Ripple Effect

The thing about this election is, I'm not scared. Not in the way I expected to be.
I don't wake up in the morning with my heart in my mouth and I can sleep at night with only a little difficulty. My hands don't shake, my skin remains blessedly clear, and my eating habits are still only a little unhealthy. I hear stories of people crying at work and staring at the ceiling every night and developing ulcers, and none of that is me.

The thing about this election is, I'm still scared.
My fear is the knots that follow my shoulders and spine even in the mornings. My fear is how I read fairy tales again because I need good to triumph. My fear is how I need to keep my hands busy, so I drink water and swim and experiment with makeup. My fear is why, at 7:30 on a Saturday night in what should be the best years of my life, I'm wondering if I can call a friend of mine for the third time this week just to say that I'm feeling a little down.

The life expectancy for a trans person is between thirty and thirty-seven years old. A classmate of mine turned twenty today. She may have only ten years left. She may have less. I don't want her to have less.

I don't anyone to have less.

One Was Enough

Two days ago at an alt-right gathering, it almost seemed like things were looking up. The New York Times announced that at the beginning of the rally, racially motivated violence was “denounced...Hispanic citizens and black Americans [were told that they] had nothing to fear.”. Prominent leader Richard Spencer even encouraged his listeners to take more respectable actions, according to an article written two days ago (link) by the NYT.  And then, Spencer finished the evening by questioning the humanity of Jewish citizens before members of his audience proudly gave the Nazi salute.  

We all thought our country was past this.

America isn’t a nation with a history to always be proud of. Our citizens and leaders have done horrible, monstrous things in the name of upholding our freedom-the freedom to be white, the freedom to be Christian, the freedom to educate your children in whatever manner you see fit. To keep this freedom protected, our nation has committed genocide. Our nation has enslaved millions of people for hundreds of years. Our nation has elected a man backed by the Klu Klux Klan and anti-Semitic writers and speakers.

Our country must learn from the past.

We must remember the chains and the smallpox blankets that allowed us to form this more perfect union. We must remember the water fountains and internment camps that allowed us to live in a world where everyone on our street was exactly like us. We must remember that when we demonize any group of people-be it a group based on skin color, or religion, or political views-we demonize ourselves.

One Holocaust was enough.

I'm so tired.