(no subject)
The nightmare is repetitive.
I am innawoods. Camping, hiking, fishing, hunting. I am a mountain man. I have finally found peace.
I cannot stand this world I am forced to live in. Everyone screaming at each other for recognition, acknowledgement.
Politicians capitalizing on ignorance and fear, voting themselves longer terms, higher pay, more exemptions and entitlements at the taxpayer's expense. They sneer down in their marble halls at their voting bloc and masturbate with the law, thinking "I own you all."
We live in an world with an unprecedented amount of access to thousands of years of information in every possible field, literally a mouse-click or a finger-swipe away and instead of drinking from this limitless fountain of fact, wisdom, and philosophy and uplifting themselves, we distract ourselves with twerking videos and dank memes.
But I have found peace. Somehow I have managed an unprecedended degree of liberty: whatever job it is that I work in (in this dream), I am given a month of vacation per year, and in that month I am a mountain man, living on my own, seperate from a society I don't identify with and cannot relate to. It's my haven, my retreat. I have a number of campsites scattered around the mountains and hills. tucked away in hidden forests and forgotten places and I spend my days just sort of hiking from camp to camp, living off the land, completely disconnected from civilization.
There is a kind of person I find odious: preacher's kids. Church kids that grow up in private church schools, disconnected and shepherded through life in ivory towers and rose-colored glasses, blissfully and willfully ignorant of the world they are a part of. Pretty little kids, naively going through life in a soap bubble.
They are unwilling or unable to live or survive outside of their bubble. It's actually pretty horrible when the bubble bursts. It's a catastrophic trauma. You see preacher's kids swing wide on the pendulum, becoming drug users, strippers, whores, alcoholics, criminals. They see the lie for what it is, the truth for what it is, and in doing so, they lose their ruby slippers. They can't go home anymore. They cannot come to terms with the huge disparity between "this is what I was raised to believe" and "this is real life".
Frankly, it's why I couldn't stand living in Utah, because the ENTIRE STATE is filled with both types: "bubble kids" and "post-bubble kids", each in their own way trying to find meaning and relevance to their lives.
For the rest of us, the many of us who go through life more or less unsheltered, all (or most) of our existential angst has already been solved. We have made our peace (such as it is) with ourselves and the world around us. But you see these people, grown men and women confronted with "expectation" and "reality" baffled, terrified, and struggling and you think to yourself, "This is something you come to grips with practically in infancy. How are you a grown man/ woman and not understand these fundamental concepts?" Or worse, when they cannot leave that bubble and become so hopelessly deprenant on that bubble to shield them from the world's horrors.
Do you grab the giggling little chucklefuck and rub their faces in the dogshit of life like a feckless puppy and scream at them "LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT!"?
Or do you turn your face to the wall, think to yourself "Oh you sweet summer child." and allow them to crash and burn on their own?
I used to think bubble-bursting was the greatest pasttime ever invented. There's an immense smug sense of satisfaction. Also a sense of accomplishment, because you are the midwife that transitions them from "magical happy land" into "real life".
BUT
You think you're doing them a favor, but really you're just a sophisticate bully, carving your trauma into their brains. You're not doing anyone any favors except maybe satisfying your own selfish need to hurt someone in the way you yourself were hurt.
BUT
They didn't grow up learning protective coloration. They didn't grow thick skins. They need this. Better a small hurt now, than a greater hurt later. We are innoculating them, vaccinating them against the traumas of reality by cutting into them with our little knives.
BUT
[...]
Anyway, in my nightmare, I am a mountain man. I am on retreat, on sabbatical. I have withdrawn from the world and all of its endless screaming so that I can recharge. Find the "me" in me again.
And, wandering dazed and lost in the forest, is one of these naive people.
If I save them and take them back to the city, I sacrifice my own ability to recharge.
If I have them stay with me innawoods during my retreat, I remove my ability to recharge.
If I ignore them, they die.
If I can't recharge, my life starts snowballing out of control again.
They are not dressed for life on the mountainside. They don't know how to start a fire. Hunt for food. the simplest of tasks is beyond them. For some reason they are out for day hike, and it's turned into an "I'M LOST" situation for them. Phones don't work. It's just me and them. Sometimes it's a man, sometimes it's a woman, sometimes it's a preteen, sometimes it's a teenager, sometimes it's a young adult, but one unifying characteristic remains: They are unrepentently naive and have been abandoned to the wilderness to live or die on their own.
"Don't worry", I tell them. "I can help you."
I put the gun to my head and pull the trigger.