the salary arrived. so did the sinkhole.

It is Friday, May 15th, 2026.

Five days since I wrote that all roads lead to rot, and unfortunately, the road has not developed better civic planning since then. It is still the same road, same potholes, same suspicious corner, same emotional drainage system clogged with old leaves, shame, salt, and things I should have said in 2017, 2019, 2021, yesterday, this afternoon, ten minutes ago. I would like to report progress, but progress has not submitted its attendance. Maybe it took casual leave, or maybe it resigned or maybe it saw my life and said, respectfully, madam, this department is beyond my jurisdiction. 

Monday began with a training. Technically, my manager was supposed to take it while I assisted her. Technically, I had prepared everything for her. Technically, I had even pushed her on Saturday to prepare, like a fool with hope and basic professional ethics. She did not. Then Sunday night, while I was busy being poor in the quiet and dark, she sent two texts asking me to join early on Monday to help her out. Help her out. Haha. A phrase so small, so polite, so corporate-y, it should come with its own knife. Monday arrived. Like, always. She started the session, and then, with the grace of someone dropping a dead animal at my feet, very conveniently dumped the whole thing on me. Not last minute. Worse. After the minute had already passed. After the train had left. After the public performance had begun and I was standing there with no rehearsal, no consent, and no escape hatch. And then it continued. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Three days of taking a training I had not agreed to lead. Three days of smiling into the camera, arranging knowledge into digestible portions, pretending surprise labour is the same thing as opportunity. Three days of doing everything. There is a special violence in being competent. People discover you can carry weight, and suddenly the weight becomes yours by tradition. Meanwhile, over the past weekend, my salary had not come. Sunday passed like a badly written insult. The banks, displaying their usual talent for comedy without compassion, debited whatever peanuts I had left as a penalty for low balance. Low balance. The account was hungry, so they fined it for being hungry. What a cruel joke. No, not joke. Joke implies timing. This was just cruel capitalism wearing a clown nose and holding a receipt. Then finally, Monday night, after a long day of unconsensual labour, I saw the money had been credited from my organisation. For one stupid second, I felt relief. A small animal lifting its head. Haha. Immediately, the utility bills marched in like creditors at a funeral. Paid. Paid. Paid. The salary arrived and was swallowed before I could even pretend to be a person with options. Now I do not know what to do with the remaining peanuts. Save them? Spend them? Worship them? Put them under a glass case and label them: Evidence of Almost Freedom? Money does this ugly thing where it becomes both survival and accusation. If I save, I am responsible. If I spend, I am reckless. If I buy one harmless thing, the future clears its throat. If I deny myself everything, the present sits in the corner and rots.¹ So here I am, financially adult and emotionally feral, wondering whether peanuts should become savings, food, joy, phone case, emergency fund, retirement fund, temporarily-escape-from-family fund, abandon-my-family fun or proof that I am still allowed to want. And because the universe enjoys garnish, Thursday started with a multi-team meeting. The three-day training was finally over. My face had done its professional smiling. My voice had carried three days of material it was never supposed to carry. My brain was sitting in the corner like a wet towel. Then our director thanked my manager for working so hard and taking the training. Ha. Cute. Cruel cherry on top. There she was, being publicly blessed for labour that had passed through my throat, my screen, my panic, my preparation, my improvisation, my body, my mind, my hands. I watched credit climb the hierarchy like a well-trained monkey. Nobody thanked me. Of course nobody thanked me. What was I thinking? That would have disturbed the seating arrangement of the universe. The senior must shine. The junior must become (un)human infrastructure. The work must appear from somewhere, like office electricity or women’s patience. This is the social work's corporate version of domestic labour: invisible until it fails, inherited when inconvenient, credited to someone else when successful. I wish I could say I was surprised. I was not. That is what made it worse.

Anyway. Because the mind is a strange animal and refuses to suffer in a straight line, Wednesday night I returned to The Law According to Lidia Poët. The trainings were over. The emails had documented their little theatre of stolen credit. My body was tired in that corporate-social-work way where even the bones seem to have attended calls. Finally, I had a little time to myself. So naturally, I used it to become unreasonable about a fictional prosecutor. Jacopo? No. The prosecutor. Pier. Pierluigi Fourneau. Or, as Lidia called him as her "Young Warner". Or her schnauzel. The prosecutor had me hooked. There is something very annoying about being hooked. It makes a fool of all your intellectual furniture. Suddenly I am not a woman with critical faculties. I am a Victorian fainting couch with internet access. I went researching him. Then I watched two of his other films² that night, like a person conducting scholarly work and absolutely not like a woman chasing the aftertaste of one very specific chemistry. The films had charm. They had their own mood, their own appeal, their own little atmosphere. For a while, they worked. Then the spell thinned. Whatever spark I was trying to follow was not really there. Because it was not only him, was it? That is the irritating truth. It was not only the face, the voice, the posture, the period clothing, the courtroom seriousness, the restrained longing doing its quiet damage. It was the charge between them. The particular weather created when Lidia and the prosecutor stand near each other and do not say the actual thing. That has stayed. It has stayed so stubbornly that I keep rewatching their scenes. Again and again. Night and day. Day and night. Like a devotional practice, except the temple is Netflix and the deity is unbearable romantic tension. By now, I know the scenes too well. The dialogues. The pauses. The facial expressions. The music entering at exactly the wrong-right moment. The way one look shifts the entire emotional furniture of a scene. The way a sentence becomes less important than the breath before it. The way restraint can sometimes feel more intimate than touch. The kisses. The looks and smiles. Every rewatch gives me something else. A detail I missed. A change in expression. A hesitation. A small cruelty. A softness pretending to be wit. A look that arrives half a second too late. A silence that does not know how to leave the room. And, yes, the giddy pleasure. The ridiculous private sparkle of it. I know it is fiction. I know it is choreography. I know there are writers, actors, lighting, music, editing, all the machinery of feeling doing its work behind the curtain. I know I am being handled. I can see the strings. Still, I keep offering my wrists. There is something almost embarrassing about how deeply a fictional almost-love can enter the bloodstream. Maybe because it is safe. Maybe because it asks nothing from me. Maybe because nobody in my actual life is looking at me like that... with recognition, challenge, danger, tenderness, and the terrible inconvenience of wanting. Maybe I latch onto shows because they give me scenes my life refuses to stage. In Lidia Poët, even longing has architecture. It has corridors, offices, courtrooms, gloves, lamps, carriage rides, glances. It gets music. It gets dialogue. It gets a face across the room. My longing gets browser tabs. My longing gets a broken phone case. My longing gets me, sitting here after midnight, memorising someone else’s charged silences because my own life has made desire both dangerous and impractical. And yet, I do not want to mock it too much. This tiny obsession has kept me company. It has given my tired brain somewhere beautiful to go. It has reminded me that I am still capable of being moved, charmed, struck, made foolish, made awake. That some part of me still responds to spark. Still recognises chemistry. Still wants the look, the scene, the music, the impossible almost. Maybe that is why it has not faded yet. The other films were charming, yes. But charm is not the same as haunting. Charm passes through the room. Haunting learns your name.

