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Assuming we’re fucked, and it certainly feels that way, love ‘em if you got ‘em

I can tell you right now I'm not doing ok. Not at all. When I think about what fear is, it is imprisonment. I always feel embarrassment around that fear because I feel like it's somehow privileged and insensitive to fear something that is not as likely for me because of my privilege. Then I immediately feel shame for that thought. I’d like to get out in front of my fear before speaking about it. But last night, for the first time, I had a dream where I went to prison. I woke up and my pillow was soaked with sweat. It scared the shit out of me and if I’m being honest it’s why I’m still up writing. I don’t have it in me for a round two. A dream is not empathy. I cannot empathize with those for whom that is an increased reality. So what do I do with this? I’m always trying to head off my therapist and get to where I think he wants me to go before he gets me there. I am eager to learn, but sadly more eager to be right. What is the “right” way to examine my fear? I know the answer. There isn’t a right way and comparing my fear to someone else’s reality is probably only marginally helpful and massively unhealthy. But I can’t let it go. Is it through vulnerability and reflection or is through owning and checking my privilege? How can I use my fear to learn, to sympathize, to activate? I know I cannot empathize with others whose fear might be closer to reality, but I would like my fear to teach me something. To make me better. The biggest personal struggle I've experienced as of late is making space for myself in my internal world, while also reflecting on the ways in which my privilege benefits me at the expense of others in the external world. My race and gender and sexuality have given me more space societally than most people on this planet. Doing the work to hear and support my inner self often comes with immense feelings of guilt and shame. When I get reassurance from meditations or self-help books I think boy I sure hope people like Joe Rogan don’t get their hands on this and weaponize boundary setting, inner strength, and assertiveness. But perhaps they already have and that’s the issue. It’s lopsided. I'm not the most kind person to myself. I’ve spent most of this year working on that. And most of the last eight years trying to work on how being straight, white and male contributes to the quality of life for others. I’m trying to both shut up and listen (to others), and listen and speak up (for myself). Even getting to work on myself feels like privilege so I want to be clear I’m not trying to paint a picture of hardship. Just that I feel conflicted in how to better myself and better the communities I’m a part of and the dread and fear when those aims don’t align.

A big part of my distress that I was able to identify while writing this is that voting is supposed to be the catch-all. I can use my voice to push forward the ideas I think will better the local, national, and international landscape and in doing so, recognize the value I have as a conscientious citizen. When it fails, it lands a blow that breaks my spirit and my spine. My individual voice doesn’t matter, but my collective demographic can still oppress even without my direct support, which then gets me thinking about the ways I indirectly supported this system of oppression. Again, I realize these are not the problems of the hour or the next four years. But they are what is immediately felt as I wait for the immeasurable ramifications of unchecked white power.

I feel paralyzed. I can’t read another “fight like hell,” post or open another email that says “now is the time to work…can we have money?” I am sure I am not alone. The establishment failed us. Our rolled up sleeves and groundwork activism has amounted to little more than an aesthetic. My first thought this morning was this is what happens when you don’t prioritize educating your populace. I have had this thought before, though in the past it was a pointed jab at the non-college educated white males who voted for Trump and how Republicans benefit from cutting funding to education. Now I think it’s more an indictment of the last eight years of shaming a powerful voting group. My outrage is bi-partisan. We should not have to devote our time to talking to racists or bigots or misogynists. But someone is talking to them. And he’s getting fucking elected. Almost entirely on the basis of just not calling them out. There is a very low track record for shaming someone into changing their mind. I’ve been in enough classroom settings to know calling someone out for their behavior in front of other people only shuts them down. It’s biology. Shame triggers rejection. Rejection triggers vulnerability. Vulnerability triggers survival mode. Survival mode activates fight or flight. And fight or flight inhibits executive functioning. The person is incapable of hearing what you are saying. They only know they are being attacked so they attack back or they retreat to a community that accepts them and makes them feel safe. Allowing people to feel safe is how you bring them out of their hardened views to consider alternatives. I know how maddening this is. Someone championing othering so they may dehumanize is not someone who feels like they deserve safety. But I don’t see any other options to get through to them. Do you? We have tried everything from cancelling to criminal charges and here we are with another Trump presidency.

