Darkover
Archangel
- Jul 29, 2021
- 5,559
You never asked to exist.
You never consented to be placed into a decaying body, on a hostile planet, inside a system that demands constant struggle just to stay afloat.
You never agreed to the terms—pain, loss, confusion, fear—yet you're forced to endure them anyway.
You're born into need you didn't choose, limits you didn't agree to, and a world that operates by rules you had no hand in setting.
Even if you do everything right—eat well, try to love, work hard—it still ends in suffering, and then in death. And along the way, you'll witness others suffer too—often unjustly, meaninglessly.
It's not just pain. It's coerced pain.
Not just existence. But forced existence.
A sentence with no trial, no escape clause, no say.
It inflicts need: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, longing.
It inflicts pain: injury, illness, aging, loss.
It inflicts isolation: the ache of being misunderstood, unseen, or abandoned.
It inflicts fear: of death, of suffering, of failure, of being unloved.
It inflicts responsibility: to survive, to work, to obey systems you never chose.
It inflicts time: the slow erosion of everything you care about, including yourself.
Even joy has a shadow—because you know it's temporary. You love someone, and it will hurt one day. You build something, and one day it crumbles. Nothing is stable. Nothing is safe.
life is a constant struggle between work and survival
Work to survive. Survive to work. Repeat.
From the moment you're born, life hands you a bill you never agreed to pay—and you're expected to spend every day earning the right to exist.
You need food, shelter, safety, healthcare—all just to not suffer more than you already do. But those things don't come freely. They're locked behind labor, currency, obedience, and often dehumanizing systems that drain you while giving back just enough to keep you from collapsing completely.
And if you don't—or can't—keep up?
You're punished.
Ignored.
Left behind.
Treated as less than human.
It's a system that turns life—something that should just be given—into a transaction.
A debt.
A treadmill you're thrown onto without rest or exit.
Even people who claim they "love their work" are still surviving under pressure. Time is taxed. Energy is commodified. You don't get to just exist, to breathe without owing something.
There's barely any space for real living—just brief windows between shifts, bills, illness, stress, and aging.
So when people say "life is a gift," it can feel like mockery.
Because for many, life is a sentence, and survival is just unpaid labour for a world that won't let you rest.
Not every struggle makes you stronger. Some just break you.
There's a myth—especially in modern, toxic positivity culture—that every hardship has a lesson, every trauma makes you wiser, every setback builds character.
But that's not always true.
Sometimes a struggle:
Shatters you, and you never fully recover.
Steals years of your life you can't get back.
Leaves wounds that don't heal—only fester quietly.
Destroys opportunities that won't come again.
Changes you, not into someone stronger, but into someone more guarded, more hollow, more tired.
Growth is not guaranteed.
Sometimes there's only damage—and the best you can do is limp forward with what's left of yourself, if anything.
There are things people go through—abuse, neglect, illness, poverty, betrayal, loss—that don't transform them into anything noble. They just hurt, and keep hurting.
And saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is a cruel erasure of those who are alive, but not okay.
Who survived, but didn't grow.
Who endured, but were left wrecked.
You are not just born into a world—you're born into a body.
And that body comes with a set of non-negotiable needs, impulses, and limitations that force you into participation, whether you want to or not. This is biological entrapment: the reality that your own physical structure enslaves you to cycles of craving, discomfort, and survival.
You don't get to choose whether you feel hunger, thirst, pain, loneliness, or fear. These sensations are wired into your nervous system—automatic, inescapable, and relentless. You're programmed to chase food, warmth, connection, stimulation, status, reproduction—not because you freely chose these things, but because evolution designed your suffering to motivate obedience.
Even pleasure—the so-called "reward"—is just a leash. The brain doles it out sparingly, tied to specific behaviors that ensure the organism keeps going. You are incentivized with momentary highs to continue running the treadmill of existence, while the lows—withdrawal, despair, unmet longing—keep you from standing still or stepping off.
Your hormones manipulate your mood. Your limbic system pulls you toward things that may harm you. Your stress response activates even when you're not in danger. You are trapped inside a machine that doesn't care if you're fulfilled—only if you persist.
Love, too, is a trap. Attachment bonds form involuntarily. You begin to care, to fear loss, to suffer when someone pulls away. And yet the system ensures you need others to survive—especially in infancy—creating an emotional dependency you never asked for.
Even sexual desire is not benign. It pulls you toward people, sometimes irrationally, sometimes painfully, often in conflict with your deeper needs. You are lured by a reproductive mechanism that doesn't care about the aftermath—only about propagation.
Then there's aging. The slow decay of a system that can't sustain itself indefinitely. Your body deteriorates, sometimes painfully, often unpredictably. Yet the drive to keep going—to avoid death at all costs—remains. The instinct to survive doesn't diminish, even as the quality of that survival collapses. It is a cruel mismatch: to desperately want to live while losing the ability to do so fully.
Your body will one day fail you completely. But until then, it owns you. It dictates your days. It decides when you sleep, eat, cry, panic, ache. You can resist its pull—but only up to a point. You are still, fundamentally, its prisoner.
You are not free. You are a biological puppet, wired to perform in a system that hides its control behind the illusion of "natural life."
And the greatest trap of all?
