i just want to exist

I live in one of the last affordable neighborhoods on the north side of Santa Fe (if your house happens to be 100 years old anyway) and work full time at a food co-op, and I am barely staying afloat. I cancelled my car insurance (so my car is rotting in the driveway) and I'm unable to send consistent child support to my coparent because I'm still paying back taxes.

I send out application after application to IT jobs, network tirelessly in my community, and I don't have a damn thing to show for it. People talk a big game when it comes to allyship but it's all for show. Nobody wants to put their money where their mouth is (even when that money is on a sliding scale). I've wasted my time on interviews where my subsequent inquiries are summarily ignored; I've courted "clients" who string me along for weeks and then say "nevermind"; I've reached out to local businesses offering transformative services alongside standard expertise and labor and have received the silent treatment again and again.

Meanwhile the crooks are still at it. Stealing our capital, our water, our knowledge and imprisoning and killing innocent people here while they kill and burn and raze Lebanon and Gaza without a shred of resistance. And people think just gathering in the square and being loud is gonna do a damn thing about it. They want us (ie, anyone who doesn't bow down to the god of war and bloodshed) powerless and ultimately dead, have made it plainly obvious, and are enacting it piece by piece.

I'm so fucking tired. I work my ass off to be told again and again by implicit value judgement and explicitly by my government that I am worthless. I try to tell my peers that this system is purposeful and working as intended and requires us to work together to counter it — to lift each other up — and nobody is willing to put up.

Some random news from the past few weeks in case you live under a bigger rock than me:

• land given to city under the condition of beecoming a park becoming a datacenter instead
• real estate on the west bank being advertised like it isn't drenched in blood
• US government pushing to erase trans people from all federally funded institutions
• trans woman brutally murdered while doing her laundry in Seattle
• ICE to share flawed and overreaching facial surveillance with local agencies
• Microsoft playing dumb after their predatory plans for AI addiction were leaked

Where do we go from here? I'm not sure. I've said the same things over and over - support your local economies, boycott surveillance tech and the legitimization of genocide, show real solidarity with those who are slipping through the cracks.

But it only works with numbers. I'm sick of screaming into this void of complacency. My inclination is increasingly shifting toward holing up in a remote mountainside with my loved ones and let the rest of yall lay in the grave you've dug.