Day #198: 2020 Can Suck It

The morning David Bowie died, I woke Josh up to tell him David Bowie died. It wasn't meant to be a mean thing, I just wanted him to hear it from me. 

He was so upset. He wanted time to be awake before that news hit him. He asked me not to do it again, especially after a similar dynamic happened when Alan Rickman died.

This afternoon I was sitting in Max's room and he stood outside the door and said I don't want to David Bowie you but maybe don't go on social media. And I knew. I said I want to hear it from you but I knew.

I hate the fact that it feels like the weight of defending our civil rights and moral standings fell on a single person's shoulders, and the shoulders of an 87-year-old woman with pancreatic cancer at that. No one was stronger but that's not fair and that's not the way a system should work.

I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel exhausted. I was already stressed about this shitshow of an election and already afraid the stupid clown in the White House was going to get reelected and get to nominate her successor. Now it all just feels like too much shit. She was a feminist icon. I looked up to her. So many of us did.

I made a donation today to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice in her memory. Her faith tradition was important to her, mine is to me, women's rights were important to her as they were to me so it felt nice to give to an organization that fights for women's rights in the name of her religion and mine.

It's New Year for our Jewish friends. I don't know a lot about the tradition but I know of the eating of apples and honey and new fruit to make the New Year feel sweet. I hope it works because right now this year just feels like sand in my mouth. I'm so done. I'm so fed up. I don't have much more in me.

I finished the most lovely book today: The List of Things that Will Not Change. Even the title is reassuring right now. I started Efren Divided which is about a boy whose family is broken up by an ICE raid, which now with the future of the Dreamers hanging in the balance like so many other things with the court split feels so prescient.

I need to do gratitudes today. Even though it's hard. I am grateful for Max's hugs. I'm grateful for my friend Sarah's lovely voice on the phone. I'm grateful for rain. I'm grateful for a clean living room. I'm grateful for a date with James. I'm grateful for a weekend. I'm grateful for the life of RBG. She changed the world. We won't let them change it back. 

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