Tag Archives: politics

How

How do you eat pumpkin pie and turkey and mashed potatoes with people for whom rape isn’t a big bright un-crossable red line?

How do you smile and hug people from whom you expected so much better?

How do you balance this reprehensible, unconscionable choice they made with the many real and concrete ways they have shown you love over the course of your entire life?

These aren’t hypotheticals; I really want to know. Because I don’t have any kind of answer yet and a vanishing amount of time to figure it out.

“Don’t let politics get in the way of friendships or family.” I certainly agree with that when we’re talking about the finer points of income tax rates or zoning laws or transportation policy. There is plenty of room for friendly good-faith differences of opinion in those areas. If we’re talking about very real threats to my son’s education and general future – and very real threats to the literal air we breathe and planet we exist on – and very real threats to my own bodily autonomy and health – and good God, so much more – well, sorry not sorry, the political is personal as fuck and I can’t pretend otherwise.

I often wish that everyone had been required to take a women’s/gender studies class in high school or college, not only because everyone should be a feminist (or womanist), but because of this central lesson we learned early and often throughout those studies: the personal is political, and the political is personal. It’s one thing second-wave feminism got absolutely right. And yes, I know at this point I’ve risked sounding like an absolute parody of myself, but it’s the goddamn truth.

To willingly make the clear-eyed choice to support kakistocratic government because…because…because you’ll get anti-abortion judges and justices? Because you think gas is too expensive? Because you think Kamala Harris is a scary woke San Francisco lib? Because…???? How could I pretend to respect that?

I could go on and on and literally forever on, but I’ve deliberately ignored federal news as much as humanly possible over the last week and a half, and don’t plan on changing that anytime soon. What’s going to happen is going to happen. I don’t need to borrow worry from the future. My brain thinks if it tries hard enough, it can come up with all the right contingency plans for every potential disastrous policy enacted, but of course that’s not how any of this works.

I think we learn pretty early on in adulthood that part of ~maturity~ is being able to hold space for two opposing facts at once. In this case, the facts are these: 1) People in my family have made a decision that I abhor with every fiber and cell and atom of my being. 2) I still love them. I don’t think either of those facts are really changeable. So here I must sit with it, and it feels like one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

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What I’m reading:

  • My most recent completion is Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror“. It’s better than a lot of personal essayist memoirs I’ve read. Respect.
  • Now I’m in the middle of Ann Petry’s 1946 classic “The Street” and have just begun Kara Perez’s “Green Money“. I’ve got to figure out how to ethically strike it rich sooner or later.

What I’m watching:

  • We continue our sojourn through Suits, now mid-season 6. It’s so great and often pretty dumb but still so great. However, if Harvey and Donna don’t eventually ride off into the sunset together it’s all completely dead to me. Don’t you dare spoil it.
  • Someone I know very wisely saved up all the current season episodes of Great British Bake-Off to watch this week in case things went, well, how they ended up going. I wish I’d had that level of foresight, as we are sadly all caught up with it, but every minute in that tent with Allison Hammond is a balm to the soul.

What I’m baking:

What’s getting me through:

  • all of the aforementioned things +
  • Ashwin
    • watching him figure out how to write ABCs
    • getting amazing progress reports from his speech and OT folks
    • seeing how much his classmates love him and vice versa
    • supporting his random and ever-changing obsessions (currently: dinosaurs, Peppa Pig, “Spooky Scary Skeletons“, the solar system)
  • my dad and me sending each other smart-watch screenshot proof of our daily-ish walks
  • my work group chat
  • Halloween candy
  • commiseration with every like-minded person I meet
  • finally, finally, F I N A L L Y sweater weather
  • we’re seeing Jon Stewart in Milwaukee next week
  • we’re visiting my Michelle in February
  • having successfully kept Twitter and Threads deleted from my phone for the last 9 days
  • acknowledging to myself that even though by many measures it’s been a pretty bad year overall, I’m still here and I’ve done a lot of really fucking hard things and I’m more confident in and proud of myself than I’ve ever been.

Kava-NAW, etc.

I am feeling discouraged today.