Changing minds comes from conversations. Conversations we are all too tired to have. Conversations I’m afraid to have. I know it’s me who has to have them. I have to take the time to educate my demographic. It is not the responsibility of the oppressed. It is my responsibility. But I’m terrified of all the ways in which I could be identified as a problem and all the ways in which I don’t measure up to being a worthy representative, a good citizen. Every time I learn something about the ways in which my race or my gender or my sexuality has contributed to a racist society, my desire to change goes up but my self-worth goes down. I don’t believe in myself enough to examine the actions of someone else. Every time I flash to when Ben Affleck was like “women deserve better,” and everyone was like “you grabbed a woman’s ass on TV, shut the fuck up.” In self-examining I haven’t found anything like that, but I definitely wasn’t waiting around for everyone to meet me at evolved humanist. I’m a millennial boy who grew up with Todd Phillips, Eminem, and Girls Gone Wild. It’s taken me forty years to develop some self-respect, but my house is still glass. I don’t think I have the resiliency to come back from a public scorning. Which sucks I know. It’s a coward’s logic. I’d rather just have a privacy curtain to do my reflecting behind, change my mindset incrementally, and vote. Who am I to say someone else needs to listen to me? I don’t know shit and have misappropriated “wokeness” just like every other self-righteous butthole. I’m trapped in a cycle of needing to feel good enough about myself as an individual to not care what other people think, but because I care what other people think about me as a demographic, I do not feel good about myself. I feel both determined and irredeemable. Again, my problem. Not yours. Or at least not yours to worry about. Maybe yours in that I’m not as useful as I, or you, would hope I would be.

Ok, let's say it's not going to be OK. Let's say we are doomed. For the record, I do not believe we are. One upside to thinking better of myself, while still not overcoming feeling less-than, is that there has to be better people out there than me. I’m doing the work, but I’m not lapping anyone. And those out in front, they are smarter and more thoughtful and have more to contribute. They won’t do it for us, but there has to be better minds at work than mine. But as a child raised on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, it takes but one New York Times election needle for me to imagine my skin melting off and my bones turning to ash that is blown into my mother’s face as she gets vaporized. So let's say the system is rigged and this is it. We're on our way out. If we accept that no amount of activism, marches, petitions, black squares, MoveOns, ActBlues, or delightful John Oliver segments are going to knock us off track to Armageddon, how should we spend our limited time? If your impulse is to race to the top, hoard it all, sweep the leg of your enemies and peers, take from others, lie, steal, bully, then I’ve got good news for you. This is not the end. You’re about to have free rein so long as no one smarter or bigger comes along to make you swallow your own sword. So congrats. I’d say save me a piece, but we all know you won’t. But if this is the end, the ship is going down, the house is on fire, the dragon is at the door, and how you want to spend your time resembles quality time with the people you care about, then lets dig in. Or lifting up others. Doesn’t have to be everyone. Might be a classmate or a peer or the person who gets paid to pour coffee. Or championing excellence and diversity and differences. Recommend a book, or go see your friend’s show, or read their post-election meltdown and subscribe. Or easing the pain of someone in need. Cover someone’s shift. Buy a meal for someone. Cancel your plans and stay in with them. Just let someone have your ear for five minutes. Or loving yourself and others. Stay in, sing someone’s praises, say I love you. There is no better time than now. Not because it will fix anything, but because time is fleeting.

If pain and suffering are unavoidable destinations, then we’re going to need all the love, gratitude and compassion we can muster. And I know. We have been fucked. They have fucked us. Every CEO billionaire dickhead politician who collects money off your subscriptions or takes money from lobbyists or takes it easy on Amazon because their daughter works there (looking at you Chuck Schumer) has fist fucked us with Hulk Hands. Just to survive we have to split our time between despair and the relentless grind. I have fallen for this. I pride myself on my grind. On my hustle. To hold on to any comfort means having tunnel vision for factory-level output so someone else can fatten their pockets. There is not a thing you can experience or own that doesn’t profit someone else before it gets to you. The first feeling I had when the election was called was disgust. Disgust with everything I filled my apartment with. I didn’t want to watch a movie or listen to music because they required using my TV or my phone or firing up a streaming app. I couldn’t even read a book. It hit me so incredibly hard. I didn’t want to participate in the system. And if you are a creator, short of singing out your window, or doing improv ;) you cannot distribute your creation without someone else making money off of it before you. So you’ve got to work 4x as hard because the pie gets served before you’re even off work. Finding a second for blind kindness can feel like an impossible task. But it usually only takes a second. And remember, in this scenario, we’re on the expressway to Satan’s nutsack. There’s no u-turning it back to Eve’s tits. Might as well spread the love around.

