Complicit

Yeah. I watched the game.

I frequently wonder, and despair, about the 53% of white women who voted for Donald Trump. It seems unthinkable to me that so many women could vote so sincerely against their own interests - these women saw a serial adulterer and sexual predator (not to mention a racist, xenophobic, incompetent bigot) and affirmed, yes, I want this man to represent me. And these weren't just poor women, frequently profiled in semi-journalistic pieces about the working classes and their disenfranchisement, but well-educated, affluent women. Women who look like me.

It baffles me. It angers me. I do despair.

And yet, last night, I settled in with my plate of burgers and glass of non-alcoholic chardonnay, and I watched the game.

I talk a lot about the suffering of minorities on this blog, knowing, of course, that I cannot comprehend those experiences. I'd like to think that I have some sense of the need for justice, for better representation, for equal rights and dignity, but I know that my whiteness, my financial security, my excellent education all protect me from the ravages of institutional racism and economic strife.

I could easily be the kind of woman who cheered, without thought, the gladiatorial pomp and valorous pain of men, our entertainers, our objects. Of Black men, bound and gagged, owned, denied the right to protest.

And last night, I was. 

I am complicit.

I pushed my values to the side. I stand, in theory, against the high risk of injury - I don't believe that any occupation justifies frequent concussions. I stand against the stifling of free expression - the NFL's blackballing of Colin Kaepernick is shameful, abhorrent. I oppose the domestic violence which seems to go hand in hand with this violent American pastime. I am a good person, in my head.

But my actions belie my good intentions. I am, in this instance, the 53%.

I ask myself, why. How could I let this happen? And it comes down to selfishness, and convenience, and betrayal.

I am selfish because I chose to be entertained - I enjoyed the back and forth, the well-contested match, the athleticism of both teams, the triumph and the defeat. That entertainment became more important to me, for those long hours, than my values. And I watched the commercials, anticipating more entertainment, knowing that consumerism is the curse of American capitalism - seeing a shocking and disgusting Dodge Ram commercial and feeling good about myself that I knew that using Doctor King's words to sell a few trucks was deeply wrong.

How many women found Donald Trump entertaining? How many got a secret thrill when he was crass, when he "told it like it is?" - when crowds cheered, when tribalism prevailed, when they wore red hats with white stitching which proclaimed, I am better than you?

And convenience - instead of having a frank, and perhaps difficult, conversation with my husband about why I could not watch the game, I gave in. I put that conversation aside, thinking oh, next season, I won't watch. Next time I'll be better. How many women voted for Donald Trump to avoid such uncomfortable conversations with their spouses? How many put their heads down, pulled the lever, denied their responsibility in order to avoid the cringing feeling of going against a man's convictions? 

How many women have betrayed themselves? Have betrayed their gender? I - a women of supposedly strong convictions - was able to betray what I claim to believe. It was easy. I don't bear the consequences. I am not at risk - I will not be injured, I will not be silenced, I am not a possession of the American public or of a wealthy organisation which cares only for profits and not for the cost of human lives.

The thing about complicity is that it is the path of least resistance. It's so simple, and its simplicity is seductive. Complicity makes sure that we don't have to have to give up our entertainment, to have uncomfortable conversations, to hold fast to our own convictions. Complicity is a cozy sofa and a warm blanket, a cocoon, a wall between us and our guilt, a football game, a vote.

I was entertained. It was a good game, last night, and the team I supported won. And another player suffered a brain injury. And no one knelt - I have no doubt that they were ordered not to. From 6:30 to 10:00, millions of dollars were spent to reassure us that Black lives don't matter.

This morning, as I see the strength of so many men and women who righteously abandoned football all season long, I am shamed.

But heck - Doctor King told us to buy a truck. It's all good, right? 

Confessions of a West Wing Addict

It's the only way I can sleep. It has been, for a good ten years, now.

Sleep has always been elusive - between my childhood worries and my teenage mania, I slept very poorly, often only between the hours of three and six in the morning. As an adult, I've grabbed at every chance for sleep, every method, and nothing works quite as well as The West Wing, piped through my earbuds, a fictional world carrying me into a solid eight hours of bliss.