In a couple of months I will have been unemployed for a year. I suppose another way of saying that is that I have been a freelance writer for a year – and believe me, that’s what my resume says, and that’s how I try to think of it – but it has not been as fruitful as I’d like and that’s probably more my fault than any external factors. I never expected it to be easy and I never expected to make a ton of money, so at least I haven’t been surprised on those fronts. I’ve pitched some editors – maybe half a dozen – and gotten zero responses, which any writer can tell you is far worse than any rejection. A friend of a friend told me about Hugo House here in Seattle, and I’ve signed up for a couple of multi-week workshops, one of which starts tomorrow – I’m dreadfully intimidated but also just kind of dying to DO IT. I see so many women out there thriving in their writing careers and I cheer them on with every bit of my heart – I just want to get where they are, where I could casually say “here’s my latest for [x badass publication]…” instead of “OMG YOU GUYS SOMEONE ACTUALLY PUBLISHED ME THIS IS REAL THIS IS HAPPENING!!!” It will take time…I know. I feel impatient today.

And I also know that a year ago, I would’ve killed just to be published anywhere at all – so paying attention and respect to progress that has been made would probably be a better route to take, mentally.

I’ve been trying to find a therapist here but it seems like none of the lady shrinks in my network are accepting new patients and the one place that seemed promising isn’t returning my email.

We bought a new mattress and it’s delightful but naturally takes some getting used to especially since it is memory foam and we are not really accustomed to that. The firmness! My God, the firmness! My body feels good but also sore?? Or is it sore from Seattle’s hills and stairs?

Allegations against Brett Kavanaugh continue to pile up – today a third woman went public. How many will it take? How many women have to tell their stories? My Twitter feed is positively bursting at the seams with women sharing their sexual harassment and assault traumas…and it just. doesn’t. matter. If nothing else, this whole episode – hell, the last two years – have been extremely illuminating re: the number of people we have in our government who could not care less about sexual assault. They’re going to vote on Friday no matter what happens on Thursday. It’s all a foregone conclusion. What breaks my heart perhaps the most is the female GOP senators who could be putting a stop to all this and for whatever reason, aren’t. My expectations for white men in power are already subterranean so it’s pleasantly surprising when any one of them stands up for women or any marginalized group. But a woman should know. A woman should get it. If Susan Collins was my senator, I’d be picketing her office every day of the week and twice on Sunday until she agreed to vote against this piece of misogynist elitist garbage.

Then there’s all the civilian Republicans who, I guess, just have no problem with giving an alleged serial sexual assaulter a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land. Your cousin. Your neighbor. Your boss. Your pastor. People in your life that you care about and respect, who aren’t showing any kind of care and respect toward women, because they are just going along with the party line. It’s really, really disappointing to see the lengths people will go to not believe women. Women who have EVERYTHING to lose by coming forward. We’re learning a lot about our friends and family members and community leaders by their responses to this stuff.

What I’m Reading:

  • “The Very Worst Missionary” by Jamie Wright, the story of a woman who became a Christian in her 20s as a young mom and decided to go be a missionary in Costa Rica and discovered that most mission work is bad/useless/counterproductive. Having lots of flashbacks to the weeklong “missions trip” my church youth group went on to Costa Rica in 2003. We…were not super helpful. Anyway, she’s funny and very sweary and unapologetic, my kind of girl.

What I’m Watching:

  • Still lots of Brooklyn 99. When I started it several weeks ago, I picked up in like season 3 or 4. So we watched all of that until it got current, and now we’re going back to the beginning to see what I missed. It’s so delightful.

What I’m Listening To:

  • Ella Mai, “Boo’d Up” and “10,000 Hours” and “A Thousand Times”. Also “Best Part” from H.E.R. (featuring Daniel Caesar). I had never heard of any of those people until about a week ago when I was hanging out at a coffee shop and letting YouTube play whatever it wanted after I picked a random Beyoncé song. “Best Part” is the song that plays in my mind when I envision a beautiful autumnal falling-in-love montage: walking through the leaves, drinking cider while wearing sweaters and scarves, cuddling by the fireplace, all the basic shit. Highly recommend.

What I’m Fuming About:

  • I believe we’ve covered that.

screaming