elective entropy

11/6/2024

(content warnings: us election, mentions of suicide)

i don’t feel much at the moment

i remember when the 2016 election was called. i was twelve years old, watching ghibli movies over skype with my best friend who i would begin dating five months later. we were both too anxious to sleep, intermittently checking results and trying in vain to calm one another. eventually, there was a result:

donald trump was president.

my future partner cried. i was shocked. we got off call and i went downstairs where my mother was sitting. i don’t remember this conversation. apparently i cried as well.

the extent of my political consciousness at the time was whatever i’d read on tumblr. i knew what gerrymandering was, basic social movements such as feminism, and that it’s generally good to not say slurs to people. in this era of my life i told off a different friend when she shared that her mother had voted third party. i now have a different perspective.

it is not the fault of third party voters, or anti-genocide activists, or chappell roan or whoever else you’d like to blame that donald trump is once again president elect - it is the racism baked into the foundation of this country, the democratic party’s pathetic pandering to the right, kamala harris’s refusal to commit to doing a goddamn thing about the ongoing genocide. the establishment has failed us.

i am not self-centered enough to think that i am in danger. i am a white person in a state with abortion protections in place, and while the township i live in tends more conservative, the areas where i spend most of my time and go to college is staunchly liberal. i am slightly worried about emboldened harassment, because i’m visibly transgender and wear a respirator in all public spaces, but if no one’s been brave enough to say anything until this point, i doubt it’ll get worse.

i am worried for the palestinian people, for those i know still living in the south, for my friends with undocumented loved ones, for the hijabis i pass in the hallway at school. i want to get more involved, i feel too passive. i do not have the money to donate nor the ability to protest, but i need to do something.

the future feels bleak. i have only recently gotten to the point where i’m no longer so suicidal that i can’t conceive of a future, and this feels like a punch in the gut. it is four years, he will not follow through on his half-joking promise of not stepping down because he will die in office, i will spend the time working through my undergraduate education anyway. but jesus fucking christ, there is an empty pit in my chest that only aches harder the more i think of it.

maybe i should reconsider my decision to keep my uterus. i want children, but my partner wouldn’t, and i can’t justify bringing a child into this world as it is. i am admittedly afraid of being raped, i’m short, thin, weak. i’m not sure i’d be able to utilize self-defense, going up the stairs too fast gives me heart palpitations.

this is the worst week to not have a therapy session. i’m currently on my period and potentially have a stomach bug, so i’m just not doing very well on any level. i’ll get over it, i think, but right now it sucks. i can’t do my schoolwork, everytime i open one of my courses i just get depressed. how do i think of anything other than this?

i feel so useless.

~april