I know it all by heart. And over the past year, my heart has been broken.

The West Wing is emblematic of a particular American dream - a liberal America, a country of witty discourse and impassioned monologues, of legislative victories and presidential accomplishments. It's a dream of intellect, of compassion, of selflessness, of hope. And I've been leaning on that dream more and more, because the country we live in is currently too far removed from any vision of political integrity. But now, when I watch my favorite show, when I'm supposed to sleep, I feel a deep pain in my chest.

If I praise The West Wing too enthusiastically, I also acknowledge its flaws. I can't deny that its version of liberalism is incredibly white and incredibly male - there are moments which grate, jarring when confronted with a more nuanced view of politics and intersectionality. The show improves in that regard, placing women and minorities more in the forefront, but its roots are firmly in one particular brand of progressive identity. Through a critical re-watching, one can see the fault lines in liberalism - it has been, for far too long, dominated by well-meaning but ultimately self-involved white men. No wonder, I think, that so many people feel abandoned by the Democratic Party - they are not included in its representation, neither on television or in Washington, D.C.

So my heart breaks with this adult understanding - if I understand and own my privilege, I must witness the deep flaws in my political party. But my heart breaks, too, for an America which tuned in and adored the characters who lull me to sleep. For an America which valued liberalism. For the state of America, today, so ravaged by the ultimately inevitable tide of white supremacy, bigotry, ignorance, and hate personified by the monster it elected.

Donald Trump could not have been elected without the bitter vein of selfishness which holds up this country like iron ore. It is that selfishness which justifies racism, misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, Christian fundamentalism, and tax breaks for the richest among us. I've got mine, says the Trump voter, and to hell with everyone else. 

This is mirrored by the less grotesque but no less insidious selfishness of privilege - a privilege in which white skin is considered the default, when we expect to see white faces in our entertainment, when we choose to send our children to "better" schools, when the injustices faced by minorities are brushed aside, when we debate removing reproductive rights from the Democratic platform, on and on and all the ways we compromise and maintain the status quo. We are responsible, too.

We are, as we always have been, at a pivotal point in the destiny of this country. While a bumbling egomaniac threatens both the limits of sanity and nuclear war, the American people seem to be pushing for something better. Women and men are coming forward to tell the truths of abuse, asking all of us to question our actions, our histories, our own survival. We are beginning to demand answers, to ask for more accountability in our entertainment, to witness and rail against injustice. But it can't be ignored that, while we are undergoing a cultural shift, people are being removed from their homes. Black Americans are still being terrorized almost indiscriminately by the police, and too many Black men are in prison for the same business which is making white men wealthy in Colorado. Abortion is harder and harder to access, and the state of sexual education makes abortion more and more necessary.

And, yes, I have to say it again - people are being removed from their homes.  

The West Wing is defined not only by its liberalism but by the thread of Judaism which runs through the characters and narrative. Many of the protagonists are Jewish, and the legacy of the Holocaust is ever-present. When the show aired, America was on the incredible high of the more progressive 1990s, and a reality in which a president could actively, brazenly, proudly call for the rounding up of the "other" would have been unthinkable. Monstrous. And Donald Trump has made it normal. And we all die, I think, on the inside, because that glorious American dream is a revealed at last to be a lie.

I don't really know where that leaves us. I think of my favorite show as an archive, as a relic, as a fragment of a time when we aspired to be better. That's not where we live, now. We live in horror. Most of us can see it more clearly, and I can only hope that the true liberalism is a liberalism which exists to defend minorities, to defend women, to defend the other. I hope that the Democratic Party can come out and champion the people who are suffering, who have been suffering, the most.

We must be honest about privilege and how it informs the evils on both sides. The time for denial is over. We are in a moment of war - with those who hate, and with the weaknesses in ourselves. With selfishness.

I'm going to keep watching The West Wing. I need to sleep. But I'm praying, before I close my eyes, for a just world which far surpasses the fleeting beauty of a well-written series.

