Paper Towel Society

Today, I woke up feeling like so many others, dreadful and, feeling hopeless. Like I have no future left living for.

Scrolling through the news, the media, the socials the same horrors kept appearing, repeated endlessly:

Wars escalating, in Iran, Ukrain and, the country with the Holy City. Millions starving, the numbers ever climbing, making it feel disconected. A human live, nothing more then a number now.

Every headline was a reminder that it only seemed to get worse.

A Sci-Fi society, like the ones we used to read in the books, except no one imagined it would be so boring, so monotonously draining.

I flicked through YouTube and socials.

Clips of protests, viral videos, people debating the latest outrage. All of it slowly bluring together, a constant background hum of dread.

People around me seemed to no longer care like it had become part of the ordinary day maybe, they are just as tired as I am from it all.

Bills rose again this month.

Groceries going up. The rent always seems to be going up never down.

Gas prices, utilities, everything around me. What just cost 2 bucks last week is already 4 by the next.

A small but sharp reminder that life was always heavier than it had been yesterday.

Walking outside, the world around me feels harsher, noisier, colder than it used to.

Conversations are more transactional nowadays.

People only spoke if there was a gain in it be it friendship, money, status our even getting a partner which is more like a dating game. In where you have to make the right move, trying to evade a red flag.

Genuine connection had been replaced with efficiency, with purpose, with calculation. We aren't allowed to make mistakes anymore. Mistakes are wrong, and we should be punished for it accordingly. Even when the nature of human is to errr.

Even the local park feels different now, the wind biting sharper than memory recalled, the leaves falling silently like tiny witnesses to what we’d become. As if nature itself, sees us as a parasite unwanted in the world that's it's destroying.

All around me are familiar faces wearing but, the masks of humans. Hurrying past me, their eyes locked on screens, shoulders tense, expressions ever fake smiling if need to.

They don't notice each other.

We all moved together, yet alone, like characters in the same story but on different pages.

At home, I sit down with a cop of tea , doom-scrolling again, trying to distract myself escaping this dreadful world but, the feeling never faded.

It alway's goes like that. Numbing it out temporary but, never going away.

They tell me, that I should focus on, smaller joy's in my life but, tell me honest when everything is monitized, privatised what joy is there left?

This world has shifted it broke, and it left so many behind.

So maybe we as humans wait, wait for a message that never comes. Dreaming about winning the lottery, so we finally be able to escape this misserable life.

But, knowing we cannot, knowing we aren't that lucky, we scroll on our socials looking for those who succeeded. All the while being stuck in the same rut.

Notching when we are outside in this world, it feels less human, the parks we once knew, now replaced by concrete, the playground filled with kids. All scrolling on their beloved I-Pads deepfrying their brains enabled by parents to tired to be one. Everyday echoes but, the quiet, layers of mental despair.

I somethimes think about the people I passed on the street.

Were they feeling it too? Our had they already resigned themselves to the slow, grinding monotony of this timeline?

Each glance, each nod, each brief encounter was a reminder that we were moving together and yet utterly apart. How can a society, that's more connected then every, be so divided.

I have memories. Of times when I was younger, everything seemed so simple back then. It was not even a mere 30 years ago. Yet now seems like forever. I remember how people used to talk for no reason at all, how smiles weren’t transactional, how laughter could fill a room without purpose. It might be my own nostalgia and, my reminsence.

But, those times now feel like I lived on different planet, a life that existed before the world hardened into efficiency and detachment.

And still, everyday I see it.

We scroll. We click. We live.

But. the question remainds, quietly, in the spaces between the headlines and feeds: Should we really accept this? Is this all there is for us?

Disconnected from society and others, divided more and more by invisible lines. Lines of wealth, opportunity, and attention.

We carry on. The world is colder, the air sharper, the noises louder. While we adapt. We endure.

We all pretend that this is normal, that this is all there is.

Some nights, I close my eyes and hear the silence of the world I wish I could reclaim.

I imagine a street where strangers nod without reason, a park where laughter of children rings free, a day where bills and screens do not dictate the rhythm of life.

The next morning always brings reality.

I wake up and scroll again, trapped in the same dark timeline, hoping for something to break through.