I've been a deluded fool, for as long as I can remember; because the truth is too horrifying.

I've always clutched to that dream that one day, after all these years of emptiness and suffering, some miracle will occur, and make everything right. Some white lady-knight will come charging in, flanked by green berets and flashbangs, to whisk me off to a happy ending that will end up justifying all the anguish I've endured to get there.

It's been over ten years now, since my second therapist decreed that there was no hope for me. No hope of love, or family, or friendship, or accomplishment, or career. The therapist before her did as much, as well. I didn't want to believe it. So I clung to the hope that there was a bright future ahead; desperately trying to blind myself to the world going on around me, with all it's ugliness and indications that their predictions were true.

But how can you cling to hope when you see that so many people are in just as dire straits - or worse - then you, and nobody's come along to rescue them yet? If there isn't even help for them, well, it's absurd to believe that there'll ever be help for someone like me.

I feel sorry for the people who are just falling in to their crisis today, or tomorrow; who don't yet understand the true horror of their plight, because they still naievely believe that people help one another; that there's a system to catch them and send them off to where they belong. They say that misery loves company. I've never found that to be the case.

I've been reading some of the testimony of people who went through Robodebt, and it is utterly horrifying. The worst part is, it's apparently still going on! I don't understand how anybody with a conscience can read stories like that, and then with a straight face promise suicidal people that: "There is help available!"

Mr. Perrotet has promised a marvelous surge of new jobs if we reelect him. Once upon a time, I would've responded with: "We can only hope!" But I don't have any hope left anymore.