Human

I started high school during the election of 2000. I was 13 years old and not  interested in politics or the news but the contentious election year was something that was always in the foreground. My mom was glued to CNN and the three of us spent many nights in the living room camped out in front of the TV listening to distrust from many about George Bush

I was 13 years old so my moms fears quickly became my own. At the time, there weren't any dystopian  teen novels to read to assuage my fears. They didn't exist, if I can be honest. I had Orwell and Nevil Shute, Huxley, Burgess and Bradbury but the tales of  tyranny seemed oddly outdated though set in a future closer to my own.

I remember being afraid, because I was told to be afraid. Bush could not be good for this county. He would not be good for minorities or women or the middle-class. We were heading into dangerous times, was the pervading words I heard and lived by for eight years.

Sixteen years later I feel like an asshole for thinking Bush was the worst we could get. He was not. He wasn't great but he wasn't the worst. The worst is now. The worst is signing executive orders left and right that delegitimize American citizens. The worst is tweeting about how the worst is yet to come. The worst is promoting "alternative facts" and a shrewd disregard for values counterproductive to the populist movement. Democracy is fragile. I know this now because we are stepping further and further away from her.

 I will lay out my facts for you.  I am scared. I repeat, I am scared. Embarrassed. Mortified. Ashamed.  Scared. I hope that following my life journey these last 10 years makes these fear valid to anyone who is reading.. I am scared, this is not the America I know or love. This is not democracy at hand.

This weekend I marched with my friend Heather in the city. It was peaceful, restorative and full of kind passionate and frightened individuals.  In my 30 years I did not think I have to brave the cold with millions of other women, children and men to march peacefully about unity. But there I was, with stranger turned friends struggling to make sense of the world.

I am afraid of the unknown. Days after the march, it seems as if everyone is just accepting this absurdity as the new norm. It is strange how history repeats itself. How we tell ourselves we won't ever return to some moment in time...only to arrive at it's door.

I am anxious and afraid and despondent. I am leaderless. I feel country-less.