YOU DON’T DESERVE JOY — YOU STEAL IT

“They branded us with grief and told us it was our personality. I’m burning that shit off with bass lines and bonfires.”

Fight Club said it.
Give up everything.
Even hope.

And when the dust clears, when all the shields and projections and Instagrammed illusions have burned to ash, what’s left?

A lump of clay.

Breathing.

Bare.

Still warm.

That’s the moment. That’s the only one that matters.
Because you’ve got a choice.

Let the world remold you. Re-domesticate you.
Or you build your own shape out of the fire and blood and bad decisions.
You get a little unhinged. A little dangerous.
Because now?

You’ve got nothing to lose.

That’s when joy becomes possible.
Not the curated kind. Not “self-care Sunday” horseshit.
Real joy.
The kind that feels like kicking the door off your own prison cell and screaming into the void just to hear your voice bounce back.

You don’t get that kind of joy handed to you.
You don’t manifest it with a Pinterest board and a smoothie.

You fucking steal it.

You break into the vault where they’ve locked it away — behind trauma, behind shame, behind the version of you that makes everyone else comfortable — and you take it back.

You dance when they say real men don’t.
You laugh loud when the funeral just ended.
You kiss like you’re still bleeding.
You show up wearing all your scars like goddamn medals and you don’t apologize for a single one.

Because the system doesn't want you to feel joy.
It wants you regulated.
Predictable. Quiet.
A cog. A consumer. A neatly packaged demographic.

But you?

You’re not safe anymore.

You’re loose.
You’re liminal.
You’re the guy at the edge of the wedding dance floor with his eyes closed and his fists pumping like the world is ending.
Because maybe it is.

Joy is resistance.
Joy is an act of war in a world that wants you sedated.
Joy is a middle finger to everyone who said you peaked in high school or shouldn’t wear glitter at your age.

So take it.
Steal it.
Rip it off the bone and howl into the night with it still in your teeth.

Because you survived.

And now?

You get to feel fucking everything.