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I went to lay down in 2016 and woke to a nightmare, and it happened again today.
For all the lying fools who claim this is what I ever wanted in any way, you’re lying fools and will remain so forever. Whatever karma has in store for you is probably something really special.
I’m not really giving a shit about that right now, though.
I’m terrified for my family. They — and I — need health care we will now not have. It is very likely they or I will die within the next four years, or certainly before any of this mess is fixed again.
If you thought I was rooting for Trump on any level, you are pathologically stupid.
I am scared for so many of my friends.
So many people I love are about to be lesser persons in an in-your-face way we’ve not seen in our lifetimes.
Women, transfolk, any and every minority. Always the Jews, obviously.
Stephen King once said, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win.” He couldn’t be more correct.
Beyond my friends, as much as I am tired of the abuse from the Stews, I hope they are taking precautions for their safety as well. They poke the hornet’s nest a fair bit for engagement and Elonbux and unfortunately that’s… y’all, we are not friends, but please take precautions. I do not doubt the ‘department of retribution’ shit for a moment, and I would take no pleasure in seeing you harmed by these people any more than I would anyone else. (Read: none, no pleasure, zero enjoyment.)
Y’all were so invested in hating anyone that criticized you to recognize we’re on the same side and had to make up stories instead to hurt people.
That didn’t work out so great, now, did it?
How much more could we all have accomplished if y’all weren’t so ego-invested and cared more about the outcome than your own glory?
You fucking idiots.
Now me and people I love have to deal with the Trumpocalypse and your deluded and wrongly-directed hate.
How much more could everyone have accomplished if people — and this is both sides now, which infuriates and depresses me greatly — weren’t so busy trying to look for things to solidify confirmation bias, for fuck’s sake.
How much more could have been done if not for a bunch of people who were more invested in their ego and clout and grifting more than doing right?
I have no money in this, it’s not about my ego. I have zero clout or desire to be any sort of influencer.
I would have liked to remain a human being, though, and y’all did everything in your power to take that away from me over and over again.
I’m still a human being, until being a woman gives me less rights than a corpse in a month or so.
I cannot overstate the dread I have for my trans friends. For my Jewish friends. For my Black friends. For my indigenous friends. For my friends in journalism. For my LGBTQIA+ friends. For my disabled friends. For my poor friends. For my friends with lifelong illnesses or injuries.
I didn’t want to be here for the end.
I never sought out any sort of blaze of glory.
I am a cagey introverted art hermit weirdness magnet.
I was happy with that life.
It wasn’t perfect. It was always a struggle and there’s no money like… ever.
(The ‘people don’t properly value the arts or hand-craftsmanship’ rant just feels so completely pointless now.)
I always planned to live in the house my folks live in today when I have to care for them 24/7 and after they pass. That won’t happen now. Their health is such they won’t likely survive long enough to pay the mortgage1. They refused to accept that they would be at risk, too.
It’s not in perfect shape by a long shot. It’s beautiful to me. It’s not a giant place, it’s not fancy. I lived there on and off in childhood and it is, in every way, home. It is in my blood and bones.
I don’t know how to be anywhere else.
There was headway on getting life together around here earlier in the year, and it feels like ashes now. I know there will still be a tomorrow and life doesn’t stop and maybe it will go on, but the dread is real.
My grandfather bought a half-finished house that the development builder originally wanted for himself before he changed his mind. You can see where my grandfather and his brothers took over to finish it along one side, too; the masonry gets a little less elegant, the bricks slightly off-kilter.
My grandmother was here visiting from Italy for a family wedding when WWII broke out, and she was required to stay, not allowed to return home. My grandfather fell in love with her, and finished that house in part to convince her to marry him and stay forever, and she did.
I love even the parts of it that are falling apart.
It is wholly of my family in a way that has always been beautiful and meaningful to me, and I genuinely have to wonder if it is safe for me to remain here as a bi pagan woman without children or any interest in them. I have to wonder: might I have to leave them? Could I even do that? It isn’t in me to abandon them. I have literally nothing else but my family anyway at this point. My health is gone, it’s too unsafe to work because of the crazy-ass lies being spread about me by people who have lost touch with reality. It’s not like I could even go anywhere else.
My dad went to school with Joe Biden. I met him when I was a kid and he was so incredibly kind2. They want to publicly execute him and his whole family, for fuck’s sakes.
I hate how well I can often predict horrors.
I wish I didn’t see the things I see.
The robber barons have returned, and none of us are safe.
I don’t tend to talk about the things I actually worry about happening here. In part, because I don’t want to give anybody any ideas, but beyond that, because I’m too tired of being dismissed as a ‘silly woman’ only to be proven right later.
No one is listening anyway.
I may end up in jail for criticizing the supreme court, so hey. Rape survivor speaking out against a likely rapist being seated on the court, yep, me going to jail for that would be peak irony, so I’m already penciling it in as a sure thing.
The short form: I attended a snotty all-girls Catholic school for two years where, as the poor student, I was treated horrendously, even by staff and teachers who seemed to relish bullying me. Also got scapegoated for almost anything that happened because my parents were not influential people in any way and literally heard one of the teachers talking about how she wasn’t going to blame the kid who’s dad’s bank had her mortgage. (It was bank presidents, the governor’s daughter, and similar upper middle and upper class folks, which I am not and never have been. We were middle-middle and struggling.)
Ever met a suicidal 10 year old? That was me.
We went to his senate office on a field trip. When we went in, he smiled at us all — and I guess he had a list of who was coming or whatever for security since we were all in his literal senate office — and said, “Deanna, you must be Ray’s daughter! How’s your dad?” right off the bat after saying hello to group as a whole.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Nobody bullied me for about a month after that. It was literally the first reprieve of any kind I’d had from it since I started first grade.
It was the first time I saw that things actually could be different.
I really didn’t have a shred of hope before that.
That feeling is coming back, fast and hard. I never imagined it would, and I aim to fight it, but there are just too many fights right now. Too many people specifically trying to do me harm on top of this.
I don’t know what miracle could change it this time, but I’m not holding out much hope for that.