I’m back in 2016 when I thought maybe just leaving the US was my best bet. Or that maybe we as a nation should just fracture into two - progressive and regressive. Or that elections going our way could save us…they can’t. Not when the other side consistently lies, cheats, and strong arms their white supremacist Christo-fascocracy agendas down the progressive majority’s throats while we sit here helpless. Ugh, what can I say about this atrocity that hasn’t already been said? I’m exhausted.
I had a very important, very stressful high profile gig this weekend that spanned Thursday-Sunday nights and took all of my time and energy. Our band was playing on an open plaza downtown, and Sunday night a group of pro-choice protestors marched through our performance space, I believe with the intention of “fucking shit up”, but instead were met with cheers and raised fists from all of us, and we applauded them as they marched through. There was hardly a dry eye in the place after. We’d all been dancing and singing our rage for two days and that just brought it all home. It was a moment I won’t soon forget.
The only solace - and I mean only - is the fact that I’m not alone in my rage, terror and depression. Every woman I know feels this way, and most of the men, too. This country is solidly on its way to becoming a Gilead-style theocracy, but at least very smart people are fighting back. We are not going gentle into that dark night.
Shall we talk about how incredibly triggering it is for a Christian cult survivor such as myself to see our entire nation becoming that? Let’s not.
Let’s talk instead about how I leave for my honeymoon a week from tomorrow and so far no one has covid, but we still have 8 days to go, and I’m still scared. How my band and I spent the last two days recording a Christmas CD for the end of the year and how stressful it was since my voice was a raspy mess from singing all weekend. How the boys are enjoying their final week of summer camp for now, and what a relief it is that it was a hit. How after determining visiting my sister for Thanksgiving is going to be too expensive, I booked us yet another Death Valley trip, and I’m really excited to get back there. How my 98-year-old friend is on her death bed and I have to go say goodbye tomorrow and how much I’m dreading it. How I have no intention of celebrating July 4th because I don’t know this country anymore, and how my black friends tell me they’ve never known it, welcome to their world. I think of that every minute of every day. These are the things that occupy my thoughts as I close out my 40s.
Today I told Bobby and Theo how I had an early miscarriage before I had them. I don’t know why I chose to tell them this now; if anything my story sounds deceptively pro-life for how much I mourned that tiny clump of cells that never could have been anyone or anything. It wasn’t about that potential baby not making it; it was about what it meant to me that it didn’t make it - that all that trying and failing and money had been in vain, that I might never be able to be a mother, that I’d waited too long and now it’s too late, that my body was broken, that I now had to make hard decisions about just how far I was going to take this whole pursuit of single motherhood thing. That’s a lot to put on something that can’t even be seen by the naked eye.
For now, I barrel ahead, head down, slowly picking away at band stuff and event stuff until I can (hopefully) catch a much-needed break next week when we (hopefully) head out to Fiji to forget all this shit for a few days.
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