systems
24th Jun, 2025
It is 5 in the am, and I'm stupidly writing this post because I've just read one of the most fucked up, unreconcilable, human, and understandable questions I've really ever seen:
what do i do when my sufferingβs getting boring?
I'm gonna try and get to my point quickly tonight, cause frankly I wanna go back to bed.
So much of the suffering in the world... is actually predisposed to being boring, I think. To start with the worst examples; occurences like racism, genocide, any form of dangerous bigotry is so often inherently systemic by nature. This is part of what makes it so dangerous... and yet also predictable. Uninteresting, when you remove the human element.
Things like depression, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia... they all follow orderly, predictable patterns, once you've been experiencing it for a while. And there's a reason we've seperated a process as complex as grief into a meagre 5 stages - they're not linear for sure, but they're often traceable, predictable, ordinary.
For better or worse, suffering is usually just... routine. It is the same bullshit repeated.
Subconsciously, I have been asking myself a similar question lately.
What do I do when your suffering is getting boring?
There is, after all, only so many times you can hear someone tell you they 'feel bad', especially when it stands as the reason why they've been absent from your life. You want so badly to reach out, lift them up, help.
Sometimes you even succeed together, y'know? the sun shines again for a little while, and you get to experience those moments of contentment and happiness.
Alas then that suffering is routine. It comes back.
And eventually, when someone you dearly love has been hurting for so long and you can't seem to help, the answer to the question becomes...
"Nothing."
It becomes counterproductive to burn yourself out on that task. One must picture Sisyphus happy, sure, but that doesn't mean that you should willingly put yourself in his position, no matter how honourable or necessary it feels to hold up the boulder of someone else's suffering.
This is a good chunk of a conversation I had with a friend recently.
"Your suffering is getting boring. I need to go back to the more interesting parts of my life, before I forget them completely."
...and you know something? As much as I willingly walked into that outcome, I FUCKING HATE IT.
It's antithetical to everything I am as a person. I feel like I have folded 90% of myself away behind a mask, and honestly the part remaining feels mostly built of spite, resignation, and similar, worse disorders. I have hidden away the good parts of me to protect them.
I am the sort of person who will go to war for my friends. There's no amount of my own suffering I wouldn't endure to make your lives better.
..but I guess I can't endure yours for you, no matter how much I want to. And it feels so ugly that I have grown tired. It is anathema to leave you behind in this pit of routine.
As usual, I don't really have a moral for this post. I just once again wanted to indulge my hubris in responding to the more insightful writing of other people.
...it's odd, though.
In the last few days, since I have stepped away from the stone and allowed its inevitable descent back to the base of the hill... I've actually spent quite a bit of time with those friends I thought I was walking away from.
They are small moments, mostly: lunch and dumb jokes together, exchanging favourite music in someone's car, a slow and warm hug afterwards. An unexpected but delightful offer of assistance with a dreadful task. Closeness while fucking around with a video camera. Talking about games, movies, tv shows. Your leg resting across mine for half an hour. Being blunt and honest and unapologetic about my opinions with you.
...and yes. Yes, those moments mean a fucking lot to me. Perhaps they mean everything.
It still feels quite different than it did before. It is the unsavory side of myself on display at the moment, after all. Perhaps I am nevertheless more palatable when you only have to deal with 10% of me.
...or perhaps something else is at play here.
I chose to stop struggling against the suffering. I thought I was accepting it and in doing so, dooming us to its eternal repetition.
Instead, the pattern has changed subtly. Too early to know if that change will propogate or be subsumed again, but there's only one way to find out.
So, is there a moral here? I dunno. I think I meant for there to be, but I think its more meaningful to see if you can find your own.
...but, let your suffering become boring, perhaps. There's no point in producing the same piece of art over and over for your whole life. You've done that.
Let it become boring. Find something, anything else more worthwhile to you. Even if it does end up being a new, funnier kind of suffering - at least it's new.
its now 6 in the am. I'm going back to bed.
I think I'm gonna have a great time these next few months. We're gonna pull a fucked up prank against the universe, and I don't know where that'll end up.
But yeah. I know I love you. g'night.