But the trouble with haunting is that it does not stay politely inside the show. It follows me out. At first, it feels harmless. Sweet, even. A little private theatre behind the ribs. A spark. A charged scene to revisit when the actual day has been all training, bills, stolen credit, and corporate digestion. The brain says: here, look, beauty. Look, tension. Look, someone wanting someone with their whole face while pretending not to. And then, quietly, the floor changes. The giddiness starts to rot at the edges. I know this pattern. I know it too well. The attachment begins as pleasure, then turns into comparison, then into lack, then into a pit with excellent acoustics. Suddenly I am not watching a romance. I am standing outside my own life, watching what it does not contain. No one looks at me like that. No one waits for me in a corridor of consequence. No one turns toward me with restrained disaster in their eyes. No one writes my longing into music. By MDD, I mean both things, because of course my brain could not stop at one acronym. Major Depressive Disorder, yes, the official beast with paperwork. But also Maladaptive Daydreaming, its glittering cousin, the one that does not drag me down so much as decorate the pit and invite me to live there. The daydreaming does not feel like imagination then. It feels like teleportation-relocation. One minute I am in my room, and the next I am living inside a scene that has better lighting, better dialogue, better stakes, better tenderness. I build corridors from glances. I extend conversations that never happened. I replay a look until it becomes a country. And for a while, the body loosens its grip. The real world thins. My actual life goes quiet in the background like a tab I forgot to close. That is where the DPDR slips in. Depersonalization-derealization disorder. Not as a separate disaster, but as the bill for leaving too often. The more inhabited the daydream becomes, the less inhabited I feel in my own body. My hands become props. My room becomes set design. My face becomes a character I vaguely recognise but do not fully own. The fictional world gains texture, and my real world loses temperature. And then the MDD, that old bureaucrat of the soul, opens its files. It begins gently, almost reasonably. See? This is what life can look like. This is what desire can do to a face. This is what aliveness looks like when properly lit. And now look at you. Look at your room. Look at your unread messages. Look at your body. Look at the broken phone case. Look at the salary that arrived only to vanish into bills. Look at the Saturday already being trespassed upon by work. Look at the years. Look at the stuckness. Look at the absence. Depression has never needed originality. Repetition is its main skill. Then the DPDR enters like bad fog. The world gets a pane of glass over it. My own hands become slightly theoretical. My face in the mirror looks like someone I have been assigned to maintain. The room becomes too flat and too far away at the same time. I can hear myself thinking, but from another room. I can move, answer, type, drink water, exist, but existence feels like a badly dubbed film. And the show becomes more real than me. That is the humiliating part. A fictional almost-touch has more texture than my actual evening. A glance between two actors feels more inhabited than my own body. Their silence has gravity. Mine has dust. Their longing has editing, music, consequence. Mine has tabs open and a mild headache. So I keep rewatching, partly for pleasure, partly for proof. Proof that I can still feel. Proof that somewhere inside the fog, the signal has not died. But every proof becomes evidence against me. If I can feel this much for a scene, why can I not feel properly inside my own life? If my chest can tighten because two fictional people stood too close under warm lighting, why does my actual future feel wrapped in plastic? If desire still lives in me, why does it have nowhere to go except a screen? This is how the sinkhole opens. Not dramatically. Not with a scream. Just one more rewatch. One more scene. One more detail noticed. One more minute of being pulled toward a life with movement, stakes, beauty, and someone across the room who sees you as both problem and possibility. Then I pause the show. And my own room returns. My own life returns. The same arrangement. The same stuck furniture of the self. The same body I keep trying to inhabit like rented accommodation. The same old fear standing at the foot of the bed, asking if I enjoyed my little outing. This is why I both love and fear these attachments. They rescue me. Then they show me what I needed rescuing from. They make me feel alive. Then they make my life feel unlivable. They pull me out of numbness. Then leave me with the full bill of having been numb. And I know this sounds excessive. I know sane people watch a show, enjoy the chemistry, maybe make an edit, maybe send a thirsty message to a friend, then proceed with their lives like emotionally regulated mammals. I, meanwhile, open one fictional door and fall through the architecture of my entire deprivation. Very normal. Very casual. Five stars. Would dissociate again. I do not escape reality. No. Never. I just return to it less assembled.

Anyway. The phone case is still broken. Of course it is. It has become one of those stupidly faithful objects that stays because I do not have the courage to replace it with something honest. A cracked little witness that's ugly, loyal, safer than confession. I keep thinking about the sapphic flag phone case, still. Not constantly, not dramatically, not like a heroine pressing a forbidden letter to her chest under moonlight. More like an app running quietly in the background, draining battery. A small wish. A small colour. A small yes I keep refusing myself because in this house where I reside, even colour can become evidence. A phone case is never just a phone case. It is a trial waiting for a prosecutor.³ Who bought this? Why this colour? What does it mean? Where did you see this? Who told you? Why are you becoming like this? Since when? Because families are very modern until your object begins to speak a language they did not approve. Then suddenly everyone becomes archaeologist, police, priest, and unpaid detective. So the broken cover stays. The safe thing. The ugly thing. The thing that says nothing and therefore survives. Just like me. I am ugly and I say nothing. And, unfortunately, I survive. I wish I were less good at surviving. This is a terrible thing to say because survival is supposed to be noble. Women are fed this word like jaggery wrapped around medicine. Survive. Adjust. Manage. Endure. Be strong. Be mature. Be practical. Be grateful it is not worse. Be glad you are educated. Be glad you have work. Be glad nobody has chained your ankle to the bedpost. Be glad the cage has wonky Wi-Fi that doesn't work only for you so you have to buy your data separately. And I am glad, sometimes. I am not completely foolish, you know. I know the world is brutal, and I know there are worse rooms, worse fathers, worse mothers, worse brothers, worse sisters, worse uncles, worse aunts, worse silences, worse locks, worse oppressors. And, I know comparison is the national sport of emotional invalidation. Still, knowing other people are drowning in deeper water does not make your own lungs decorative. I am tired. Not beautifully tired. Not aesthetically tired. Not poet tired. Not the cinematic kind where a woman removes one earring and looks devastating under yellow light. I am tired in the spreadsheet way. Rows and rows of small unfinished things. Cells filled with pending. Useless colours marking them pending. Body pending. Courage pending. Departure pending. Desire pending. Honesty pending. Future pending. Life pending. There is something obscene about being mid-twenty-something and feeling already archival. Like I am not living, have never lived, but only preserving evidence for a case no court will ever hear. 
Exhibit A: the broken phone case.
Exhibit B: the body that alternates between hunger and punishment of embarrassment when I do eat.⁴
Exhibit C: the tabs I keep open as if research can become rescue.
Exhibit D: the private list of things I will do when I leave.
Exhibit E: the sentence, when I leave, carrying the entire weight of a religion.⁵
But what if I do not leave? There it is. The honest rot laid bare under the decorative moss. What if I do not leave? What if the box of things I will do when I leave becomes a pathetic, loser museum of the woman I kept postponing? What if all my rebellion remains beautifully theoretical, well-written, occasionally funny, and completely unusable in this stupid head of mine and a copy of it here, in this weird little corner of the world wide web? What if I keep becoming more articulate about the cage and never actually become less caged? I hate that question because it has no manners and it shamelessly enters without knocking and sits on my bed. Today was not even dramatic enough to justify all this. That is the insult. Nothing happened. No grand fight. No cinematic breakdown. No one said the cruel line that would make a clean villain of them. The day simply passed over me with its usual dull hands. Work, phone, food thoughts, body thoughts, tabs, messages, heat, humidity, perpetual fatigue, my mother's devotional songs, the faint humiliation of still being myself in this rotting flesh. Maybe that is why I am writing. Like always. Because nothing happened, and still I feel like I survived something tremendous. Maybe the event is not always external. Maybe sometimes the event is waking up inside the same life and not immediately turning into stone. I keep thinking of Lidia Poët again. Not just the law, the fight, the forbidden rooms. Of course, that is the central point, though. I keep thinking of her forward motion. Even when she suffers, the story lets her move. Or, more aptly, she moves her story forward. She enters rooms, she argues, she demands, she fights, she risks, she desires, she loves, she fails with choreography, and she still continues. Her world resists her, yes, on this screen, it gives her scenes. My life, by comparison, feels like a loading screen. A buffering woman. A spinning circle wearing moisturizer. 

