breaking point
It seems that everything around me is breaking.
My coffee maker, vacuum, AC, washer/dryer, one by one these appliances, designed to make my life easier, have stopped working, reminding me just how tenuous my life of convenience really is.
Of course, nothing is built to last. We all know this. It’s the dirty little secret of convenience culture that keeps us endlessly consuming.
So, as I stand in my hot and humid home, severely under-caffeinated, wondering what to do with all this broken stuff gathering dust in my basement, stuff I never learned to fix yet want to avoid throwing into a landfill, I realize that it’s not just the machines.
Something in me is breaking too.
Not all at once, but piece by piece. My worldview and the stories I’ve clung to about our humanity — who we are, what we’ll stand for, and what we’ll refuse to tolerate — have been shattered.
As we witness the endless scroll of graphic images, genocide funded by our tax dollars, the forced starvation of entire populations live-streamed on our phones, and people being kidnapped in broad daylight, without due process, in the so-called “land of the free.”
Our inhumanity is being so blatantly exposed.
Something deep inside of me has fractured, and with it, an old way of being and moving through the world. I’m seeing with sharper eyes now. A veil has lifted, and I can’t unsee what I’ve seen.
I suspect this fracture is part of something larger. A collective breaking. A spiritual tectonic shift.
Perhaps it started when I lost my parents (though I suspect it started long before, during Covid, breast cancer treatment, burnout etc). Grief cracked my foundation. Letting go of the “good daughter” role left an opening, and in that space crept something wilder.
Less polite. Less obedient. More awake.
A questioning of the narratives imposed upon me, the ones that said: be nice, be quiet, don’t cause trouble. I’m finally letting those outdated stories go. They may have helped me survive and stay safe (to a point), but they no longer serve me or the world we currently live in.
Because what and who are we being “nice” for? Who are we protecting when we stay silent?
The systems and false narratives we bought into are collapsing. The evils of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, so unabashedly exposed. Fascism is on the rise as the Earth screams. Oceans are rising, forests are burning, and the whales have fallen silent.
And still, we mine. We pillage. We justify. We are exhausting everything, including ourselves. It’s both overwhelming and terrifying.
Last night in a fog of despair, I found myself searching “self-euthanasia options” and I contemplated adding a lethal dose of pentobarbital to my go-bag. (Not that I even have a go-bag.)
But somewhere within the crushing doom and gloom, a sliver of hope flickered.
Maybe this breaking isn’t the end. Maybe it’s the beginning. Maybe the collapse is inevitable, painful, yes, but necessary. A cracking open that allows the light to enter. The kind of destruction that precedes rebirth.
I don’t know what comes next. None of us do.
But I’d like to believe there is something sacred in this unravelling. That a different way of living, freer, fairer, more humane, is still possible. Not just personal liberation but collective liberation. A community not built on extraction, but on care. Deep care for the earth and all beings.
And maybe, just maybe, what’s breaking is what was never meant to last in the first place.
So beautifully articulated. Thank you for sharing this. It’s such a sacred time… I hope we can hold it.
Oh, Isabel. I feel like we are living in or on the brink of a dystopian society or, as participant observers in an upside down social psychological experiment where the benevolent, beloved and hopeful are labelled as bad actors (bias disclosure = social psychologist x sci fi reader/viewer). The bleakness of the observations (in our world/around us), your sentiments and despair not only resonates with me personally as everything seems to go sideways at once but, to me, highlights that you are light, love, and hope - idealistic, optimistic, and positive (and not in the toxic positivity way). You might appreciate this divergent thinking as an offer of promise (ish)...if you suspend disbelief and relate to the connections.
A friend of mine has circled back into my life in a way (we've known each other since I was 14). His creative intermedia endeavours focus on conceptual art x neuroplasticity x autofiction. Prominent in his theoretical perspective is "destructive plasticity" (Catharine Mallabou). The idea centres around destruction as fostering a more intense version of "rewiring" in the brain. This aligns with complexity theory and "adjacent possibles" re: how to become "unstuck" in systems (society, establishments, etc) - a topic that I wrote about on interventions to promote positive change during my postdoc in collaboration with much more brilliant mentors. I don't have any answers or solutions for how we can arrive there collectively as, I too, feel like I am floating these days...but something about these themes of destruction and adjacent possibilities as a mechanism for instigating positive change (rebuilding) gives me hope and builds my own resilience.
I am going to visit you soon :)