Oppressive land of the free

Periodically, I need to just vent. I have decided to put together several posts for that very reason. I'm not just pushing myself to open up, but I'm actually willing to go beyond what I really think on a number of issues. This is one of these posts. Expect this to turn out as an incomprehensible irrational rant.

I have been joking about it for years. It's a good thing that we're told that we are living in the land of the free. If we weren't, how could we possibly know?

Throughout my life, I have been continuously told that I have no right to be me. Whenever it becomes clear to anyone that I don't fit our nation's narrow and rigid mold, people turn against me. To date, I have only found one way to survive within a society that displays extreme intolerance. I have lived the bulk of my life as someone I hate.

Hating myself for the sake of survival has serious consequences. While I may not be struggling with such things as an enormous workload with strict deadlines, stress has become a massive problem. There are reasons that I frequently insist that I live a deceptively stressful lifestyle.

There is a very good chance that stress will play a role in my eventual demise. Basically, I have been living a lifestyle that is slowly killing me just because that is the only way that I have found to survive in the modern world. I have a term for modern-day America that directly contradicts the propaganda that is being shoved down our throats. We are living in a conform-or-die nation.

All of this was a problem prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, what few rights and freedoms still existed were stripped away. Our country became even more authoritarian and oppressive. For someone who was already struggling, this felt like an assault to mental health on top of my existing problems. I was among those who were more worried about death by government control than death by the pandemic.

I would say that my biggest goal in life is to be me. Instead, I am being forced to live my life as someone I hate. Our country won't allow me to survive as a decent person. My entire life to date has been about suppressing decency and everything that I care about just to maintain a pulse. Quite frankly, my desire to be me shouldn't involve threats to my survival.