And yet, beneath all this melodrama, some tiny stubborn thing remains alive. Annoyingly alive. Cockroach alive. Government-office-file alive. It keeps making lists. It keeps saving poems. It keeps laughing at terrible jokes all alone in the small, dark room. It keeps wanting pizza, sea air, impossible softness, a room with a lock, a body that is not treated like a public institution, a love that does not require a courtroom, and one ridiculous phone case in colours nobody is allowed to interrogate. This, I suppose, is hope...? Not the clean kind. Definitely, not. Not the motivational-poster kind, either. Not the “everything happens for a reason” kind, which should be banned and replaced with free snacks. My hope is smaller and more suspicious. It looks like keeping the browser tab open. It looks like drinking water after punishing the body. It looks like writing the sentence even when the sentence is ugly. It looks like admitting I want things. It looks like not mocking myself immediately after admitting I want things. Okay, fine, it looks like mocking myself only a little. At 20:55 PM, I am still here. Still stuck. Still carrying home inside me like contraband. Still afraid that my life is not a phase but the whole arrangement. Still saving possible selves in invisible carts. Still not buying the phone case. Still wanting it. Maybe that matters. I hope, it matters. Wanting. Even wanting badly. Even wanting secretly. Even wanting in a house where desire must learn to move like a shameful thief. Rot is still here, yes. But maybe rot is not the only thing loyal to me. Maybe want is loyal too. Maybe the little sapphic flag in my head, the one I have not bought, the one I have not allowed to become plastic and visible and stupidly real, is not only fear. Maybe it is also proof that some part of me still knows colour. Still recognises itself. Still presses its face against the shop window of the future and says, very quietly, not yet, but mine. Not yet. But mine.

As I write this, she, my manager, has texted again. After work hours, of course. Respecting time would be too vulgar, too modern, too dangerously close to recognising me as a person. Some work needs to be done ASAP. As she had already promised it. Naturally. ASAP: the social work's corporate mantra of poor planning, passed down from one panicked person [usually the manager] to another [the underdog] until it lands in the lap of whoever [mostly, the underdog, again] has the least authority to refuse. The funny part is, it is not even my job. Not really. But somehow the inconvenience has found my address. Now I will have to either ask the concerned person humiliatingly late at night, as if I am the villain in their Friday, or ask tomorrow, on an off Saturday, and become the tiny unpleasant notification in someone else’s weekend. This is how bad management spreads its shame. Someone does not plan. Someone does not prepare. Someone does not communicate. Then the failure travels downward, wearing urgency as perfume the gives you a migraine the moment it hits your nostrils, until the most junior person is left holding a burning plate and apologising for the smoke. I hate this part most: the forced borrowing of another person’s time. I hate that I must become the messenger of someone else’s chaos. I hate that I must sound polite while carrying a request I do not respect. I hate that my options are either to inconvenience someone else or absorb the inconvenience into my own body, which is apparently where all unclaimed work goes to die. There should be a word for this. Not burnout. Burnout sounds too final, too respectable, like a candle in a poem. This is more like being nibbled. Tiny bites of time. Tiny bites of rest. Tiny bites of Friday evening, Saturday morning, salary, self-respect, appetite, softness, desire. Nothing large enough to make a case. Everything small enough to be dismissed. Just do this once. Just check once. Just ask once. Just join early once. Just help out once. Just manage for today. Just stretch a little. A whole life can be stolen in “just.” And I know what will happen if I say no. Maybe nothing dramatic. Maybe no punishment anyone can screenshot. Just a change in tone. A slight coolness. A note in the invisible ledger. Not a team player. Not proactive. Difficult. Uncooperative. Needs attitude adjustment. The old words wearing office clothes. So I sit here, at 23:25 PM, writing about being stuck while the proof of stuckness arrives in real time. A message on my phone. A task outside my role. An urgency I did not create. A Saturday being quietly dragged toward sacrifice. And me, still deciding whether to obey, delay, soften, apologise, resist, or perform that sophisticated modern dance called “setting boundaries” while standing on a floor made entirely of consequences. Maybe I will reply tomorrow [that being, Monday]. Maybe I will say, “I’ll check this during working hours.” Maybe I will type it bravely and then stare at it like it is a bomb and then erase it. Maybe courage, for tonight, is not sending the message immediately. Maybe survival is letting one ASAP remain slightly less ASAP. Maybe rebellion begins as a notification left unread. Actually, I read it. Or maybe I am romanticising avoidance because I am tired. Both can be true. Most things that keep me alive are morally untidy.

~ Oizys.

¹ This too echoes: “The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.” ― Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
² The Mascarpone Collection.
³ Good reference.
⁴ An addendum for Exhibit B: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.
⁵ An addendum for Exhibit E:
When I leave, I will buy the phone case.
When I leave, I will breathe normally.
When I leave, I will decorate myself without fear.
When I leave, I will not explain every harmless thing like it is a crime scene.
When I leave, I will become the version of myself who exists without whispering.

Job hunting is a full-time job that doesn’t pay

I am sitting with my laptop, 47 tabs open, 3 different browsers, reading another “dynamic self-starter” requirement. I’ve been applying to so many jobs lately;  obsessively, exhaustingly, methodically; and the silence in return has been deafening. Negligible callbacks. No feedback. Just form rejections or, more often, nothing at all. Every application feels like bottling lightning with a cover letter. I keep rewriting my story to fit a box someone else built. I keep telling myself, “You’re not lazy. You’re in limbo. And limbo is a battlefield.” What does one even do to get a job anymore? Apply? Network? Manifest? Beg? Burn sage? 

As a certified daydreamer, I sometimes stumble upon a job listing that feels like it was written for me, like the universe whispered it into existence. And I let myself believe.

