Playing for Time

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Here we are, kids, facing trauma of a sort that hasn’t been seen within our shores until now. It’s a heavy thing, watching night close in, knowing our way of life is more than likely ending in favor of a terrifying unknown. But as the numbness and DENIAL start to wear off a bit our psyches move into other stages of grief, and next up is ANGER. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross taught us that the five primary grief levels are DENIAL, ANGER, BARGAINING, DEPRESSION, and ACCEPTANCE, but also that those levels don’t remain in a nice neat order or follow an easy progression, and let me just say that ANGER feels like it’s setting in for the longterm. I mean, who the hell would I BARGAIN with anyway… I’ve had quite enough of DEPRESSION over the last decade… and ACCEPTANCE? Seriously?

There’s no accepting that my Black and Brown friends’ lives will become infinitely more fraught with danger, my trans friends will be exposed to unspeakable jeopardy, my gay friends and family will have to make decisions about safe places to live, somewhere on the planet, anyone who is different will be subject to scrutiny requiring them to justify their own existence. Lives will be in a state of upheaval for the foreseeable future so I can find no form of acceptance in my heart for the fact that people I once trusted have bowed the knee to a madman filled with hatred for the world and everything in it.

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The people who voted in favor of fascism seem to think we’ve simply had another transition from one political party to another, when what we’ve done is shifted into an entirely new way of being, and we don’t know yet what that will look like. Those same people believe they’re the favored ones and what happens to us won’t happen to them.

They know not what they’ve done.

**

Nothing about the next four years and the ones thereafter will be easy, so we’ll all definitely know what we’re made of if we survive intact. There are things to keep in mind as dusk approaches:

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The world we wanted, the one where everybody gets to be who they are, is still a bridge too far and we see that now, don’t we. I’ve unbelieved a lot of things, but I’ll always believe that beautiful world exists… if only we knew how to live in it.