It’s May of this year. The war in Ukraine had been going on for a while, but at least the COVID restrictions are lifted. You have a job, a house, a significant other, and pretty much all you ever wanted. A remote controlled telescope on a mountain, for example. Your official title is senior machine learning engineer. No children though, because if the apocalypse doesn’t happen in your lifetime, surely it will in theirs. Doesn’t really matter if it’s nukes or climate change, something will have to give. You are 34.
You’re getting a little bit upset with work. Nothing serious, let’s call them growing pains. You work from home, and have done so for the past 12 years. Suddenly the company enacts a policy change, something that is not your favor. It comes to a deal / no-deal situation. No-deal. You are out of a job.
No income, but enough savings to try and find another job. The markets are good, should be easy to find something else. AI skills are in demand. You can even experiment for a bit, take break, write a book, make a movie, that kind of situation. You’ve wanted to since the pandemic, get out a bit.
Heck you could even try and become an influencer somehow, that seems fun. So off you go and watch a lot of tutorials on making tutorials.
Your relationship doesn’t go so well, you drink a lot. Some people get angry when they drink. That happens. It’s not ideal though, it strains things. You get angry, it's mostly fear that you can't release.
Having watched enough David Lynch MasterClass, you decide to make a movie. It’s about playing with cameras. It’s about current events. It’s about you, because it has to be a little bit self-referential. Confronting yourself.
The movie has a death scene. It feels weird editing that footage. Trying to place your own demise.
You go insane, there is no other way to describe it. You become detached from reality. Not all at once, these things take time, it could be an interesting book. Maybe one day.
You and your SO break up, you've been together for 15 years. In hindsight it will all be absurd, but reality was shattered at that point. Three days later you are in a mental institution, in isolation. You have no grasp on reality, what little there was, long gone. To you it could all be an elaborate combination of the True Man Show and The Game, it’s all fake!
It takes three weeks before the doctors deem you fit to go home. Your grasp on reality is still weak, surely there must be some grand reveal to all this? A party of sorts would be nice. You keep hearing things, it’s all a prank, right? There must be a behind-the-scenes?
Your now ex SO has moved out of the house. You’re home alone. You manage, try to.
No party. You miss having somebody besides you.
One night the realizations start coming. The things you did, the things lost, the gas prices, that big house you can’t afford on your own. That house with the cracks in the wall. You start to panic a little.
You barely sleep.
“How am I gonna do this?”
A little panic is ok. Freight never hurt anyone. But when the panic becomes overwhelming it is truly terrifying. It’s like you’re stuck in an endless loop. So, the house has an expensive mortgage. Easy to afford with two salaries, hard with one. Due to the housing market renting is not an option, buying cheaper likewise not an option. Everything is getting more expensive. The memories of your psychosis haunt you. You remember everything, but it will never make sense. Not really.
You panic in all caps. It doesn’t stop.
"This is no life, where can I go, what can I do? I’ll be homeless soon!"
You’re hospitalized again for the panic attacks. You have a diagnosis: you’re bipolar type 1. You currently experience a depressive psychosis. To you it just feels like endless panic so bad that you no longer want to live.
6 whole weeks before they let you out again. Now you’re started on Lithium and antipsychotics.
No job, no SO, bipolar diagnosis, two hospitalizations, unaffordable house with few or no alternatives, side effects from the medication, and a giant hole in your mind. Your hands tremble. You can barely concentrate; everything feels strained and weird. You get exhausted easily.
To top it off the tech market has collapsed, a large sum of money evaporated, in addition to draining most of your savings. And, job finding will be harder because you can no longer think. Tomorrow it's November.
Almost broke. Alone in a house with a 6-meter high ceiling. Still no party. How do you write an ending to this? What will happen next?