I imagine the version of me who gets it: cool, confident, caffeinated. I reshape my identity around the role. I draft mental tweets about the work I’ll do.

And then? Silence. Not even a polite no. Just the usual ghosting. Rejection doesn’t just hurt my chances. It hijacks my identity. I start asking not “Am I good enough?” but “Am I anything at all?”

I do this monthly, by the way. Like a ritual. Spot the dream job, fall in love, get ghosted. Repeat.

And in this sacred cycle of self-inflicted heartbreak, I haunt the LinkedIn profiles of people who did get those positions. I compare and contrast their every achievement, line by line. I zoom into their credentials, the photos, the internships, the polished summary paragraphs.

I make mental notes of where they went right... and where I must’ve gone wrong. It’s not envy, exactly. It’s more like academic grief. A post-mortem of opportunities that slipped away.

What is a job? A paycheck? A place to put your brain on weekdays? A badge of worth? Why does it feel like I’m chasing a ghost version of myself in a blazer and imposter syndrome?

There’s no safety net. Just this quiet panic under my skin. Hopes and dreams feel like they’re flying farther away from me each day. Some mornings, it feels like my competency is slowly leaking out of my soul.

But... The waiting, the rejection emails with no feedback. Talk about interviews that felt like interrogations. Or worse, hope-laced silences. And then I scroll through another “I’m thrilled to announce…” post on LinkedIn, with a sad, lumpy blob of jealousy rising in my throat like bad tea. I want to be happy for people (and I usually am!) but some days it stings. I feel like I’m getting erased while the algorithm cheers someone else on.

That exhaustion from LinkedIn (LinkedIn is an unnecessary evil, by the way!) trenches or getting ghosted by HR has been teaching me so much. I’m learning that job hunting is less about skills and more about performance. How well can you mask exhaustion with enthusiasm? How many times can you pitch yourself before you forget who you’re selling? How long before “professional” starts meaning “emotionally numbed but high-functioning”? There’s this impossible bind. Be ambitious, but don’t burn out. Work hard, but rest. Hustle, but heal. I feel like I'm always choosing between being well and being seen. And if I dare to pause, it feels like the world moves on without me. Reading most job descriptions now feels like reading aspirational fiction. I don’t even need to feel guilty about not reading books anymore. 

Sometimes, I feel like my real dream job is the one where I wouldn't need LinkedIn. A role where I could show up as myself, not a clickable summary. Where I’m not forced to compress my soul into a headline. No “culture fit,” no personal brand. I don’t want my life to be reduced to KPIs and key deliverables. I want work that lets me breathe. Just real work with real meaning, without having to turn myself into a walking pitch deck. I’m not asking for ease. I’m asking for respect. And honestly? Rest shouldn’t feel like a rebellion.

I keep hoping side projects count (even anonymized poetry that nobody knows about!). But, my question is: why is “the right job” feeling like I am applying to be someone else? the right job should feel like recognition, not reinvention, right? This is exactly the marrow of the modern job hunt: we are not just searching for work, you’re clawing for dignity in a system that doesn’t even remember we exist. The modern job market isn’t built for poets or dreamers. It isn’t built for thinkers. Or for care. It was built for efficiency theatre, the kind that rewards polish over potential and pedigree over passion. No, it’s not a meritocracy. It’s a visibility contest: loud, relentless, and deeply unfair. It favors the glossy, the networked, the already-known. And those of us who are real? Who bring depth and devotion? We’re made to feel like we’re “too much” or “not enough,” never the right shape for the job-shaped hole.

Some days, I feel like I’m grieving the version of myself who could’ve done so much, if only the world had noticed. If only systems weren’t so rigged. If only potential mattered more than packaging. I’m not loud. I’m not always "on." I don’t speak in bullet points or market myself like a brand. But I show up, I think deeply, I care hard. It’s just that no one seems to notice unless you shout. And, as usual, shouting doesn’t come naturally to me.

I don’t know what the dream job is anymore. I’m still looking. I’ll keep applying, yes. But I’m done apologizing. The job is not to chase jobs. The job is to build a life. Job applications are a tool. Not the temple. I’ve decided to stop shrinking to fit. I’m done editing my soul to sound more like synergy. Whoever hires me next doesn’t just get my labor. They get my loyalty, my integrity, my fire. And, I've decided to interview jobs as much as they interview me. Until then, I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep dreaming. And I’ll keep becoming the version of me that doesn’t need to be picked to matter.

Here's the context behind the urgency: I just switched jobs this year. I ran; ran; from a soul-sucking, peanut-paying corporate job that drained the joy out of everything. I thought I had made it out. I joined the social sector. First month? Euphoric. I felt like I could breathe again. But then... the cracks. Salaries delayed. People started leaving. Then the firings began. The office turned into a ghost town. And I’m stuck again: overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed. And it’s scary. Burnout isn’t a side effect anymore, it’s the entire atmosphere. I’m tired before I even start my day. Rest feels illegal. Rest feels like laziness. Rest feels like losing. We’ve normalized being stretched thin like it's ambition, but really, we’re just running on hope fumes and broken sleep. And honestly? The grief of working in the nonprofit world hits different. It’s heartbreaking. It’s lonely when you didn’t come from a utopia-coded progressive uni or have the ‘right kind’ of pedigree. Trying to find a fair-paying nonprofit job feels like breaking into a club where the bouncer keeps telling you your vibe is too real. Meanwhile, the cause is real, the stakes are real but the support? Nowhere to be found. It’s wild how even purpose-driven spaces expect you to martyr your sanity for pennies. I thought nonprofit meant values-first, but it feels like capitalism wearing an empathy costume. The mission is noble, but the machinery is broken. And I’m caught in the cogs. 

I think part of the problem is that I never really had a “dream job” in the first place. Not in school. Not in college. I was too busy studying, trying to survive, or writing lonely poetry in the margins of my notebooks. I didn’t dream of corner offices or five-year plans. I didn’t grow up dreaming of a title or a salary. I dreamt of being seen. Of not feeling invisible. Of not being lonely. Of doing something that didn’t make me feel like a background character in my own life. Of having a life that made sense. We were sold a linear fantasy, but the world zigzagged. The real dream isn’t a job title, it’s dignity, it’s meaning, it’s waking up without dread clawing at your chest. The right job shouldn’t make you shapeshift; it should recognize you already are the shape. It should feel like resonance, not reinvention.

Sometimes I feel haunted by a future that was built for me by other people. As kids, we’re spoon-fed this shiny, linear story: study hard, get good marks, pick a respectable job, climb ladders, get promotions, buy property, smile in family WhatsApp groups. The “good life.” But I don’t think I ever wanted that future. Not really. While everyone else was dreaming of MBA programs and big company perks, I was secretly imagining that some rich, mysterious publishing house would stumble across my lonely little blog and offer me a book deal. I dreamed of writing barefoot in cafés in Scotland. Of giving readings in bookstores that smelled like old paper and ambition. Of wandering around the UK on a budget and a prayer, soaking up rainy streets and secondhand stories. I didn’t want a career. I wanted a life I could feel inside my body. But then came the expectations. The "be practical" warnings. The polite discouragement dressed as love. Slowly, I started shelving those dreams, one by one, to make room for a future that felt safe. Probable. Professional. Predictable. And now I sit here, years later, wondering if those dreams are still waiting for me somewhere, or if I buried them too well. Maybe that’s why job hunting feels so violent. It’s not just work I’m chasing, it’s a life I never gave myself permission to want.

