This wasn’t what I was planning on writing today.
I was going to pen a rather poignant piece about my own mental health and how I’ve been doing this week, but I can’t. I can’t think about anything other than the fact that we now live in a white supremacist regime. This is literally the most dire situation I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been held at gun point, so I have a pretty good idea of what’s bad I think.
I am scared for my family. I am scared for my friends. I’ve been checking in with people all morning, making sure no one I know has killed themselves or been killed. A lot of my friends and family are having mental breakdowns today. People are in fear of their lives. I’m in fear for mine.
A lot of people are going to be hurt and killed over this. I feel like I’m grieving over friends I haven’t lost yet. I have friends pushing their weddings up to ensure they still have the right to marry. I’ve seen tweets of people urging trans people to change their legal documents in the next 72 days because they might not get the chance to later. I texted my family and my friends asking them to please please please please please stay safe.
I don’t feel safe.
I don’t feel safe in this country anymore.
There’s always been that knowledge that being a gay Black woman in America is not safe but now I feel like my own demise is imminent. I feel it for my friends. God, I am so nervous and expectant for the death of people I love.
I overestimated the decency of American people.
I underestimated the racism of America.
I underestimated the fact that white people value whiteness and white supremacy over their own wellbeing.
America voted for a child rapist, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a man who hasn’t the first clue what the fuck he’s doing to lead its country because it felt comfortable sweeping that under the rug if it ensured the reinstating of white supremacy. White people are ok with a man who sexually assaults women being in charge because well at least he’s not a woman. How hateful and disgusting must you be to trust a man who wants to rid the nation of entire religions and races with the highest office in the land?
Never in my life have I wished for this much violence.
I find myself hoping for a coup. I’ve been calculating the odds of the success of a double assassination (because if Tr*mp is gone, we still have his equally evil VP). How likely would it be that another nation attacks us? I hope the odds are high. I want entire annihilation of this country. And why shouldn’t I? A literal half of this country hates me and everyone I love, so I wish the same violence upon them.
I am reminded of my time spent working on the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. I worked tirelessly in Chicago for months, my co-workers and peer even longer and harder. I put my heart and soul into that campaign and I wept on Election Night. I was so proud of myself and my friends for ensuring those four more years of the best President we would ever have.
That work was wasted.
Everything we worked for is squandered. Undoubtedly this presidency will work just as hard to erase all the good we worked so hard to get. Millions will be without healthcare. LGBT people will be without rights. Women will no longer be in charge of their own bodies. Black people, Latinx, Middle Eastern people, anyone with non white skin will be persecuted. Gun control, climate change reform, criminal justice reform. It’s gone.
I have nothing left to give. I have no hope anymore. I did everything I was supposed to do ensure this didn’t happen, and it didn’t work. This is not on me.
White people, you did this to yourselves.
The same white people that helped elect and re-elect President Obama decided that after eight years of a Black president, maybe a woman president is too much. After eight years of economic growth, stability, equality, maybe the next best thing is a president endorsed by the KKK. Whiteness is so fragile that white people were willing to sacrifice their own selves for it.
The thing that bothers me the most (in this very instance, as different things fly to the top of my list every other moment) is that while white people will suffer, they will not suffer nearly as badly as we will. White women, your ownership over your body is over, but you won’t be the victim of hate crimes. Poor white people, you’ll get poorer, but you won’t be killed.
You will suffer, but you will not hang.