I'm praying for our souls. 

Fearless

How do we live in this world, a world of wonder, of pain, of delight, and not grab it with outstretched hands and a joyful heart?

As my father slipped into a quiet and lasting sleep, I read to him. I sang. I shared my poetry and recited, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," which made me think of him, on his island, at peace. I performed a monologue from Our Town. I cried. 

My father was a complicated person, and his role in my life was complicated. I have so many delicious memories of the long hours we spent talking in our little back garden on Lafayette Avenue, and memories of him crying - memories of a man of passion, recklessness, confusion, brilliance, laughter. When I was a teenager I thought that no one else could understand me with the same clear incisiveness, the same deep kinship. In the months before Dad passed away, I realized that he had shared that reckless soul with me - a soul tossed to shatter and reform on the rocky shores of life. Broken, healed, reborn.

I miss my father. I celebrate him, too.   

I've never been much good with grief. Those who have died are not aware of their absence, and those of us left behind have been charged, I think, to be glad. Glad of the memories. Glad of the gifts our loved ones have given us. I have no desire to grieve. I sometimes feel cold and heartless when faced with the pain of others, because all I want to do is shout and dance and rejoice - to think of all the wonder of our tiny lives and to celebrate how deeply we have loved. 

My father taught me many lessons. He showed me how to listen, how to examine, how to analyze. He showed me how to see the motivations and emotions which guided people, and he showed me how to turn those chaotic forces into art. He taught me to cry when my heart ached with beauty. He taught me how to laugh. 

My father lived with so much music in his head that it sometimes seemed impossible to get it all out. There are things my father left undone. When you look at such a brief life it can be too easy to think of missed opportunities - what could have or should have been. That can be a source of grief. But I think about the words my father left me with and I know that, even if he did not reach every goal, every milestone - even if times were hard, and if he failed - his intentions were valorous.

Dad posted four words on Facebook which have been echoing in my head as a final fatherly command - pursue your dreams, vigorously. Those words were the culmination of successes and failures, of joy and despair, and I hold them close. My dad might not have been able to achieve every dream, but he did something which I think even he didn't understand - he touched so many lives. He had deep friendships and fond acquaintances and provoked strong emotion in almost everyone he met. And he didn't know, maybe, that those four simple words would light a fire in his daughter's mind. He didn't know that what he did, what he said, how he lived, could be just as inspiring as his music. 

We live so much of our lives in fear. We worry about picking up the phone or listening to voicemail. We choose not to take risks. We don't know how to make or keep friends. We put off the things we desire, the true songs of our souls, because our dreams seem too far out of reach. We ignore or are ashamed of our addictions, we hide our illnesses, we pick apart our selves. We love, but guardedly. We wake up without waking.

And the world is so beautiful.     

And it exists in pain. It exists in joy. Never one without the other. 

Pursue your dreams, vigorously. 

Our time here is short - and we have no idea how long or brief our lives may be. There's no appointed hour, no real warning, when we die. And if we live our lives in fear we waste so much of that minuscule time. And, like my father, we may have little sense of the impact we have - we may not understand that our smallest actions have tremendous effects. We must be fearless. We must shout, dance, and rejoice. 

My dad was 55. He was young. He didn't do everything he wanted to do. But he did so much, and he left us with this charge to dream.

I'm going to honor that, as best as I can. I will fail. I will stumble. But I will be vigorous in the pursuit of my father's final wishes. I will be fearless.

Thank you, Dad, for everything. Your daughter loves you, and she listened.  

Living and Reliving

It's funny, the way we make patterns in our lives - the way we live with habits we think we will not break. 

My childhood was tumultuous and strange. Sometimes I tell people little details about my life, and the overwhelming response is always, you should write a book. And here, on this blog, I feel I've begun the process of constructing my own narrative - the words which build upon each other, which illustrate, which eulogize. Very few topics have been off-limits, and if my prose has been purple, it's only been in an attempt to do justice to the crazed dance which is life.

