Because despite all of it, the abuse, the mental illness, the failed relationships, the endless disappointments, I did survive.

In some strange way, I made it.

I survived a childhood that should have broken me.
I survived relationships that reopened every wound imaginable.
I survived my own mind more times than I can count.

But one thing I never managed to survive was permanence.

Nobody stays.

Not really.

Every single person swears they will, right up until the moment they don’t.

And honestly? That’s probably the most painful part of all of this.

Well, except June.
June stayed.

The rest of you motherfuckers can go to hell.

I’ll see you there. ;)