
Illustration: Angelica Alzona
Dear Fuck-Up,
Alright… real talk. I’m a white man in my mid-30s. I was raised in a very modest, Roman Catholic family in Pittsburgh, where I returned several years ago to build a new life as an adult. And it’s been generally successful! I genuinely love this city, it’s great to be around family again, I’m working enough to pay my bills, and I met a smart, attractive, well-traveled man about a year ago and locked that shit down into a lovely, healthy relationship. Yay me!
But here’s the thing. While I’ve shed my religious upbringing in my adult life, I’ve held on to a moral code of being a good person and treating others with dignity and respect. And for the most part, I’ve tried to operate under the idea that most people are trying to do the same thing. But… the world doesn’t really look like that anymore. Every single little aspect of life seems to be politically polarized and I find myself fighting with friends and family that I guess I still value? Most days I feel like I am fighting the good fight, but sometimes I wonder if I haven’t been radicalized in some way by the same culture we all exist in.
I consider myself a smart consumer of media. I follow the news, maybe too much, but it’s always from sources that I believe are still reporting from a strange thing called “reality.” But, on a very core level I feel like the joy of life has been sucked out of me, and I only exist for “the fight” now. Every single advertisement now sounds like propaganda, every feel good story is some wicked angle to make me complicit in someone else’s exploitation. I’m finding it harder and harder to just engage with life and with other people in a way that is normal and fulfilling, when American life feels anything but. Call it your typical existential crisis, and maybe it is… but maybe you have some insight?
Love,