Patterns. I read over my words and they echo back at me, and themes emerge - home, faith, illness. Justice, pain, regret. And through all of these themes are the threads of how I've lived. 

Too often, we place upon ourselves the burden of the past. We carry it with us. All the hurt and trauma, the joy and passion, the moments we remember gladly and those which we long to forget. Within us lie snapshots and vignettes of our families, our friends, our selves, a handful of days which stay with us and make us who we are. As I read my own words - an exercise in vanity, without a doubt - I notice those memories and realize that I've been reliving them. 

Trauma is like living in the past, over and over, not just remembering it but experiencing it anew. And I think a lot of life is like that, not just the difficult bits. Many memories are enriched by that reliving - my sister's birth is made more poignant by the years I've been lucky enough to know her. My relationship with my mother is more glorious because I live in the moments when we were on our own, and I rejoice in the ensuing years of adult friendship. 

But some memories become habits - worry stones we turn over and over between our fingers. We return to them, we cherish them, they lie like quiet waters within us. They are there when we are lonely and scared, and they are familiar, our childhood blankets worn thin and filthy. 

I've read the old blog posts, the old facebook memories, and in so many of them I write about drinking. 

Alcohol has been a constant in my life, from cocktail parties I attended as a child to teenage gatherings to gourmet cookouts to afternoons on the deck. And why not? Alcohol is everywhere. Costly advertisements during the Super Bowl show thin, attractive people working out, busting their butts over weights and interval training, and then rewarding themselves with beer. Another commercial shows a young man who doesn't even want to drink but who is urged by the spectral force of fear of missing out to grab a case and party with friends.

Women are encouraged to drink. We're told by memes, by jokes, that we deserve to drink - that all our work as single women or wives or mothers or professionals requires a bottle of wine at the end of the day. Drinking, the world seems to say, isn't just for the boys any more. There's so much out there for the woman who does everything - chocolate wine, birthday cake vodka, cosmos and margaritas. And we cool, tough girls get to drink the real stuff - bourbon, rye, whiskey - and smile through the burn as men congratulate us on our assimilation into a drinking culture which has elevated toxic masculinity and made it sexy.

And there's nothing wrong with drinking. But these messages with which we are constantly bombarded are bits of that tattered security blanket. Drink to feel good, to relax, to hide, to smile. Drink because everyone drinks. Drink because your parents drink. Drink because, what else is there to do, really?

Breweries, vineyards, upscale liquor stores; fun runs with a plastic cup of cold relief as a prize. Sexy twenty-somethings and craft cocktails, college students and beer pong, weddings, birthday parties, brunch. 

Five months ago I stopped drinking entirely. Personal reasons, medical reasons, any reason. 

Alcohol has been a theme running through my life, through my writing. It's been a companion, a signal of creativity and la vie boheme. I've been the cool girl and the classy girl - mixed drinks with homemade syrups and cold beers savored on hot days. And I never knew how wonderful life could be without it.

Life is so good. 

I'm thirty years old. I carried around my security blanket, I shouldered all the memories and the habits and the curses of my forbears, I believed the commercials and I laughed at the jokes. And I realized, slowly but inevitably, that I didn't want to do that any more. I didn't want the comfort of a lie. And I was lucky in that I stopped and could stop and wanted to stop. 

Everyone should do what is right for them. I'm never going to judge anyone else's consumption. If you, dear reader, enjoy drinking and feel good doing it, then great! All I know is that my life has improved, and that I've been able to discard the remnants of so many hurts, so many moments, a handful of desperate days. Choosing to abstain in our alcohol-worshiping culture may seem almost perverse - but abstinence can be the gateway to healing.

In five months I've done more healing than I had in ten years. Here's to today, and tomorrow, and every moment I choose not to relive, but to truly live. 

Cheers.  

          

Gagged

I haven't had a lot to say.

Every day we wake up to a new horror. America is in the firm and maniacal grip of a callous and dangerous madness, the madness of nationalism and deceit, of vanity and the vainglorious, of hatred, of cruelty, of ignorance. And the horror is compounded again and again by the knowledge that it will all get so much worse. Today, we hear the words of this country's demise through executive orders. Tomorrow, these usurping tyrants go to work.