You're taught to be grateful for it.
You never consented to be placed into a decaying body, on a hostile planet, inside a system that demands constant struggle just to stay afloat.
You never agreed to the terms—pain, loss, confusion, fear—yet you're forced to endure them anyway.
You're born into need you didn't choose, limits you didn't agree to, and a world that operates by rules you had no hand in setting.
Even if you do everything right—eat well, try to love, work hard—it still ends in suffering, and then in death. And along the way, you'll witness others suffer too—often unjustly, meaninglessly.
It's not just pain. It's coerced pain.
Not just existence. But forced existence.
A sentence with no trial, no escape clause, no say.
It inflicts need: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, longing.
It inflicts pain: injury, illness, aging, loss.
It inflicts isolation: the ache of being misunderstood, unseen, or abandoned.
It inflicts fear: of death, of suffering, of failure, of being unloved.
It inflicts responsibility: to survive, to work, to obey systems you never chose.
It inflicts time: the slow erosion of everything you care about, including yourself.
Even joy has a shadow—because you know it's temporary. You love someone, and it will hurt one day. You build something, and one day it crumbles. Nothing is stable. Nothing is safe.
life is a constant struggle between work and survival
Work to survive. Survive to work. Repeat.
From the moment you're born, life hands you a bill you never agreed to pay—and you're expected to spend every day earning the right to exist.
You need food, shelter, safety, healthcare—all just to not suffer more than you already do. But those things don't come freely. They're locked behind labor, currency, obedience, and often dehumanizing systems that drain you while giving back just enough to keep you from collapsing completely.
And if you don't—or can't—keep up?
You're punished.
Ignored.
Left behind.
Treated as less than human.
It's a system that turns life—something that should just be given—into a transaction.
A debt.
A treadmill you're thrown onto without rest or exit.
Even people who claim they "love their work" are still surviving under pressure. Time is taxed. Energy is commodified. You don't get to just exist, to breathe without owing something.
There's barely any space for real living—just brief windows between shifts, bills, illness, stress, and aging.
So when people say "life is a gift," it can feel like mockery.
Because for many, life is a sentence, and survival is just unpaid labour for a world that won't let you rest.
Not every struggle makes you stronger. Some just break you.
There's a myth—especially in modern, toxic positivity culture—that every hardship has a lesson, every trauma makes you wiser, every setback builds character.
But that's not always true.
Sometimes a struggle:
Shatters you, and you never fully recover.
Steals years of your life you can't get back.
Leaves wounds that don't heal—only fester quietly.
Destroys opportunities that won't come again.
Changes you, not into someone stronger, but into someone more guarded, more hollow, more tired.
Growth is not guaranteed.
Sometimes there's only damage—and the best you can do is limp forward with what's left of yourself, if anything.
There are things people go through—abuse, neglect, illness, poverty, betrayal, loss—that don't transform them into anything noble. They just hurt, and keep hurting.
And saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is a cruel erasure of those who are alive, but not okay.
Who survived, but didn't grow.
Who endured, but were left wrecked.
You are not just born into a world—you're born into a body.
And that body comes with a set of non-negotiable needs, impulses, and limitations that force you into participation, whether you want to or not. This is biological entrapment: the reality that your own physical structure enslaves you to cycles of craving, discomfort, and survival.
You don't get to choose whether you feel hunger, thirst, pain, loneliness, or fear. These sensations are wired into your nervous system—automatic, inescapable, and relentless. You're programmed to chase food, warmth, connection, stimulation, status, reproduction—not because you freely chose these things, but because evolution designed your suffering to motivate obedience.
Even pleasure—the so-called "reward"—is just a leash. The brain doles it out sparingly, tied to specific behaviors that ensure the organism keeps going. You are incentivized with momentary highs to continue running the treadmill of existence, while the lows—withdrawal, despair, unmet longing—keep you from standing still or stepping off.
Your hormones manipulate your mood. Your limbic system pulls you toward things that may harm you. Your stress response activates even when you're not in danger. You are trapped inside a machine that doesn't care if you're fulfilled—only if you persist.
Love, too, is a trap. Attachment bonds form involuntarily. You begin to care, to fear loss, to suffer when someone pulls away. And yet the system ensures you need others to survive—especially in infancy—creating an emotional dependency you never asked for.
Even sexual desire is not benign. It pulls you toward people, sometimes irrationally, sometimes painfully, often in conflict with your deeper needs. You are lured by a reproductive mechanism that doesn't care about the aftermath—only about propagation.
Then there's aging. The slow decay of a system that can't sustain itself indefinitely. Your body deteriorates, sometimes painfully, often unpredictably. Yet the drive to keep going—to avoid death at all costs—remains. The instinct to survive doesn't diminish, even as the quality of that survival collapses. It is a cruel mismatch: to desperately want to live while losing the ability to do so fully.
Your body will one day fail you completely. But until then, it owns you. It dictates your days. It decides when you sleep, eat, cry, panic, ache. You can resist its pull—but only up to a point. You are still, fundamentally, its prisoner.
You are not free. You are a biological puppet, wired to perform in a system that hides its control behind the illusion of "natural life."
And the greatest trap of all?
You're taught to be grateful for it.
Last edited:
spot on.
