Covid, Hate, Finances, and Finding Hope

     I have been out of the writing habit since COVID hit me a few weeks back. Tonight is my attempt at getting back to it. I am still pretty tired from it. The feeling of congestion, fever, soreness, and tiredness was pretty awful and I am thrice vaccinated. I cannot imagine what wild COVID without vaccinations would have been like. It is a strange and tiring time to be alive. Plagues and hatred seem to fill up the internet and yet life outside continues pretty well unabated. The looming shadow of inflation, rising costs, and wage stagnation stand over everything like a pall. And yet the sun still shines hot and bloody in the Texas sun. 

    I have never felt particularly safe in my life. Growing up in rural Appalachia isn't exactly the most queer friendly environment for a child. I spent most of my life cultivating some sense of safety. I ended up getting black belts in several martial arts and developing a sort of grim outlook that I would likely die at any moment. I was born in 1976, a Gen X kid who never really thought the world would continue past the year 2000. I am aging. I am transgender. I have great worries about the future for myself and my loved ones. The only hope I have is that each day I manage to wake up and hold my little life together. 

    One thing that really disturbed me today is that I read about a European town that burned an effigy of a trans woman. After all the mass shootings here in the United States, all the anxiety about finances, the horrors of a pandemic, and most recently the rise of monkey pox, I am incredibly tired. I find myself longing for the money, contacts, or resources to move somewhere I might find a little peace. Someplace quiet on the water just to know a few months of peace as the world seems to crumble into ruin around me. 

    I used to want to spend time having fun with people in cities. Going to clubs, parties, and museums. To travel and have a nice life looking at the places I have never seen. Now I am haunted by the idea that it is all very nearly over. I don't have much hope left in me. I will vote. I will hang out in my home as long as I can afford a home to rent. Then I guess I will camp in my car and see what happens.

    Did this happen because I was lazy? Because I wasn't smart enough? Because I just can't exist in this world? These questions swirl inside my brain and trouble my heart with vexation. How does everyone else deal with this? The idea that you might be seconds from the genocidal intentions of those you thought might be friends or neighbors. Shootings, violence, hateful rhetoric. It wears upon me and makes me wonder what is left that I can even do? Am I just as fucked as I fear that I am?

    I am writing these words and I wonder if they are helpful to me, or anyone else, or merely self indulgent tripe as I sit in a puddle of self pity? Then I smile to myself and realize that good or bad, I have practiced writing and that is a win. That is what keeps me going I think. The little wins. Every repetition of the things I choose to do is a win. A workout, words written, a meal cooked, a walk taken.

    In the end it is just moments. I can't control the future but I can look for some happiness now and that is all I can do. If you read all the way through this meander down dark roads, I love you and I appreciate you. I am thankful for the opportunity to blog these thoughts.

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