Every promise will be fulfilled.

I don't know what to say. I scroll through my Facebook feed, through twitter, and I read powerful statements of protest alongside the shocking actions of our Republican administration. Resistance is present, through marches, through protests, through discord and disagreement, and I sit, comfortable in my home, and observe.

I've always carefully curated my online presence, revealing mostly the mundane and the pleasant on Facebook. Recipes, snapshots, evidence of contentment. I've been a bit more honest here, but Facebook has been the land of the smiling Alice, the nice Alice, the Alice with very few ugly things to say. I've felt it to be an exercise in propriety, almost - a new kind of facade which shows some, but not all, as if I allow a flash of ankle under long skirts but no more.

Niceness. I fight myself, I hold back all the things which I could say. Sometimes that is wise - but now, more than ever, it is a shallow and selfish lie.

Niceness is feminine. Niceness is proper. Niceness is polite.

When millions of women across the world marched on January 21st, they were criticized for abandoning the rituals of niceness. Nice faces turned away from what they perceived as vulgarity. Reproductive organs, and any reference to them, have been criminalized, codified as disgusting or inappropriate, constrained by law and by the common American tongue. To say, pussy, is to betray our national niceness. To grab it is celebrated and rewarded.

When a woman owns her body she is shamed. When a man assaults it, he is made president.

Niceness. I have a few friends who openly support this president, and I may have others who voted for him but stay silent. Most of my friends and family number among the majority of the country who bravely say, resist. I've been struggling against my self-imposed but socially sanctioned rules of propriety, trying to find a way to stay true to myself but avoid offence. What of those friends who voted in a monster? How can I keep them?

Or were they never my friends at all?

Do I want friends like that?

Do I want to be friendly with people who would imprison the children in my neighborhood, as Donald Trump wishes to do with immigrants? Do I want to maintain my smile, my affection, as my closest friends and family are denied equal rights? How valuable is niceness in the face of climate change and the very real possibility that we are past the point of no return? Will one or two friendships outweigh the loss of everything this country is supposed to be about? Will quiet chats and quick waves justify knowing that these people, these friends, are willing to hand our country over to a sexual predator?

Am I still supposed to be nice?

Niceness is a convenient tool. It is a gag. It binds us - it binds women most of all. We are told to be pleasant, to be neat, to be quiet and calm and dignified. We are told to smile. And if we step out of line, if we curse, if we name our body parts, if we yell in the street and demand representation, we are labeled as vulgar, crass, unladylike, nasty. Society brands us as hysterical, again and again.

Niceness is not in any way what we need right now. Gentility and reserve are the costumes for afternoon tea, not for rebellion. I'm scared to rip the layers of niceness from my online and real life persona, because everything I feel right now is so, so not nice. I am angry and bitter and restless. I cry and yell and curse. I find myself contemplating a volcanic release of the defiance I have stored within my body and brain. What destruction will I unleash? What bridges will I burn? How many nice people will I enrage?

To remain nice is to take the coward's way out. I have the luxury of a safe home, a stable life, and I could sit here for the next four years and be nice. I could make tea and be silent. I could be ladylike. It would be easy.

But that life is for someone else.

To hell with niceness. I am relieved, I am grateful, and I am determined to be nasty.

Day Two

By now, I assume - I hope - you have seen some of the immediate fallout of the election. Black and Latinx Americans are targeted for violence and hate speech. Women are being groped by gleeful men who assume that sexual assault plays a role in making America great. Muslim women are terrorized for their constitutionally protected expressions of faith. LGBT+ citizens waken to new uncertainty, bigotry, and fear. Buildings are vandalized - and we see the return of the swastika in public symbolism; we see bald faced antisemitism which too many of us pretended no longer exists.

I hope you have also seen protest. I hope you have seen that groups like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are accepting donations and vowing to continue the fight for decency and justice. I hope you are girding your loins for a long and righteous struggle for a better America, one unstained by hate.

