Dammit! I want to write!
Since the Election, I have tried really hard to write something along the anime genre, for why I originally created this project. Anything. A short story, a diary entry—hell, I’ve got an entire section dedicated to that one! But as much as I try, nothing seems to come out onto the page. I’m too distracted, too caught up in my horrible emotions. Too anxious about what’s coming around the corner. I’ve been gifted with a marvelous imagination, but it’s a double edged sword, and right now I feel like I was doing a fancy acrobatic trick with it, and I just impaled my forehead with the sharp tip of the sword.
I’m a trans-woman, and I feel absolutely devastated about Trump being elected, and his Mandate for Leadership for his policies. I got physically sick after reading just 30 pages of this 920 page tomb. My anxieties aren’t just all about my life either. I look around at my place of employment. Almost every one of my co-workers is not Caucasian. I work mostly with other women. I’m sure you’ve heard of the species, the gender that the Conservative Right wants to put back in the kitchen, birthing the kids, wiping snotty noses, and keeping quiet with a loving smile. When everybody is rounded up and shipped off to God-knows-where-Texas, there’ll be like three people to do the work of ten. And that’s just the front end by the cash registers. Oh, and no janitorial crew either.
I fear that I’ll be rounded up, just because I’m not Cis-Hetero. you know, not normal. I’ll be forcibly de-transitioned. With that comes the lustful raging violent outbursts where I just want to tear the skin and certain appendages off of hateful, despicable feces for human beings. I’ll be sent to that hot desert in the middle of nowhere. Left to die, because my body just doesn’t work the way it used to. It creaks. It hurts.
And assuming that somehow, I evade capture. Well, the winter season is brutal here in the Northeast. When the tariffs hit, and everything goes up by a minimum of 25%, I’ll be priced out of surviving. How do I know that? Because right now, 91% of my income goes toward just paying rent. My partner, lost her SSI, went from nearly $1,000 every month, to $137, and starting in February, it’ll go down to $46. So, I know I won’t be able to keep paying the mandatory bills, like transportation, electricity, or even a phone, let alone luxury items like food (aka, beans, rice, flour).
The past couple of weeks have been rough on my mental health. I thought I finally won over my decade long Death Wish a few years ago. I finally found a happy place. I accepted myself, and my place in the world, and everything had fallen into place. But lately, that old nightmare has come knocking again. There’s not a single day that goes by where I’m preoccupied with my death. How is it going to happen. Will I be alone? Would anybody really care? Will it be painful?—even moreso than my everyday standing pain? At least it’ll be over fairly quickly, right?
Or will I be given an option to fight back, for the people, my community, my neighbors. Will I be a heroine in this story called Life. Will I be allowed to age to a tender elderly age, when I can sit back, enjoy a good cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa and swap stories with other old fogies while playing bingo or canasta? Dare I say, running a final role playing game, where the most often question asked is not “What are you doing?”, but rather, “What was I saying?”
But my point to all of this rambling is that I seem to have just lost all motivation to do anything anymore. Like really. What’s the point. Everywhere I look, all I see is hated, anger, sadness, misery, pain, smugness. Basically, every single negative emotion a human being can express, that’s all I see. Even the comedy that I’ve used in the past to cope with my depression and anxiety isn’t working. I wonder, have I lost all hope? And what does it really matter anymore anyway? All I do is work, sleep, and occasionally eat. Rinse and repeat.
I don’t know. Maybe the planet will be better once the United States ceases to exist. Maybe people all across the world won’t be exploited anymore. Maybe the wars will stop. Maybe I can remember the lyrics to that one song that’s been on auto-repeat in my mind for the past two days. Maybe, I can finally rest.