I am fucking terrified.
This week has done a number on me emotionally, psychologically, and physically. I’m so tired of thinking about it that I barely want to talk about it. But it’s the background radiation of my life and I am having FEELINGS right now and it’s frustrating because it feels so isolating.
Reynaud’s apparently flares with stress so I’ve been freezing and while I have done zero strenuous activities all week, my body feels like I’ve been fighting bears and climbing mountains.
I feel awkward and sheepish for being (what I imagine is perceived as) alarmist when I look at everything that’s happened this week and tell people it’s only going to get worse from here so we need to start preparing. Not awkward enough not to say it because the worst part about it is I know I’m right. I’ve read history. I grew up on Pence’s side of the aisle, I know how to read the writing on the wall, I can hear the dogwhistles in their approaches. I know what to look for and I know where they want to end up. I can’t know the future, but I sure as hell know the direction we’re going right now.
And I am fucking terrified. I haven’t been able to bring myself to admit it out loud but I am scared. My body has not stopped being tense for a week, I find myself holding my breath and not realizing it.
I’ve thrown myself into campus organizing. I worry a little bit that I seem like a conspiracy theorist but at the same time, IT’S ALL FUCKING HAPPENING. That’s what I hate about everything; and that more than anything is what gnaws at me in the night.
I KNOW. I KNOW because I was there. I was trained to be part of the movement that made this happen. This feels personal to me in a way it is not personal for most people and I’m having a really hard time handling those feelings. I wasn’t important, I left before I got to play a role, but I was being groomed. I knew the rhetoric, and the strategy, and the hopes. When I left I hoped all that would stay behind too. Like somehow it would disappear because it left my conscious and surely the majority of America wouldn’t let that happen.
But it didn’t. They started winning. A lot. And now we’re here.
And I’m scared.
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