Up next, on Futilely Posting Things for Attention Theater:

So with everything that's been happening lately, I'm in a particularly bad mental state. Now, I don't mean to say that my beliefs and conclusions are *wrong*, simply that they're bad because they make it hard for me to work, function, and live.

In brief: Nothing works. Every system is broken. Every effort is futile.

This month, I've:

Spent hours trying to get false negative information off my credit report. It finally succeeded, after what should have been a ten-minute phone call turned into hours of phone calls with unhelpful representative, e-mails, actual letters, formal complaints to the BBB, faxing, research...

Applied for a loan from the credit union I'm a part of, maintain an active loan and credit card with, neither which I have never missed a payment on... and been denied because I have a balance on my credit card. Never mind that their failing to provide the loan which I could easily repay could, nearly did, make it impossible for me to pay ANY of my accounts.

Had my dental-expenses line of credit canceled a week after they sent me a new card to renew it due to, they claim, aforementioned false negative information, but most likely because I *didn't* have a balance on it.

Gotten arrested for simply riding the Metro, obviously.

Been assaulted, but denied the opportunity to make a report to the police, and so my assailant got off scot-free with her crime.

Been denied an attorney because I 'make too much' despite the fact that an ordinary attorney's retainer would be two whole months of pay for me, and I was forced to borrow even for the discounted one.

Been kicked out onto the streets without any belongings whatsoever.

Had my promotion delayed for no reason whatsoever beyond mindless bureaucracy.

...and that's just the stuff that I can easily remember. Let's include in this umbrella the basic failures of the transportation infrastructure which steals away substantial chunks of my life daily as well.

NOTHING works right. Of the 9 total items listed here, only *2* of them were resolved with the slightest bit of adequacy. The remainder of the list consists of systems which are *supposed* to protect and help me and enable me to function instead being *actively and openly hostile* towards me.

So what's the lesson here? If I try to do anything, quite literally *anything*, it will most likely not only fail, but slap me hard in the face and result in an unrecouped cost of time, effort, and money. The only possible way to exist in life is to do nothing, be nothing, and make absolutely no waves so as to attract absolutely no notice.

How is that possible? It isn't, obviously. Even to function basically I have to do things like travel to work, engage in commercial transactions with stores, pay loans and fees, have bank accounts...

The conclusion, then, is that life is a complete exercise in utter and hopeless *futility*. The only thing you can do is to play the game as quietly as possible and hope that when the backlash comes, when the broken systems backfire on someone, it isn't you. The only absolute in the world is entropy, and the only hope anyone can realistically have is in *luck* -- the entirely arbitrary nature of the systems means that sometimes you can squeak through without getting screwed. If you're REALLY lucky, you can even get a little ahead before you get hit. But there's no guarantee. There is literally nothing anyone can do to protect themselves.

And so this is what I'm trying to come to grips with. How to keep going through with everything when I can see very clearly just how futile it is.

Man... I thought I'd feel better if I was able to express what I was thinking. But seeing it now, I would have preferred to keep it non-formulated, just an understanding without words that I could grapple with in similar terms. Having laid it out in language, though, it's so bleak and cold I don't quite know how to deal with it, though. I feel a little ill, now.