Maybe that’s why the job search feels so personal. It’s not just about getting paid. It’s about asking, “Is there a place in the world for someone like me?” And when the answer is silence… it stings deeper than we let on.

Everyone says “impact over income” until the rent’s due. They still follow the same tired meritocracy myths. Fancy degrees and elite circles? Still the key to the door. Passion? Lived experience? Grit? Not on the job description. It’s not about values. It’s about proximity to prestige.

Sometimes, I put in so much efforts while applying for jobs. I’ve sent my soul with my resume... and they still ghost me like I sent them spam. (Also, no. I don't want to write a 500-word highly-tailored cover letter for your excel job. It's a job application, not an odyssey. I am NOT a culture fit and that's a compliment!) But, they all feel like a silent scream in a crowded room. I feel like people make a huge fuss about ATS or AI or AI ATS or whatever. Like, I can say: “I have 7+ years of experience in breathing,” and still will make the ATS (or, won't... I don't know!). And, those entry-level roles requiring 10 years or the unpaid trial projects? We all joke to cope, but that laughter is doing the heavy lifting of grief because beneath that is fatigue. And fear. And a constant rewriting of our self-worth. The job search itself is unpaid labor. Emotional labor. Cognitive labor. Soul labor. Sometimes, I apply to a ton of jobs, diligently, completely. I burn through tabs and tweak resumes until I can't see straight. Then I pause. I wait. I tell myself, “Let the responses come.” But they don’t. And while I rest, the listings keep moving, the deadlines pass, and I miss out on those. I sit there with nothing but silence (and shame...). And slowly, I just… give up. Not forever, but enough to feel like a failure in limbo.

We call it “looking” but really we’re building a full-time brand campaign for ourselves, for free! No one sees the spreadsheets. The follow-ups. The cover letters that take pieces of our souls from us. No one counts the time spent watching hope slip through algorithmic cracks.

There are moments where I’m pumped, eyes wide, heart racing, excitedly applying to jobs that feel right. The kind of roles that make me whisper, “Maybe this one. Maybe finally.” But that hope? It gets shattered. By a nonresponse. Or a generic, polite rejection. Or just my own self-doubt, circling back like an unpaid intern whispering, “Who do you think you are?” The crash after the high is brutal. Like sending love letters into the void and getting echoes back in Times New Roman.

I am not desperate. I am discerning. And that’s my new job title. Sometimes, I even feel guilty for thinking about what kind of job would suit me. Like I should just be grateful for whatever comes my way. Everyone says, “Just be grateful someone’s hiring.” But grateful for what? For burnout? For unpaid test assignments? For having to beg for dignity in exchange for labor? Gratitude without boundaries is exploitation. And, I’m bound by family expectations, by society’s timelines, by this blurry, unpredictable future. I’m scared to dream too specifically, too selfishly. And then there’s that cold jealousy towards people whose jobs make sense, whose paths look linear. It’s not that I want their life. I just want mine to stop feeling like a question mark.

I keep wondering: if I’m doing everything “right,” why does everything feel so wrong? Why do so many brilliant, kind, competent people end up in the waiting room of their own lives? And why does getting a job feel like being picked for a secret society, not a role? So many like me are stuck in a waiting room to live our lives. Just sitting there, waiting for a “good job,” a well-paying one, or any escape hatch far from home. We tell ourselves: once that job comes, then we’ll start our life. Until then? Our careers feel reserved for the frosted-glass club chilling at the top, while we pace below, carrying portfolios and hope like offerings. You can be both highly skilled and unemployed. But, where do the unchosen go? And what about goals? What are they? What are mine? Aspirations? Needs? Life? What even is the plan anymore?

If you’re out there job-searching too, still reshaping yourself for job listings, still whispering "maybe this one": You're not alone, this post is for you. You’re not failing. You’re enduring in a system designed to wear you down. It’s not that you’re not trying hard enough. It’s that the effort has become unsustainable. And you’re still standing. Still sending hope notes into the void. Still dreaming despite the ache. You're not lazy. You're not lost. You're just in limbo. And limbo is a battlefield.

Okay, I have to go and write a six-page research note for a job application, formatted to impossible perfection because nothing says overqualified, underpaid, and barely surviving capitalism like being expected to smile in Arial 11.

- Oizys, currently emailing cover letters into the abyss.

Money, Money, Money

Everything is money. Everything is a lot of money. Costs a lot of money. Standing up to your father. Saving your mother. Running away from your creepy cousin. Not being jealous of your older sister and her solo trips. Staying out with friends. Having a self-esteem. Having a hobby without the pressure of monetizing it but at the same time not seeming like a desperate sell-out. 

Having a clean room. Having a quiet room. Having a room. A door you can close. A bed you can sleep in, not just collapse onto. Not just a cot to rot in. Sheets that don’t smell like the past week. A morning where you don’t wake up exhausted before you even stand up.

Time is money, they say. But somehow, only your time. Not the hours you spend waiting for a bus that never comes. Not the hours wasted in meetings that could have been a single email. Not the hours you give away to a job that calls you family until they don’t need you anymore.

Being a good person. Expensive. Too expensive. Saying yes is free, saying no is costly. Being kind, but not too kind, because that’s naive. Being cautious, but not too cautious, because that’s cold. Being generous, but not so generous that people think you’re trying to buy something.

Having a body that doesn’t hurt all the time. Not just because of illness but because you sat wrong, slept wrong, lived wrong. Keeping it from falling apart. Dentists. Doctors. Gynacs. Pads. Medicines. Therapists. You tell people to go to therapy and pretend you don’t know how much one session costs. You tell people to rest and pretend you don’t know that rest is a privilege.

And love? Love should be free, right? But loving someone means dates, gifts, rent, bills. Weddings. Divorces. You love someone and suddenly you’re reading about tax brackets. You love someone and suddenly you're thinking about health insurance plans. Love is free but living together isn’t. Love is free but raising a child definitely isn’t.

Even dying is expensive. Funerals. Wills. The cost of a final resting place. A cheap coffin is still a couple thousand dollars, but don’t worry—there are payment plans.

Even speaking is money. Having the right words, the right accent, the right tone—expensive. Too cheap, and people dismiss you. Too refined, and people resent you. Knowing the right language in the right country. Knowing when to shut up. Knowing when to speak up, knowing how much it costs to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Silence is expensive too. The right to stay silent. The right to not be spoken over. The right to ignore emails, ignore calls, ignore the whole world for a little while. Unplugging. Logging off. Deleting your account. Walking away without explaining yourself.

Privacy? Luxury item. They make you pay to hide, pay to disappear. VPNs, secure phones, off-the-grid cabins. The people who say “if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” have never had anything worth taking.

