“How do you see yourself in five years?”, right now is the question that I fear the most as a perspective employee. I’m afraid to answer this question, because I have a personal moral belief to always be honest. I’ve developed this ethic from years of previous deception—little white lies here and there, and that lead towards time spent being incarcerated, and loosing nearly a decade of freedom from my life. But to the point, I’m afraid to answer this question, because when I close my eyes, I see nothing. Emptiness. It’s dark, like completely black.
You see, I’m a visually imaginative person. I associate mental images and pictures to words that allow me to quickly define vocabulary. This allows me to be very creative when writing and participating in role playing games—something that I haven’t been able to do in years. But I digress.
I see nothing but emptiness because of all the recent political agendas that have been revealed. Everything from Project 2025, to the Election … stuff, to the New Administration’s policies and repealing longstanding Orders that I had known my entire life. And I’m scared. Terrified. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I’m directly affected by the upcoming regime change that the Conservatives, the White Christian Nationals have planned. For the past two and a half years, they have attacked my Transgender sisters and brothers. Passing legislation on bathroom bans, and now on identity documentation. I know more is coming, but right now, The Administration seems to be focused on immigrants and deportation. What happened to the legacy of America? We were once proud to take other people, to integrate their cultures into our own, a ginormous melting pot. But today, we have Nazis running the show.
As a transgender person, although I’m in a relatively safe Blue state, I know that my rights are being stripped away, just like other women throughout America are. After this New Administration is done going after the low hanging fruit of people to deport, They will need people to farm, harvest, clean, and construct America. They plan on using slave labor, found in prisons, paying pennies on the dollar, quite literally. When I was incarcerated, working within Food Service, I made $19.20 every month. That was enough to afford one bag of freeze-dried instant coffee (using the tip of a spoon’s worth of coffee grounds), a notepad, a couple pens, and a couple Instant Ramen Soups. Don’t forget to have a stash of Mackerel or Stamps to pay off the bullies so you don’t accidentally drop the soap in the shower. The LGBTQIA+ and NeuroSpicy communities will be fulfilling that role. What sucks is that I’m already nearly crippled, thanks to being exploited by our Capitalistic System from working on my feet all day. My plantar fasciitis has grown to include plantar fibroma in my left foot. Both of my heels constantly ache with pain, and in the morning, I can barely walk to the bathroom, the slightest pressure applied to my feet sends surging pain through my feet and legs. I digress, again.
So what do Nazis do to slaves who cannot or will not work? Execution. This is the reason why when asked to look at my life five years from now, I see nothing. Because I honestly don’t believe that I’ll still remain alive in five years. In fact, given the amount of pain killers I’m ingesting, just to tolerate the pain to do my job every day, I’m facing an increasing risk of not only liver failure, but also heart attack and/or stroke. Which is lovely, because I’m already at an elevated risk for heart attack and/or stroke because of the estradiol I inject weekly. However, that may end up becoming banned under this administration. And then all Hell may break loose as this batshit crazy lady, looses her shit. I can easily see myself failing to safeguard the greater community from the intrusive thoughts of lustful violence that interrupt my concentration when I’m not internally calmed down by the estrogen coursing through my veins. Oops, I digressed.
But there is a glimmer of hope. Maybe with all the craziness and chaos that I’m for certain that 2025 will usher in (just look at the astrology this year), I’m looking forward to seeing a revolution taking place. Will I survive that? Probably not. I don’t and can’t own any firearms. I have enough supplies to last maybe two weeks at best, and those will be depleted before they will be needed, because everything is too expensive now, let alone a couple months or even years from now. And while I do have some survival training, I know I wouldn’t last very long living in the woods—assuming I can even get to them in a timely manner, only because I’m out of shape, and damn near crippled. (See one of those paragraphs above.)
And what would I even do in a Revolution? Sure, I know a bit about radio technology and computers, but I don’t own any HAM radio equipment anymore. Besides, my license expired years ago. I can cook though! Yes, maybe I’ll be able to supply the Rebels with hot, tasty food… if I have access to foodstuff though, and I can’t guarantee that I won’t end up burning the first couple hundred batches while I learn how to use the equipment designed to feed hundreds of people en-mass. Surely though, there won’t be any need for an anime fiction writer, either. Because everybody will be too busy just trying to survive literal Hell on Earth at that point. So, in summary, I’m pretty useless to both the Federal Imperial Government and to the Rebel causes.
But, having a blank slate for a vision of the future could be a good thing, right? That means that the world would be full of untapped opportunities for me to explore. Kind of like a meadow of wildflowers in the springtime, filling the air with pleasant aromas and pretty colors all around. Or maybe I’m just being a naive optimist again.