"We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do."
--We Gotta Get Out of This Place, The Animals
Oh my god do I hate this. I hate this place, hate the work, hate the way it makes me feel all the time, hate the way that free time is either a distraction or a reward and never an end in itself.
It's like we're rats, millions of rats on millions of treadmills in a lab somewhere. They poke us and prod us and inject us with things that fuck us up, and our reward for holding up each time is that we get moved to a new treadmill - one that moves faster, where the pokes are harder, the substances deadlier, and the penalty for falling off the treadmill that much worse.
And when one of the rats takes the time to scream out, "Dear god, why are they doing this to us? Why are we letting them?," millions of confused rats turn their confused rat heads to that one and reply, "This is how things are. This is how things have always been. This is how things will always be." And there are no scientists here, folks. Just the rats doing what they've always done to themselves.
Maybe this is me burning out.But it's not like I'm thinking about this all any differently. I don't want to go to school - I'm here because it's what I'm supposed to do. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to do anything with my life. Right now, I just want to sleep. Throw down my sword and shield and say, "You can not make me fight for something I do not believe in." But I can't. I'm a good lad. There's nothing for me but the treadmills.
I don't want to come back here. But they'll make me. I'll make me. I don't have a choice.