Faith is money. Not just church donations or temple fees. Not just the cost of halal meat or kosher kitchens. The price of belonging. The price of being seen as good, moral, righteous. The price of believing in something bigger than yourself without being used, without being exploited.

Doubt? Also money. Therapy again. Self-help books. Meditation retreats. Yoga classes where peace of mind is bundled with a hundred-dollar membership fee. Doubt is a hole in your wallet that someone is always ready to fill.

And art. God, art. You’re supposed to make it for love, not money. But supplies cost money. Training costs money. Time costs money, and nobody wants to pay for it. They want passion, but not the cost of passion. They want a masterpiece, but not the hours that made it. They want you to be grateful that they even looked at your work.

Freedom, of course, is the most expensive thing of all. The ability to walk away. To quit a job, to leave a bad relationship, to refuse, to say no. Freedom isn’t free, but not in the way they tell you. It’s an auction, and only the highest bidders get to leave with their dignity intact.

Everything is money.  Everything costs money. Even the things you thought you already owned. Even the things they swore were priceless.

Your time, your energy, your peace of mind — these things aren’t just commodities; they’re investments. And it’s hard to see where you’ll get returns when the interest keeps compounding, the bills keep coming, and you’re still paying off yesterday's debts.

You pay for your success with sleepless nights. You pay for your mistakes with regret. You pay for your dreams with sacrifice. You pay for your sanity with distractions. You pay for your stability with compromise.

And they say it's all worth it. They say if you work hard enough, if you keep pushing, if you don’t give up, you’ll get there. But “there” is always just a little farther, a little higher, a little more out of reach. And they keep raising the price of admission, even as they tell you it’s a privilege to try.

But in the end, all you can do is keep paying. Keep paying for your place in the world. Keep paying for your right to exist without apology. Keep paying for the freedom to choose your path, even when the path itself is sold to you like a luxury item.

Because that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it? The cost of existing. The cost of being seen. The cost of being heard. The cost of being free. Everything is money. Even the air you breathe. Even the love you give. Even the dreams you chase.

But here's the thing: we’re conditioned to believe that the cost is inevitable, that it’s simply the price of living in a world built on scarcity. But what if that’s not true? What if the price is just a construct—a system designed to make us feel like we’re always running out of time, out of options, out of resources?

What if the real cost is the illusion itself? The way we chase after what we think we need to be worthy, to be seen, to be successful. We sell ourselves the idea that without the right amount of money, the right career, the right relationships, we’re incomplete. We’re told that if we just have more, we’ll have it all.

But what happens when we start to realize that “more” isn’t the answer? That in the pursuit of accumulation, we’ve lost sight of the things that don’t come with a price tag? The moments of stillness, the conversations that don’t need to be quantified, the simple act of existing without performing, without justifying our worth.

What if the real freedom is not in escaping the system, but in understanding that we are enough, right here, right now, without needing to earn it, buy it, or prove it?

Sure, you can’t escape the bills. You can’t pretend that the world doesn’t value you based on what you can offer—whether it’s time, skills, or attention. But maybe you can find a way to stop letting it dictate your worth. Maybe the true revolution is in rejecting the idea that the price of your life is anything but your own to define.

Maybe we can all stop running in this endless race for more, for more, for more. Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves: What’s the cost of not living fully right now? What’s the cost of waiting for some perfect, idealized future where we finally “have it all”?

Because in chasing after the illusion of what we need, we lose the things that are truly priceless—time spent with people who care about us, the quiet moments where we remember who we are when the world isn’t demanding something from us, the joy of creation that’s not tainted by the question of how much it’s worth.

And yet, we still have to pay. Because that’s the world we live in. But maybe, just maybe, we don’t have to pay with our souls, our joy, our peace.

Maybe the cost is not as steep as they make us believe. And when it’s all said and done, what do you have left? A receipt. A reminder of everything you’ve paid for, everything you’ve lost, and everything you’ve gained. But most of all, you’ll have the knowledge that nothing is truly yours unless you’ve fought for it, paid for it, earned it.

And still, you’ll wonder: Was it worth it?

But even when you try to walk away from it all—when you think you’ve managed to find some balance, some space for yourself—it follows you. The bill collectors. The demands. The expectations. You can never quite escape the feeling that every moment of your life has a price tag. Even the time you try to spend doing nothing, the time you try to claim as yours, is measured in some way. Is this rest worth it? Is it okay to take a break, or is that just another sign of weakness in a world that tells you to hustle?

Even when you close your eyes and try to shut it all out, you can’t ignore the cost of everything you've accumulated, the price of all the things you've tried to hold onto. The house, the car, the clothes, the gadgets. Things that are supposed to make life easier, but somehow only seem to add to the weight. You have to maintain them. You have to care for them. You have to keep paying for them long after they’ve stopped giving you joy.

And then there’s the cost of your own existence—the things you can't even put into words. The quiet sacrifices you make every day. The moments you hold in your chest but can’t share with anyone, because sharing means paying the price of vulnerability. Being understood. Being seen. How much is that worth? Is it worth the effort of trying to explain yourself, over and over, only to be misunderstood or ignored?

You give pieces of yourself away just to keep up, just to keep from falling behind. You trade your comfort for a fleeting sense of success, your peace for the illusion of stability. And still, it’s never enough. There’s always more to pay, more to prove. More.

Even your thoughts cost you. You can’t think for free anymore. Your ideas are currency, and whether you like it or not, someone is ready to capitalize on them. Every tweet, every opinion, every photo posted online—these are commodities, and the minute you share them, you’re putting a price on your existence. The price of your attention, the price of your time, the price of your identity.

And then they tell you to “be yourself,” to embrace your uniqueness, but only if you package it in a way that makes it marketable. Only if it’s polished, palatable, profitable. Being authentic isn’t free. It’s just another way of selling something you thought was yours. Even your individuality is a product to be sold, bought, and consumed.

And in the midst of it all, the question that lingers: Is this it? Is this the price we pay just to exist? To survive? To navigate a world that constantly demands, that constantly extracts from us, until we’re nothing but a collection of bills, obligations, and obligations to others’ expectations?

You look around, and it’s all the same—everyone’s caught in the grind, pushing forward, trying to make ends meet. Trying to make sense of it all. But nothing changes. The system is designed to make sure you never feel like you’ve “paid enough.” There’s always something more to owe. Always something more to give.

And yet, we keep paying. Every day. Every hour. Every minute.

Because that’s the price of being—of surviving. Of playing the game, even when the rules are rigged.

And then, you start to see it—how the system is built around this relentless cost. How it’s not just your life being monetized, but your very existence is tied to a cycle of extraction. The politicians who tell you they’re fighting for you, the ones who promise to lower taxes, to “fix” healthcare, to make things easier—they never mention that the price tag is still there, hanging above your head. Always hovering, always rising. They make it look like a choice, like you’re in control, like you can somehow navigate this labyrinth without losing more than you already have. But it’s all smoke and mirrors. They’re selling you the illusion of agency, while your choices are already being made for you.

