Two years ago, I wrote a few words about the withering routine, more specifically, a never ending cycle of recurring events in a stagnant and collapsed country. The daily problems with water, inflation, political backstabbing, and that other stuff that keeps happening over and over again without end. At the end of each cycle I’m left more exhausted, worn, and less than what I was at the start of it.
Setting everything related to COVID-19 aside, 2021 is an accurate recreation of that 2019 portrait. The same political standstill and collaborationism between both sides continues, just more pronounced than when I last spoke about it. The same problems plague the country, and the same lack of solutions is all that we have on the horizon.
While the country has gone through some changes (some good, some bad), the rest remains as usual despite the mirages and illusions that the newfound “normality” presents us with. Two years later, Venezuela is just as before, and by extension, my life is as stagnant as it was back in 2019 — and this is slowly but surely taking its toll on me, more so than ever before during this past month of September.
I am a creature of routine, that hasn’t changed, as it’s my nature to be a man of routine. I find myself comfortable around predictable routines that I can easily manage — and that includes the less than idyllic routines such as the water rations and what have you. But the overall routine of my atypical life has become too insurmountable as of late, and with each passing week, I feel myself being further consumed by it and by the entropic stagnation it begets.
This routine of mine was meant to be temporary, and was supposed to last only until we got a visa and boarded a plane away from it all, something I still haven’t been able to achieve.loo and behold, this routine has become all but permanent in my life, and it’s not longer just a stagnant one, but it’s evolved into an entropic one as well..
The worst aspects of my daily routine are synergistic with one another, and they give forth to new problems that I’ve been forced to deal with almost on a daily basis, draining much of my strength in the process.
This year has been brutal with regards to miscellaneous problems that keep piling one after another. The entropy of this routine has its own physical counterpart, in the fact that everything around me keeps malfunctioning and crumbling, as nothing lasts forever.
The never ending problem with water shortages dictates the pace of my afternoons and evenings, thus limiting my resting time, and determining what I cook and when. The worsening problems with blackouts and brownouts have damaged some of our appliances, and I’ve been forced to spend money from our escape funds to deal with it while forsaking repairs and replacements on the less important ones.
My objectives remain the same, and so are my dreams, but so far, I’ve been unable to completely materialize either. I lost a year and a half to COVID-19 (and counting), and now it’s made everything related to my escape even more uphill than back in 2019.
The exhaustion of this entropic routine, coupled with my own self-perceived failures, and overall deficiencies as a person are heavy enough of a burden as it is, one that I am fully aware that it’s entirely up to me to overcome. Now, the fact that I’m constantly stressed over the fact that I am running out of time with my las passport extension, and that some new deadlines approach has thrown me to my physical and mental limits, and I’ve been so drained throughout the month.
I find myself trapped in the labyrinth of my life’s routines, and the entropy has begun to take it’s toll. For the past three and a half years, I’ve lived a fragmented and paused livelihood; when my mom passed away I shattered in a million pieces, and all I’ve managed to accomplish is to glue most of them back together.
But all the countless problems, the stress, and all the uphill battles towards escaping in this race against time have begun to dissolve the flimsy glue that’s holding me together, moreso now that new obstacles are looming on the horizon, for which I only have tentative solutions should they in fact materialize — that being said, the sooner I get out of here the better, as I wouldn’t have to even deal with these upcoming problems in the first place.
I’m not blackpilled and succumbing to nihilistic despair, but at the same time, I’m not at my hopeful and optimistic best either, I’m dancing somewhere in between. Sometimes I’m alright during the day, but extremely down at night or vice versa, just as I’ve been for most of my life ever since I was a teenager — my humor tends to reflect that duality that comprises me very succinctly.
However, in order to keep going with the entropy of this routine of mine, I’ve had to pause many things of my admittedly sad and limited life, including temporarily pausing work on Sins and the overall project’s lore entries, as well as hobbies, entertainment, and yeah, why not, escapism too, in a desperate attempt to pull myself back together — because over the past weeks there has been many days were the only reason I get out of bed is because I have to take care of my brother and cook for him.
I’m burned out by everything, the country, the shortages, the constant failures with obtaining a visa and trying to get out of here. Getting out of this labyrinth of negativity and depression is entirely up to me, it’s not my first rodeo with it, but man, has it been harder to snap out lately. There’s been moments where I feel like I’m finally over it, but at nights I once again stumble, or I’m met with some new obstacle or setback, and just when I think that I can finally get a weekend’s worth of rest to recharge myself and realign my psyche — bam — a ~12 hour blackout throws my plans for respite out of the window.
Sleep eludes me just as it has eluded me for most of my life, but when I do manage to sleep, my dreams are as cruel as they can be, not because they’re nightmares, but because I dream of better things, like my mom being alive, and me being someplace else. I wake up every time to the crushing reality. I could definitely use a vacation, because the last time I had one was back in 1999, right before my parents divorced, but that’s not in the cards for me right now. Perhaps one day, in the future, after all is said and done.
My time is running out. Less than ten months now, that’s all the time that I have left to solve the puzzles of my visa, to break the cycles of my entropic routine and finally reach the breakthrough that I’ve desperately been seeking for the past three and a half years of my life.
I am tired and worn out, but I need to improve my health in all regards and stop letting this entropy chip away little by little. I gotta snap out of this stanganation with regards to my weight loss, and get my creative groove back, so to speak. I need to once again wrestle and tame this routine if I want to make it out of here, and break the cycle of the negative feedback loop (of my own making) that’s shackling me both physically and mentally.
Come what may, in ten months I will be stranded whenever I end up being at, and I hope to be stranded elsewhere and not here. That’s the fight I have to keep fighting, for me, and most importantly, for my brother.
I’d like to avail myself of this opportunity to thank you all, Patrons and non-patrons alive, because it is thanks to you guys that I’m able to put food on the table for my brother and myself. Not a day goes by when I’m not grateful in my prayers, and hopeful that one day, sooner than later, I’ll have the strength and means to pay all of it forward.
God bless you all.
-Kal
