Another anonymously contributed post from one of our anonymously anonymous authors.

Three months ago, I said it was time to admit how bad it’s gotten. I dragged the truth out into the daylight, bruised and blinking, for anyone still willing to look it in the eyes. I named the rot. I pointed at the collapse behind the curtains. I said the quiet part aloud because silence had begun to feel like complicity. And I thought that would be enough. That if I carved the truth deep enough, something clean might come from the wound. That something might grow in the clearing. That the silence would finally shift.

But nothing bled out. The wound just scabbed over in the shape of another news cycle.

I’ve spent the time since watching the machine grind on. Same cacophony, but with more agency, as if the noise had learned to move on its own. People still lurch from one outrage to the next, attention hurled like spare change at whichever spectacle screams loudest. Behind it all, the structures that were already cracking now tilt at angles so grotesque we pretend it’s a feature, not a flaw.

The industry, the institutions, the discourse itself – they keep moving, animated by something synthetic. A sort of AI-fueled muscle memory. A body repeating its rituals long after the soul has left the room.

I no longer feel anger the way I used to. Not the righteous kind that sharpens your vision and sets your jaw. What remains is quieter. A slow ache in the bones. A recognition that what once felt shared was never mutual. That many paths cross only briefly, and not always in common cause.

There was a time I carried that anger like a torch, convinced it would light the way forward. But much of it was born from misplaced expectation — from believing that proximity implied purpose. Disappointment grows sharp in that confusion. And lately, I’ve been thinking about how little time we have. About how often fear dresses up as pragmatism. About how many of us are just trying to survive the fire, unsure where it began or where it ends.

Resentment is a slow and bitter poison. It is tempting to hold it close, to call it clarity, but it offers nothing that endures. It dulls the senses and hollows out the heart. I still believe something better can take root. That even now, empathy can stretch across the wreckage. That it can remind us what it means to be human.

The truth is, most people are not cruel. They are afraid. They are exhausted. They stand at the edge of the abyss and convince themselves it’s just a shadow – not the echo of something hollowed out. Because admitting its depth would mean confronting what’s been lost…or what never existed at all. 

Some days, I am one of them. Other days, I still shout into the void.

There are bridges I no longer walk. Roads that once seemed necessary but now circle endlessly back on themselves. I’ve used depression as a curtain to hide behind, and cynicism as a torch to burn paths that led nowhere. It is easier to be clever than it is to be kind. The weight of what has been abandoned still lingers. Not as punishment. As a reminder.

But I am trying now. Not to pretend things are fine. Not to paint rot in softer colors. But to remember that the people on the other side of this fracture – whatever it has become – are still people. Some are scared. Some are lost. Some are complicit. Some are cruel. And some are just tired of standing in the smoke.

It is a strange thing to admit that the fire might not stop. That the systems we built our lives around are not just creaking, but collapsing. It is tempting to think the best we can do now is roast marshmallows on the embers. But I want more than that. I want something to grow again. To feel the green beneath my feet.

Not quickly. Not neatly. Gardens do not bloom in days. Especially when the soil is choked with salt and seeded with bones. But seeds can still take. Even now.

This is not a call to unity. I do not believe in unity without accountability. This is not a sermon or a blueprint. It is only a truth: grief and rage can share a table with mercy. And even as we resist, we can leave space for what might someday return, uncertain, unformed, and perhaps finally open to repair.

There is no grand fix coming. No cavalry. No cathartic third act where the good prevail and the corrupt are swallowed by the earth. This is the long haul. And what we do next will not be judged by history, because history no longer has the luxury of distance. It will be judged by each other. In boardrooms and basements. In confessions. In confrontations. In the moments we choose to listen, or not.

So what now? That question haunts me. Every day. Some mornings, the answer is “put pen to paper.” Other days, it’s “hold your ground.” Sometimes, it is just “get through the day without betraying yourself.”

But today, the answer is this: speak gently where you can, firmly where you must. Give truth even when it shakes. And if the garden ever grows again, may it bloom not from synthetic noise, but from the quiet brilliance of a mind that remembers how to dream.

We lost something these past few years. Not innocence. That was gone long before. We lost the assumption that people meant well. We lost the shared myth that progress is inevitable. What remains is the question: can we still be decent in a time that rewards cruelty?

I don’t know. But I believe the attempt still matters.

The fire may have moved on. But the smoke still clings, and the garden waits – even now.