Numb

 I am still immensely grateful for the antidepressants. I am holding it together really well, like even to the point where I look at myself from afar and go "huh, she's doing pretty well" even while there's an endless churn of fear and pattern-finding and worry going on inside.

I went to our favorite adventure-themed bar on election night because they had an all-night happy hour. It helped to be with people, even though I felt somewhat pathetic being a decade older than all of them (at least a decade, possibly two RIP). I got to talk theatrical effects with the designer which was SO incredibly pleasant after wondering for all this time.

But the display in the corner kept ticking up for Trump, and the nausea that had plagued me all day didn't play super well with lots of cocktails, so eventually I walked myself home. Bereft of a food plan, and still feeling nauseated, I made popcorn. And as I sat down to eat it at the table, I opened my phone and saw that they'd called it.

I sobbed. I grieve. I feel that I've seen the death of a nation. I feel that I've seen this before.

In January 2017 I wrote, in the other place

And then it's Yeats chasing Niemöller, ["First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist...", and the world is] turning and turning in a widening gyre.

Looking back at the things that terrified me then, I realize how much we've lost. The US's unchecked capital greed has weakened it to the point that it's been completely captured and encircled by a hostile outside entity. 

I do not know what will happen next, but I do know that any last lingering promises of the "normal" life my parents were given have now been made effectively null and void.  Between climate change and the total breakdown of democracy, with a sham Supreme Court and regressive insanity in the executive and senate, even if the House evens out it's going to mean nothing. We on this coast are a popular topic for sneering and fearing among the right, regardless of how much, if any, of it is deserved. We'd just been crawling our way out of the "liberal hellscape" lies toward the recovery that'd been withheld from us. 

The country (appears to have*) voted for war and famine and inflation and death. 

We now have until January to brace ourselves for impact.

* I am hearing some mutterings that this election could have been interfered with so thoroughly that it could rightly be considered stolen. If that's the case, they didn't try to be subtle about it - no "just enough to win" - they went all out for the steal. But regardless the left has already begun the circular firing squad, flagellating over how much their party sucks and taking the result as gospel, so I think that point is effectively mooted.