A Year After The Distortion

This may get a little wordy, so bear with me for a while. 

A little over a year ago this month, we officially entered the Glitch.

This isn't a corner of The Twilight Zone, a sector in The Outer Limits, or a reflection within the Black Mirror, but rather some odd series of events that showed the world that the United States of America is not only imperfect but critically flawed, unapologetically hateful, unbalanced, and tenuously fragile. The United States showed the world that it doesn't matter if you're educated, empathetic, rational, and truly overqualified, ESPECIALLY if you're a person of color or a woman.  The United States showed the world that its citizens are pretty okay with authoritarian fascism under the rule of a revenge-seeking felonious despot surrounded by racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic sycophants.

Hell, some of those countries LOVE that about us.

The whole day it went down felt like a physical distortion as if something wasn't quite right. 

A year ago, I felt tired, and as I reflect on the year that passed, I still feel tired. Even more so because the seeds that were firmly planted are bearing fruit.

Food and other goods we all rely on are high and getting higher thanks to a pointless trade war that raised the tariffs on everything not made in America, which is EVERYTHING, all because the Administration wants to create jobs that would make those products here, unaware that raw materials that would make those new jobs possible come from other countries. Not to mention the fact that a lot of American factories have actually closed because their access to the cheap raw materials and supplies have been cut off dramatically.

You're still paying high prices for eggs. And beef. And vegetables. And canned foods. And fast food. And medicine. And toys. And art supplies. And computers. And streaming services that have diminished in quality, quantity, and value despite the price increases. And everything you can think of. 

And the Administration doesn't care.

People are being snatched from their homes, places of business, places of worship, and places where they can just enjoy themselves and being hunted like animals on the streets of America by masked savages armed with free-rein lawlessness and a seemingly endless arsenal provided by our tax dollars. 

And the Administration doesn't care.

Black people are systematically being erased by the government. They are being fired largely because they are Black. This hateful culture has become legitimized and commonplace in the mainstream, especially in the media which has gleefully dismantled diversity divisions that the powers-that-be at these companies were forced to create but really didn't want to because "Fairness? For EVERYBODY? Eww!" These companies will bend over backwards to appease a wannabe monarch by publicly stating they don't want to deal with Blacks, Latinos, or LGBTQIA+ folks anymore in any capacity while expecting those groups to just continue to support them. Meanwhile, as everybody were being distracted by whatever nonsense the media tries to tell you, there are strange fruit hanging in the South and many parts of America once again.

And the Administration doesn't care.

This Distortion we've been in since that November night a year ago, and the lone effect of it is for all of us to just break. The monsters want us to be fearful of going out. The monsters want to make us hate each other, divide us, erase our existence, and literally starve us of education, the truth, empathy, and food. These want to take away our joy by gutting everything, consolidating the media and molding it to fit their whims and agendas, 

I'll be honest, it's pretty hard to stay positive these days about the state of, well, everything.

Life in the Distortion has been chaotic, but I've managed to maintain a bit of sanity in an insane world. I've prepared for this kind of world since I was a child. I've always been told that this country hated folks who looked like me. Now, sadly, it seems they're more open about that resentment and are no longer afraid to say it out loud. They've been given permission and vindication to be openly cruel, bigoted, and hateful. While some folks are oddly surprised this is happening in their America, the realization of what they're seeing is something way too many of us have known.

America has ALWAYS been like this It's just now affecting folks that haven't experienced this in their lives, and it shows.

A lot of my friends, on the other hand, are scared. They've never experienced anything like what we're seeing right now mostly because they come from a part of society that never had to deal with that. Fortunately, some of them are realizing that community, emphasis on the "unity," will help them maintain some sense of sanity in a seemingly unstable world.

This world is a glitch, and it's going to take a hard reboot to get it back right. That may take a lot longer than we anticipated or have patience for, but at least there is a great disturbance in the force, so to speak, as the recent elections throughout the country proved earlier this month.

People are tired and angry. They're getting wary thanks to the monsters in charge, and they're putting people in positions to at least buffer what's happening to us. I hesitate to say "stop" because bullets have already been fired haphazardly in a crowd. Literally in some places. 

The thing I've learned the most is you need the support of friends in times like these. I'm not even talking about fiscal support or mutual aid (but I am thankful a few will send a few bucks my way in these trying times), but actual mental and emotional support. I legitimately wouldn't know where I'd be without my circle of friends online. 

Though I'm frustrated I may have not been as good a friend as I should be. I know I disappointed a few, and I know some felt like they experienced a sense of abandonment from me, and that was never my intention, and for that, I'm sorry. While I try to be a bit more creative throughout the past year, mentally, I've been holding on by a weatherbeaten tether. 

Being a caregiver is not easy, and my mother's health had my main focus. She's all I have in this world, and there have been days I feel I don't do enough for her, and that frustrates me too. She's hanging on, thank the cosmos, and keeping quietly to herself and being more or less stress-free despite being aware of what's happening in the world.

I swear, that woman has the patience of Job, and that's a very admirable trait of hers. And it's largely because of her that I'm able to hang on and keep what sanity I have left.

So, as we continue to thrive in the second year of the Distortion, I want us all to know we're all we got, and as long as we've got each other's backs and try to stay strong, we could get through this glitched up world of ours. And I do believe we'll get through it, hopefully with our souls intact, our morals uncorrupted, and our empathy remaining our greatest strength. 

I refuse to give in to immoral compliance, and I won't be intimidated by criminal threats.