And don’t even get me started on the ones who say, “If you work hard enough, you can make it.” It’s the same tired mantra, the same lie wrapped in a bow. Work hard, they say. But what they don’t tell you is that not everyone’s working with the same set of resources. Not everyone has the same starting point, the same access, the same safety net. The playing field was never level to begin with. The rich get tax breaks, loopholes, subsidies. The poor get fees, fines, debt. And in between? Well, you get more work. More hours. More stress. The cost of staying afloat is still rising, and they’re still telling you to just try harder.

The market decides everything. The job market, the healthcare market, the housing market. Your worth is tied to your job title, your salary, your credit score. And they’ll tell you that’s your fault if it doesn’t measure up. That’s your failure to navigate the system, your failure to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Meanwhile, the ones at the top, the ones who play the game with their rules, they never feel the pinch. They live in the gated communities, the ones where the air is a little cleaner, the schools are a little better, the hospitals are a little closer, and the jobs come with benefits.

But you? You get stuck in the grind. Your taxes go up, your wages stay stagnant, and the world keeps asking more of you—more hours, more patience, more flexibility, more everything. They keep demanding you keep up, all while telling you that if you just did more—if you just found the right hustle, the right side gig, the right investment—you’ll make it. But it’s all rigged. The system is designed to leave you running in circles, all while the ones who make the rules keep getting richer. The cost of your labor, your time, your energy—it’s never truly yours. It’s just another cog in their machine, a machine built to extract, to profit, to grow.

And let’s not even talk about policies. Politicians who pretend to care about “the people” but are only looking for the right corporate sponsor, the right donation, the right endorsement. They pass laws that sound nice—“healthcare for all,” “living wages,” “social security reform”—but the fine print is always there, hidden behind the promises. The truth is, those laws aren’t designed to help you. They’re designed to keep the wheel spinning, to maintain the status quo. Because change would mean a hit to their profits, to their bottom line. And no one gets rich off of changing the system that keeps them rich.

Look at the environment. Look at the cities crumbling, the air thickening, the oceans rising. And still, the rich fly private jets, drill oil, buy beachfront property. It’s not their world that’s burning. It’s yours. Your children’s. Your neighbors'. And they’ll tell you it’s all your responsibility to fix it. Buy the electric car. Cut your emissions. Live sustainably. But when you ask the ones who have the power to change anything, they’ll tell you the problem is too big. It’s too complicated. We’re too late. So you’re left trying to save the world one small decision at a time, while they continue to profit off the destruction of it.

Everything is money. And the cost of living in this system isn’t just high—it’s deliberately designed to make sure you never have enough. It’s designed to keep you always paying, always striving, always struggling, while the people who write the rules keep getting richer. They’ve perfected the art of making you feel like you’re the problem. That if you’d just work harder, play smarter, save better, you could fix it. But that’s the illusion. The truth is, the system is stacked against you. It was never designed to help you win. It was designed to keep you paying—until you’re just too exhausted to fight back.

And so you keep going. You keep paying for your right to exist, for your right to live without the constant weight of debt, the constant grind of survival. But the truth is, it’s all a game. A game where you’re the pawn, and the rich, the powerful—they keep shifting the board, making sure you never have a chance to win.

And they’ll keep telling you that everything is possible, if you just try harder. Because that’s how they keep the system running. Keep you just close enough to the edge, to make you think there’s a way out, but never quite letting you go.

Everything is money. Everything costs money. You can try to ignore it, you can try to escape it, but it never lets you go. It wraps around every part of you, twisting tighter and tighter, until you’re not sure where you end and the system begins. And you start to realize—this isn’t just about the bills, the loans, the debts. It’s about everything. Your time, your energy, your labor, your thoughts, your dreams. All of it is priced out, listed on a ledger somewhere. Your worth is on that ledger. Your very existence is quantified, commodified, traded.

You’re told that money isn’t everything, that you’re more than your paycheck, more than your job, your possessions, your image. But you’re also told, over and over again, that you’re nothing without it. That without the right house, the right clothes, the right relationships, the right career, you’re invisible. You don’t matter. You’re not worth anything unless someone is willing to pay.

And so, you keep paying. Every hour you work, every decision you make, every move you take, you’re paying. You’re paying to survive. You’re paying to exist. You’re paying for your worth, your safety, your future, and your peace of mind. And all the while, the ones who hold the power, the ones who write the laws, the ones who build the systems—they’re getting richer, their lives getting easier, while you run on a treadmill, always striving, always chasing, always paying.

And still, you keep going. Because what else can you do? You’re stuck in a game you didn’t choose, a game where the rules are made by those who have the resources to shape them, and you’re left trying to survive the cost of just being here. And even when you fight back, when you try to tear down the walls, when you shout that this isn’t right—that it’s not fair, that it shouldn’t be like this—they just raise the price of everything. They make the cost of living, of surviving, even higher. They tell you to work harder, to hustle more, to save better, to do more, to be more, and somehow, none of it is ever enough.

You try to make it, you try to get ahead, you try to carve out a space where you can breathe without the constant weight of the world crushing down on you. But the truth is—there’s no such thing as enough. There’s no such thing as getting out. Not really. Because they control the game. They control the rules. And they’ve already decided how much you’re worth.

Even your dreams? They’re priced out. The things you’ve told yourself will make it all worth it—the vacations, the hobbies, the relationships, the adventures—they cost more than you have. They cost more than you can afford. And the more you dream, the more it feels like they’re pulling the rug out from under you, telling you, No, you can’t have this. You don’t deserve this. You see it in the people who have everything and still want more, and you see it in the people who have nothing, still giving everything.

Because at the end of the day, you’re not allowed to escape. You’re not allowed to step off this treadmill, not allowed to take a break, not allowed to breathe without paying for it. You can’t stop running, you can’t stop hustling, you can’t even stop wishing. Because if you do—if you stop—then you’ll see the truth. You’ll see the cost that’s been hidden all along. The cost of your worth. The cost of your time. The cost of your humanity.

And when you finally see it, when the weight of it all crushes down on you and you realize that you’ve spent your whole life paying for things you’ll never own, for a world that never really wanted you in the first place, you’re left with nothing. No way out. No way to undo the damage. No way to change the rules, because they’re already set. The game is rigged, and you’ve been playing it all your life.

And so you wonder—was it worth it? Was it ever worth it? Or was the cost of living, of surviving, of existing, just too high all along? And when everything you thought you owned, everything you thought you were, is stripped away—what’s left? Just a receipt. A long, painful list of everything you’ve paid for, and everything you never got.

The truth is, they knew it all along. The cost of it all was never meant to be paid. It was meant to break you.

And in that moment, when you realize the truth—that all along, you were just a pawn in someone else’s game, that the price you’ve been paying was never meant to be paid back—you feel it. The weight of it hits you, and it’s not just the crushing burden of the world. It’s the suffocating, bitter taste of betrayal. The knowledge that you were never meant to win. You weren’t even meant to survive without breaking.

