Oh, Darling Ones,

How are your hearts and your nerves?

If you are the type of person who cares about other people, even the ones you don’t know; the type of person who wants to limit suffering and make sure everyone has enough, your faith in humanity, your heart, and your soul took a beating this week.

Mine sure did, and I’ve spent the last few days yelling with people who agree with me.

Something sure as hell happened and it was not good. At all. I’m not in the right head space nor do I have the emotional capacity to dig too deep into an election post mortem. There’s plenty of recriminations to go around. I do lay a lot of the blame at the feet of cis men and the masculine bubbles they live in. Maybe we’ll talk about this more later.

Maybe it’s the near-death experience (sounds dramatic, but strokes kill people all the time) or the fact that we’ve done this before (2016-2020), but this time around I feel more intellectually devastated than emotionally.

I did not spend yesterday in a teary puddle. Instead, I spent the day doing things that make me happy. I ate homemade banana bread (thanks, Sunday me), switched back and forth between listening to Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein and Joy Oladokun’s “OBSERVATIONS FROM A CROWDED ROOM” while crocheting. I spent the evening shouting on the phone to my friend EM about how my new life’s mission is to make men uncomfortable about their casual sexism whenever I can. Men make me uncomfortable all the time. It’s only fair.

Very different from 2016 when I spent most of the day crying helplessly.

I was uncharacteristically optimistic making all kinds of vows (privately and publicly) to love harder, rebel joyfully, and not let the fascist rob of hope. Doesn’t sound like me, does it? But it’s how I feel.

Frankly, I am more selfishly frightened this time around. I’m newly disabled with poor people’s insurance. Things can go pretty bad for me really quickly if I lose that insurance. Even if I had the ability to work full-time I’d never be able to cover the cost of my macular edema treatments. According to my insurance claims those cost $18,089 each time I go. I go every four to six weeks. I won’t make enough money this entire year to cover one appointment.

I’m only getting by financially because I’m draining my savings. That won’t last forever.

So yes, scary as hell. Or at least it might be. Thanks to Lexapro (please don’t take that away RF Brainworm) I can calm myself enough to not worry about it until I know I have to.

Until I have more concrete things to worry about I’m going to love hard, rebel joyfully, and make things to share with people.

It’s okay if you’re not in the same kind of place. We’re in the upside down and nothing makes sense. We’ve been through this before, hopefully we’ll make it through again.

Love, love, love
Jodi