What's on Your Mind?

I’ve been staring at the text box on Mastodon for about a week now. “What’s on your mind?” it says to me. I honestly don’t know what to say that anymore. I recognize that the goal of everything happening right now is to erode any ability to fight back and to flood you with so many moving targets that it’s impossible to concentrate. What angers me the most is it feels like it’s working.

During the 2016 - 2020 presidency, I made it about halfway through before I had to put a moratorium on checking the News daily. Reading the News became exhausting. That was when there was little progression of these terrible ideologies because of the rampant incompetence of the president and the incompetency of those with whom he chose to surround himself. Now it’s seeming like bigotry has united these forces and while they’re still incompetent, they’re managing to succeed and people I care about are losing their right to live as they choose.

So here we are on a Friday. It’s been 88 days, 10 hours, 44 minutes (at the time I am writing this) since we started round two of the American dumpster fire and I’m already exhausted by all of this. I’m terrified that November of last year represents the last time my vote was counted in the United States. I’m terrified that I might have to move. I’m terrified that by the time I decide it’s gone too far that I won’t be able to move and that my family and I will be stuck trying to survive in an increasingly hostile environment.

I say all that recognizing that I’m not even among the first targets. I’m white, cisgender, middle-aged, reasonably well off, reasonably well paid, etc. My team at work though, I’m terrified I’m going to lose them. Only one of them has a green card and the rest are here on H1B visas. I’m terrified they’ll go home to renew their work visa and will not be allowed back into the US. I’m terrified that as progressive as my company is that they’re still a business and that if there’s substantial money to be made by following the hateful ideologies of the current presidency that they’ll forget how progressive they are and cave to those demands. They’ve shown no sign of that, they say the right things, and above all they have a history of supporting progressive initiatives well before they existed as buzzwords and talking points.

I try to remain hopeful and focus on the wins. But we’re not even a hundred days in and I’m exhausted. I hate this. I will continue to fight and resist until I can’t any more. I will likely try to make myself feel better by playing mindless video games, eating food that’s horrible for me, and looking at photos of adorable baby animals until I feel like the world is going to be OK and that we’re going to come through the other side of this and things will improve.

But I’m still terrified.

That’s what’s on my mind.