Sustaining The Gaze

I am 73 years old, and I have officially resigned from the "Solo-Silo."

For decades, I believed that independence was the goal—that if I perfected my "Wild" life, I’d finally be worthy of a place at the table. But the cost of that self-awareness has been high. It is quiet. It is heavy. And it is profoundly lonely.

I am standing in the wreckage of my own self-sufficiency. When the parents are gone, the family is estranged, and the "used-to-be-friends" are too far, you realize a terrifying truth: You are the only one standing between yourself and the void. I have lost interest in being "buoyant" or "loud" to make the world comfortable. I am a motherless child who has realized that if we are all going to hell in a handbasket, we might as well slow the descent by holding hands.

I am not looking for a "fix." I am a Village Experimenter. I am moving off the Island of my own survival and into the Grove of Altruistic Hedonism. I’m reclaiming the swearing, the microdosing, and the fierce pursuit of pleasure—not to bypass the reality of our broken world, but to endure it.

I’m looking for the Rare Integrators—the edge-travelers and grief-walkers who are also tired of the lie. I don’t have a map, but I have a lantern. And I’m ready to stop breathing this different air alone.