I want you to know, and I need to know, that I am coming out of this in deep despair, but with the conviction that even in the darkest of dark, something my limited experience with could be described as “cute,” so you know, I could be wildly wrong, you can still show kindness to a stranger, back up your friend, check on your neighbor, extend grace to an idiot, and love yourself. I am scared. I am fucking devastated and I am angry. I get angry at the Left, at the Right, at people angry at the Left, and people angry at the Right. I get angry with activisits and with people who do nothing. I get angry with myself. I feel it like razor blades pushing their way out from the inside. I don't want to pretend that I have any idea of what's going to happen next or that I should at all be the person to say what you should feel or do or think. I wish I knew who that person was. Someone who could change the winds or at least predict them. I honestly don’t think they exist. You’d have better luck tracking down a Big Foot than anyone with answers. I’m flying blind here. I got a big cargo of self-love and no co-pilot. No airport tower. I have been disenfranchised and deceived by institutions and organizations that have failed to represent me or offer improvements or better my life. And they were fucking designed with me in mind. I am a part of a system that makes complacency simple. I cling to that system and I benefit from it where so many others do not. I have not done enough. I don't know that any of us have. I don’t know that any of us will. I certainly won’t. I’ll be dead in the ground having caused more harm and chaos than good. Most of it indirectly, but when you’re on the receiving end, it doesn’t matter who manufactured the knife. But not every moment has to be violent.

If I am quiet enough, I can feel love. I have to remain completely still. I am in The Quiet Place and any moment is going to attract a fucking hope butchering beast. I have to stop scrolling and planning and ranting and moving and hustling. In that absence of everything, there is a feeling of love. Love for my kittens, Mighty, Midge and Lou. Love for my parents and for my grandpa who is no longer here but who would have no doubt voted for Trump. I can feel love for my best friends and my partner. I have love for everyone who has put themselves out there on an improv stage. Everyone who has given themselves a chance to learn, grow, be themselves, and accept themselves. I love them. Sometimes not easily. But ease was never part of the package. We have air conditioning and burger delivery. Let’s not get greedy with the conveniences.

Every morning I write my morning pages and I end it with saying that I love myself. You know I must feel like shit if I’m admitting to that. But the thing is, I am starting to believe it. Which makes it a little common to discover love for someone else. And for what it’s worth, I can believe it for you too. Because I am not special. Or I should say I am no more special than you. I have been working in therapy on living with discomfort. I am always trying to keep things absolutely perfect for myself. No bumps or bruises and the effort I put into that is great and painful. Now I recognize we are football fields past discomfort. Bumps are goosebumps from waking up in a bathtub full of ice with our kidneys stolen, and bruises are internal bleeding with the tip of the knife broken off inside. We are somewhere down a dungeon in an Iron Lung or one of those contraptions where they lock your head in with starving rats. And if they threw away the key (again I’m not ready to say they have), well I don't want to feel the self-loathing for getting myself caught or the anger with my captor or the hopelessness that my savior might be a dipshit who thinks logic is more powerful than emotion. I no longer want to put forth the immense strain of a life undisturbed while they tighten the screws. Of the upmost importance is accepting how I feel, shutting the fuck up, and listening for those quiet moments of love as the sand runs out. I want to make sure the person next to me knows they are loved. And loved by someone who loves themselves, so you know that shit is 100. You can’t give what you don’t have. I believe this is possible in even the bleakest of hellscapes. In fact I believe it is necessary, intrinsic, and eternal. Everything can be taken but the love we have for one another. That is our only real possession. The only thing we take to our graves. So swig it. It’s right there in your breast pocket just for these occasions. I promise you won’t run out.

Ok all three cats are on the bed so that’s pretty good ammunition for an incarceration-free sleep. Wish me luck and send me some love. Goodnight.