Hey everyone,
It’s been a while, so I’ll just gloss over a few things that have happened since my last posting. (I think it was back in May??? Yeesh, how time flies!)
I moved… again. I won’t go into a whole lot of details here, but just know that the last place I was living in was detrimental to my mental health, my physical health, and my wallet. Note to self, never rent an apartment that has everything electrical – lights, heating, etc.; It’ll only eat through my savings account like a swarm of locusts through a harvest. Plus, it doesn’t help when the landlord refuses to accept payment other than checks and doesn’t deposit on a regular basis.
I now live in an apartment in Somerville with four other people, but the good news is everyone gets their own bathrooms. I don’t have to share 🥰. The bad news, pets aren’t allowed unless I pay an extra $50 a month (unless they are registered as an ESA – which Spooky is). However, I have to have permissions from all of my roommates in order to have her. One of them is proving…difficult. So until I can get express approval from everyone, Spooky has to stay with my parents. They’re okay with it, but it can be hard at times, especially when Spooky is being a bit of a bully.
Not much else has happened, except for the various holidays and the election this week. Halloween/All Hallow’s Eve/Samhain was nice. Got to see a lot of trick-or-treaters, which was especially heart-warming! And speaking of warming, it was an unusually warm night. Even now it’s 64 degrees outside. Unusually warm for November. Makes me nervous for our ecosystem.
Speaking of November, I wanted to talk a little about this past Tuesday.
It was…a hard pill to swallow.
I went to bed after voting that night, thinking that things would be fine. I felt I wouldn’t need to worry about my rights as a woman being in danger, that people would be capable of seeing reason. Or at least feel enough to set aside their differences and vote to progress our country into the future. But that didn’t happen. Wednesday morning, I found there are those who would rather lord a say over my body than give me choice. There are those who would rather judge, and condemn, others based on their looks, rather than by their character. There are those who would rather dictate how others should love, than look into their own hearts and try to heal their own pains.
I was sad, but held it together Wednesday morning. That is, until I read an email from my mother, apologizing for the actions and severity of her generation. My boss walked in on me crying and trying so hard to wipe away the tears, only to have more replace them. She was not the only one who consoled me, nor was she the only one who shared my grief and fears for the future.
My future, and her own child’s future.
It was a quiet and solemn day in the office. Then again, so far this week it’s been quiet and solemn. I suspect it will for a while.
But I suppose that is the will of nature and life. Sometimes progress wins, and sometimes regression wins.
There’s a lot of things I would like to say, but I know I can’t. Not yet, at least. Because I know there are those who would love to take my words, twist them into something more heinous and cruel, and use them to make my life a living miserable hell.
But what I can say is this: This may seem like a big setback in our world, but it doesn’t have to be. That…man and his little crew of degenerates and progress-haters, they’re only a small portion of this country. They may act like they’re gods, but they aren’t. They’re still human. They bleed red just like the rest of us.
How quickly these elected officials forget that when they are voted into those positions, they can be voted out. How quickly they forget that the very purpose, the very existence, of those positions they covet, are solely to serve the masses. Us.
Let’s help remind them of what it truly means to hold such positions.
So yes, let’s take the time to grieve our pains and to lick our wounds. Let us take the time to rest, to take care of our selves, and to take deep breaths.
This is NOT the time to panic. Things are not always as dark as they appear to be.
My grandparents always used to tell me, whether it was baking a cake or learning math, panicking will only get you deeper into trouble. Take a step back, take deep breaths, keep calm, and keep pushing forward. A cake can always be saved, and a math problem can always be solved.
We can get through this. We will get through this.
Sometimes you have to draw the arrow back in order to make it fly forward.
L.J. LaBree 