I have spent forty-six years inhabiting the edge of a war I never declared. I speak not from consumption, but from the echo: that dull, constant noise left behind by the self-destruction of others when it lives under the same roof or on the same street. I am exhausted, not just by the fatigue of the years, but by the reality of one who has had to observe, without participating, how the chaos of others imposes itself as the norm.
There is a lie that has taken deep root in our society: the idea that responsibility for consumption is purely individual. It is a convenient fallacy, a narrative designed to protect those who, from the shadows of the market, profit from human vulnerability. While public discourse busies itself by pointing fingers at the addict, the real machinery—that invisible hand orchestrating distribution—continues to operate with surgical efficiency.
The most disturbing aspect is not just the product, but the architecture that supports it. I watch with suspicion how entire industries, under the mask of entertainment and new cultural expressions, normalize what should be an alarm. I do not condemn art, but I do question that "invisible hand" which, by mutating into songs or trends, seems to be designing a trajectory for the most vulnerable among us—our youth—disguising the abyss as an aspirational playground.
However, what weighs heaviest in this periphery is not the business itself, but the "warm complicity" of the bystander. That apathy of the family, the authorities, and the common citizen who has decided that looking away is a form of peace.
Writing this is my act of resistance. I understand now that my life has been a prison with invisible bars, built by the silence and inertia of others. By giving a name to this cage, by documenting this chronicle from the periphery, I cease to be an exhausted witness and become someone who, finally, is beginning to step out.
