Machine: Letters from the Cracks of Civilization

For everyone who has ever felt too much for the spaces they're supposed to fit into.

Do you perform enthusiasm for work that slowly kills your soul? Do you smile when you want to scream, apologize when others hurt you, twist yourself into shapes that please everyone while you slowly disappear? Have you succeeded at a life you never actually chose?

The Machine is a raw, honest examination of what it costs to be human in systems designed for smaller people. Written from the perspective of someone who spent decades trying to belong in spaces that required the abandonment of essential parts of himself, this book gives language to experiences that don't have names.

This is not self-help promising easy answers. This is not a manifesto calling for the destruction of civilization. This is a personal exploration for anyone who suspects that something vital has been lost in the process of becoming a functional adult-for those who wonder why success so often feels empty and why authenticity so often feels dangerous.

Through eight interconnected essays, author Garnet Lyndon examines how we're conditioned from birth to suppress our wild selves, how we police our own authenticity, how we lose the ability to distinguish between genuine choice and manufactured options. He explores the myth of control, the commodification of love, the transformation of children into machines, and ultimately, what it means to reclaim belonging among "the dogs"-those cast aside for being too sensitive, too intense, too real.

This book is for:

• Anyone exhausted by the gap between who they are and who they perform
• People who feel like strangers in their own successful lives
• Those who've been told they're "too much" and are tired of trying to be less
• Anyone seeking permission to trust their own perceptions about what's wrong with systems everyone else accepts

Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part love letter to authenticity, The Machine offers no easy solutions-only the radical suggestion that the problem might not be your inability to adapt, but your refusal to participate in your own diminishment.

"You are not alone in the cracks. Some of us live there by choice now."

Perfect for readers of Adrienne Maree Brown, bell hooks, Brené Brown, and anyone drawn to honest examinations of what it means to be human in an increasingly systematized world.