Trigger Warning

Triggered

After a lovely lunch out, at which I ate all my pizza and drank a Spark non-alcoholic beer - even Farm Boy has non-alcoholic beer now that's indistinguishable from all the expensive craft beers I used to drink due to a hi-falutin' substance use disorder - I decided on a whim to take a break from the Olympics and listen to Gabor Mate.

So glad I did.

I've heard him say it a hundred times, it's not about the trigger, it's about the explosives we carry around inside us.

Finally, it clicked. It's not you, it's me.

Then I watched another video, this one on attachment vs authenticity, a video I must have viewed a dozen times over the past couple of years, and how the need for others to care about us can get in the way of the need to be true to our values, who we are, not who we've adapted ourselves to be.

It clicked, too. It's not our fault, it's not anybody's fault, it's tricky not losing ourself in the various roles we take on, are assigned. People pleasing is a survival tactic, being who other people want us to be, ignoring our values to avoid confrontation, to fit in, be wanted, loved.

I enjoy hearing the stories of Olympic athletes who walk away from the dream, sometimes for a decade, and come back, gut, heart, brain in sync like maybe they weren't before. Anybody, really, who switches it up like that, goes on a journey, returns knowing who they are, what they want, how to be.

Millennials joke about adulting, but by adulting they mean acquiescing to the demands of a capitalist system increasingly beyond the regulatory capacity of government, a capitalist system stacked heavily in favour of their retired parents, trampling our world's heritage sites, cruise by cruise.

I feel propagandized to want a life that doesn't make sense to me.

Millennials also wander around our cities like zombies, using bolt cutters to steal bikes, the lowest form of theft, so low our police services ignore it in favour of chasing down stolen cars.

TVO's Steve Paikin did The Agenda from my hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, where the addiction crisis is so much in evidence.

Nobody knows what to do about it.

Dr. Mate wants us to use compassionate inquiry to understand addiction, whether it's our own or someone else's, starting with the problem the addiction initially, at least, solved. So not a harsh, "Why do you do this?!" but a curious, "Why do you do this?"

When I said to my ex's boss at a party, "I drank to make myself interesting", he joked, "I drink to make you more interesting, too."

Is boredom pain? I think it is. Loneliness. Those of us who take public transit here in Ottawa, who live downtown or go downtown often enough, see people of all ages, but certainly Millennials, drugged into oblivion, lying on the sidewalk, unconscious. Are they trying to keep themselves alive or trying to kill themselves?

How did we let it come to this?

Ottawa police who aren't busy chasing down stolen cars have set up shop in the Rideau Centre, a show of solidarity with business owners in the Byward Market. I think my panic attacks, which would happen after a meal out downtown, were my gut, heart, brain upset by the juxtaposition, me eating in the restaurant, unhoused addicts lying on the sidewalk outside it.

Where I live people are moving because they're afraid of the men wandering around at night, testing doors, often carrying bolt cutters. I just found this out today from my neighbour I complain about on the regular, who has his eyes and ears on the street, so maybe I'll give it a rest.

In both cases my (female) neighbours had to call police to get them to leave, that's how aggressive they were, and apparently even then they took their time moving on, taunting them all the while.

I see a lot of sketchy looking guys riding pretty nice bikes these days. It makes me mad. Hard to sympathize with them when they're causing other low income people such distress.

I grew up being told I was a citizen of the world. Well I don't feel like one. Nothing is sitting well with me right now. Gut, heart, brain, they're all out of sync and I'm trying to remember a time when they weren't.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I figure I may as well put it out there. Maybe it will help somebody else feel like it's not just them. Below is a painting from 1914 called "The Drinker" by Erich Plontke depicting addiction and despair. A Facebook friend posted it so I thought I'd share it here.