You wonder how they managed to do it, how they made you believe you had a choice, how they tricked you into thinking that maybe, just maybe, if you kept paying—kept hustling, kept sacrificing, kept proving your worth—that you might finally get to breathe. But the cruel twist of it all is that you’ve already given everything you could. And you still aren’t enough. It was never about what you did or didn’t do. It was always about making you believe that if you just gave a little more, you’d get something in return. But now you know. There’s no “reward” at the end of this. There’s just more work, more sacrifice, more endless bills, more debt, more nothing.

And now, even the very idea of escape is out of reach. They’ve made sure of that. The cost of freedom? It’s always just a little too high. The cost of silence? Too steep. The cost of rest? Just one more thing that only the privileged can afford. You thought you could step away, find a space to breathe, to just exist without the suffocating weight of them breathing down your neck. But they made sure that no matter how far you run, the price is still there. And now, it’s not just the system that’s against you—it’s the deep, bitter realization that they always had the upper hand. That you were never meant to win this fight. Not really. Not in any meaningful way.

So you’re left here, at the edge, looking down at the wreckage of everything you thought you could build. Looking at the pieces of your life scattered in the wake of a system that took everything, and then laughed when you thought you’d won just a little bit of it back. And the worst part? You can’t even be angry. Because they’ve already turned your anger into another commodity. They’ve made sure that even your rage is for sale, is something to be bought and sold. And in the end, it’s not even about winning or losing anymore. It’s about surviving long enough to keep paying the price, to keep pretending that maybe you’ll get a moment to rest. A moment to breathe.

But you won’t. Because the cost of that is too high. It always was.

And when you look back at the years you spent paying, sacrificing, hustling, you realize—you didn’t even know what you were paying for. It wasn’t just your time. It wasn’t just your energy. It was your very soul.

And as you stand there, staring at the wreckage of everything you've given, it hits you: they never intended for you to win. They never wanted you to succeed, never wanted you to breathe easy. The game was never meant for you to play. It was never even yours. You were never meant to have anything. You were meant to work, to suffer, to bleed—while they sit back, counting the spoils of your misery.

And the sickening part? You knew this all along, somewhere deep inside. You knew it was a scam, that it was rigged, that every “opportunity” they handed you was just a leash with a little more slack. They gave you just enough hope to make you keep running, to make you think there was a way out, a way to escape the grind. But there was no escape. There never was.

You spent your whole life paying—paying for your worth, paying for your freedom, paying for your peace of mind—and now you look at the wreckage of everything you thought you could be, and you realize the brutal truth: it was never yours to keep. It was all a transaction. Your labor, your time, your life—every inch of it was priced out, parceled off, and sold before you even had a chance to see it for what it was. They took it all, and when you reached for the crumbs, they raised the price again. They kept raising it until you had nothing left to give.

And that’s the ultimate betrayal, isn’t it? That you spent all this time thinking you had something. Thinking that if you worked hard enough, if you did everything right, you’d finally have the right to exist without paying for it. But in the end, all you were ever doing was contributing to the pile. The pile they kept growing, while they whispered sweet lies about “opportunity” and “progress.” And now, you’re left with nothing but the shrapnel of a life that was never really yours to begin with.

The truth is, they knew all along. They knew they could break you. They knew they could squeeze every drop of hope, of energy, of spirit out of you, and you’d still keep coming back for more. Because that’s how it works. They make you believe you can escape. They make you believe there’s a way out. But every step you take forward is just another one closer to the edge of the cliff. And now you’re falling. You’ve been falling.

And when you hit the ground, you’ll realize—there was no cushion waiting for you. No soft landing. Just the cold, hard truth: the cost of your existence was always too high.

And in the end, you didn’t even own yourself.

You never did.

And the worst part? The truly sickening part, is that they don’t just do it to you. They do it to all of us. They’ve built this system of greed, of endless cost, on the backs of every single person who’s ever struggled to make it. They don’t care about your worth. They don’t care about your soul. They care about one thing: keeping the wheel turning. They care about making sure that you—and everyone else—are always paying. Always working. Always sacrificing for their profit.

It’s not just the rich getting richer. It’s the powerful pulling the strings from behind the curtain, making sure you and your neighbors stay divided, stay distracted, stay distraught. They sell you the lie that you’re the problem. That your time, your choices, your failures are your fault. That if you just worked harder, saved smarter, were better somehow, you could escape the trap they built just for you. And when that doesn’t work? When you break under the weight? They call it your failure, your personal responsibility. They call you weak, lazy, entitled. But they never tell you the truth. They never tell you how this whole thing was built on your exploitation. On your sweat, your labor, your fear, your blood.

They never tell you that the whole world is rigged for their benefit—and they’ve been telling you it’s just your fault for not getting ahead long enough that you start to believe it. They’ve been conditioning you to think that this is the way it’s supposed to be. That it’s normal. That your suffering, your struggle is just part of life. They’ve manipulated your very sense of self, made you feel that the pain you carry is yours to bear. But it’s not.

This isn’t life. This is modern-day slavery. The illusion of freedom, of choice, of a system that works for everyone, is a lie. They’ve taken the very essence of humanity—the belief in equality, in dignity, in fairness—and turned it into a transaction. They made sure that your value, your existence, is only worth what you can give them. And that’s the trap. That’s how they keep you in line. They’ve divided us all, convinced us that if we just worked harder, just followed the rules, just kept our heads down and played the game, we’d make it. And when we didn’t? They blamed us. They told us to do more, be better. But they’ve been playing us from the start.

They’ve stolen your future, your peace, your chance at something better—and they’ve made you pay for it every single day. They’ve made you so scared, so anxious, so consumed by the cost of living, that you never see the truth. That the system isn’t broken. It was designed this way. And they know it. They know it all along.

This is how they maintain control. This is how they stay on top. By making sure that the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and the rest of us keep clawing at each other for scraps. They’ve made us hate each other. Made us see each other as competition. Made us feel like it’s our fault if we’re left behind. They’ve divided us so thoroughly that we can’t even see we’re all in the same fight.

The fight isn’t against each other. The fight is against the system. The fight is against the powerful few who have sold us this lie that everything is about individual success, that your worth is yours to earn, to buy, to prove. But you were never meant to win. You were never meant to escape. You were meant to stay in the cycle, to keep paying. They want you to believe in the dream of freedom while they keep raising the cost.

It’s time to wake up. It’s time to stop believing the lie. We are all in this together, and the true enemy is the system that has made us believe we have to fight each other for scraps. The truth is—this isn't just about money. It’s about our lives, our dignity, our humanity. The price they’ve placed on our existence is too high. And it’s time to tear down the walls they’ve built between us. It’s time to take back what’s ours, to see that we are not just pieces in their game, but human beings who deserve more than this.

If we want real change, real freedom, we need to fight together, not against each other. We need to stop paying the price they’ve set, stop being the pawns in a game that was never ours to win. The cost of being human shouldn’t be this high.

But until we all see it, until we all realize how deeply this system has been twisted, we’ll just keep paying. We’ll keep paying for their luxury. For their power. And we’ll never know what it means to truly live.

- Oizys.