I take your hand
(I wrote this short text full of difficult emotions as a coping mechanism when faced with the US elections this morning. Please make sure you are in a position to read before doing so. Take care.)
Anger.
It is the stunned anger that strikes first.
It is the "how did this happen?", the incredulity, the disgust, and the will to tear this world apart and build a new one not even from the seeds of the previous one.
The remaining feelings are mostly fear - and I don't even live there. But it's a wider kind of fear, a fear of seeing the world ending over and over and over each week, of seeing a similar scenario happen in so many countries; and at best of having the one where I live blatantly denying its temporary reprieve of Left-leaning parties, and of this being swallowed up by most through the medium of billionaire-owned dominant media. It is all this ruining feeling, this terrifying erosion of a husk of democracy in real time, each election a new opportunity to barely choose a lesser evil and brace for the fall of a bigger sword of Damocles any moment now; and to witness this all over the world again and again.
I want to cry, or puke, or both, and the only thing I'm able to do is to trigger my close ones and be broken with them and to sink my nails into the palms of my hands.
I am trying very hard - not necessarily to keep hoping, but to keep clinging to the things and the communities and the people that bring joy.
I am rereading The sky is falling, and trying to fight back by surviving and existing, and clinging, clinging, clinging to the islands of comfort until my claws grow back.
It is the only thing I can do for now.
Stay safe. Take care.
I take your hand if you want.