April Awakening: Day Seventeen ☀️🌤️☁️
Back before the 2020 election, my dad told me that a second Trump presidency was a lock. “There’s no way this guy can lose,” he told me. But something in the pit of my stomach was telling me different. We were actually in the middle of a pandemic at that time, and I was getting a terrible feeling that some shenanigans were going to occur that November. It’s like I felt the perfect storm was brewing and we were about to surrender our home to something far more sinister than we could’ve ever imagined.
I haven’t been proven right in a court of law on the exact kind of shenanigan that occurred, but I don’t think I’m far off in saying something wrong certainly happened. I mean, do you feel content with all that’s gone on since Biden took office? Do you feel like this is legit? Because I don’t and I never have. But this ongoing resolve (and admitted hardheadedness) I extol just doesn’t seem to be making any headway. And so at what point do I just lay down my arms and let the squatters rule the roost?
There are days where I feel so optimistic over what’s going on out there. Even as I so rarely leave my own abode, I can still see the winning through all the on-the-ground turmoil. And then there’s days like today where I’m just so damn tired of watching the ‘wrong’ win out. People tout values I simply cannot grasp, and they are cheered and revered for it. Maybe I’m just far too online these days, but there’s such a misalignment happening that I feel ready to just throw in the towel. It’s fluctuating to a point where surrendering feels like the safer option; pretending to be pleased with the current state of affairs just so I can sleep at night. The thinking for some is so black and white that I feel I have no other option than to just pack up my gray and go home.
Don’t worry about me though. I’m just being my emo self. I said to my dad before the last election that we’d be able to survive whatever nonsense they were about to unleash upon us, and he agreed. But it’s him I do worry about these days. He so badly needs to get out of the house and really reconnect with himself. It’s been such an arduous journey the past five or six years, that I fear he hasn’t really had time to process it all, especially existing in the same home he was taking care of my mother in. I worry he’s given up sometimes. I hear it in his voice. Still, he never lets that sliver of hope ever leave him. Just tonight he had to reassure one of his friends who is feeling the same malaise as I am today, that the more these people in the wrong screw up, the bigger the bust will be. We can finally kick them out of the house and really clean up the mess they left behind.
No matter how down I feel about it, I still won’t let the defeatist attitude win. I can acknowledge it exists while letting the hope stay in Pandora’s box. I suppose that’s one thing I inherited from my father, the never-ending optimism. There’s pockets of hope out there, even if I can’t always see it from my small Manhattan perch. And as “our president” says more weird things and people keep defending it, it just shows me who’s not invited to my big house party when the evil ruling class is forced to give up their freedoms. Shenanigans be damned. Get off my lawn already.