2016 has been a hell of a year people, and I'm not sure I even know how to process where things are headed. I generally like to consider myself pretty even keeled emotionally, but I am *still* not watching the news or reading newspapers. Like at all. Every time I check back in to Twitter or Facebook and see the latest PEOTUS appointment, or skim another article about how fucked the already most vulnerable people are/going to be, it makes me want to punch something. Or cry. Mostly both. I am stuck in a sucktastic spiral of hopelessness and it is terrible.
What I am supposed to think/do/feel when Paul Ryan says that free lunches give children "empty souls"? Or when Pat McCrory and the GOP controlled legislature in NC calls a special session just to make sure they've fucked over as much as possible the incoming Governor (who's a Democrat)? Or when fucking Kellyanne Conway says that the Left is delegitimizing Trump's win?
No money I donate (unless I win the lottery) or one-on-one conversations with people who disagree with me are going to do anything to improve this bullshit. I admit that I'm probably failing to keep my eye on the bigger prize, but I'm so angry it's virtually impossible to look past who people voted for and try to think there's any redeeming value still there.
(Spoiler alert, there's really not.)
When I turned 30 last year I didn't think there could be a time I missed my mother more, but on November 10th, 2016 I managed to surpass it. There is just something completely unrelentingly terrible in experiencing a fundamentally life lessening moment like Trump's win and not have your mother to call. Or hug. And I'm saying that from a place of privilege. I'm black, but making middle-class wages in a city where the majority of residents at least pretend to understand how fucked as a whole the US now is.
That's really about it. As much as I am so beyond ready for 2016 to be over, 2017 is not going to be any better. Maybe in 2018 we'll get a few more voices in the Senate or the House, but I can't say I'm particularly hopeful about it. It feels like the white, racist, misogynistic people are winning, and that is a shitty place to try and find hope.
Also, as well intentioned as you might mean it, please don't try and placate me with the nobility of small kindnesses. I could not give less of a fuck right now, and am honestly unmoved by the argument.
Edit: And every bit of this article.
"Vanity keeps me from throwing away my makeup and sanity keeps me from, as I often feel the repugnant urge, breaking the mirror with the surface of my own face and leaving us both cracked open. But I also can’t deny my current impulse to become as ugly and unlikeable as I can, merely to serve as constant reminder of the ugliness inflicted upon us. We’ve been told time and time again that prettiness and likability will protect us from harm, that to be good women, we must play by these rules, but this is a lie. Nothing will protect us except for ourselves—and what’s more fortifying than a defensive exterior? There are days when all I want is to become a human road sign, a blinking hazard to any man misfortunate enough to cross my path: “I WANT TO OFFEND YOUR SIGHT. I WANT TO OFFEND YOUR EVERYTHING.”"
I understand, being in DC I'm seeing it. It helps me to not watch the news. My goal is to help those who feel hopeless or marginalized. Just know that DC residents are NOT welcoming these terrible people with open arms. Actually anti-inauguration parties and rallies are being held. I have decided to look at the orange terror as the catalyst for bringing the true noble people together, the doers, those who really love people and TRUE Christians to combine and fight the power. It's hard to not feel negative, but I gotta have faith; WE have to have faith!
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