But that which troubles me today is the tide of well-meaning words, the praise of positive thinking - pleasant on its surface but hiding an unwillingness to see our not-so-new reality.

I have a grudge against positive thinking, both personal and political. Having a mental illness basically guarantees that someone - a friend, a family member, a mentor - tells you that positive thinking is your savior and cure, something other than paltry palliative care against what is sometimes a fatal condition. Mental illness is too often misunderstood as a weakness of will, and stock responses to real suffering concern themselves with how a change of mindset is surely the cure. Addiction, too, falls prey to that school of thought, as if struggling with addiction were only feeling a bit blue, a bit angry, a bit down in the dumps, a bit weak.

Surely, positive thinking can fix this! And then those friends, family members, and mentors let their eyes turn away from pain they are unwilling to face.  

I've seen that nonsense happen in response to the tragedies of our nation. Well-meaning white people seem to think that Black Americans just need to forget the systematic oppression which is the cornerstone of our national identity and infrastructure. It's insidious and it's easy; it's simple to sit in front of our televisions and look at righteously angry people and say, in the nicest terms, get over it. As we wake up on the second day after the election, I see more of the same, and the guise of willful ignorance is often a beautiful image - a sunset, an animal, our flag - over which is written, we must be positive.

No, we must not.

There is positive thinking and then there is determination, and the difference between the two is immense. By telling others to be positive, we ignore their pain. Would you dare look into the eyes of a woman who has been assaulted and tell her to think happy thoughts? Would you be able to live with yourself as you stood over a Black woman who was beaten and spit upon and say, kindly, get over it? Can you look at your LGBT+ friends and know that this country just elected men who believe in abuse, in electrocution, to force a change their identity, and ask them to be positive?

If you can really do that, if you can ignore the truth, you have a strength of will I cannot imagine. But it is not a strength of character or morality or honesty. It is a strength in a willingness to unsee other people's very real and justifiable suffering.

And we are all, in some ways, suffering. I am angry here, and I understand that is uncomfortable. Perhaps we use positive thinking to hide our feelings not from others, but from ourselves. Perhaps we don't have the words to express our fears. Perhaps years of our culture trivializing mental illness have stopped us from developing the kind of skills I have had to learn in therapy - self-care, self-reflection, self-criticism. Honesty. Grief. Compassion. Maybe we use positive thinking to hide from how we feel and who we are.

But it is a gross injustice. We have a responsibility as citizens and as human beings to look into the experiences of our neighbors, friends, family. We cannot be blind, not anymore, and we must see the truth now more than ever. Tuesday thrust upon us a new duty, not to be positive, but to be determined.

We must be stronger, and that means changing the way we think, speak, and act.

I have sympathy for the moments of mourning which accompany a radical shift in the way we perceive the world. This election feels like a betrayal of a great institution, a democratic experiment, a home. But we're not going to fix it unless we get angry, get ugly, get - dare I say it - negative. We should be downright pissed off at how much and how often we have been deceived.

As a woman with a mental illness, I am telling you that we will get better, but that the only way to do it is to be honest. We hurt. We have seen others hurt. Our nation has been hurting for a long, long time.

It's time to face the truth, not with palliatives, but with determination.

We must face our pain if we want to survive.

Do Better

Many years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled, "Shame." Struggling with my bipolar disorder and my place in the world as a young woman with a mental illness, I typed out a few words on the nature of shame, the nature of being atypical in a world which, it seemed, valued conformity above all else.

I am no longer beholden to that shame, to the feeling that I don't fit in, to the misfiring neurons and the long nights of panic and mania and inspiration. I wrote, and I spoke, and I let that shame go. 

But we, as a country, as a stunted conglomeration of bigotry and beauty, of fear and faith, of hatred and hope, should be deeply ashamed today. We should mourn - mourn not only the results of our democratic process, but our very selves. 

It's difficult to take responsibility for actions and events we abhor, terribly hard to admit complicity when disgust wins. I wish I could deny any wrongdoing - after all, my politics are based on inclusion, on love, on justice, on peace - and simply hate those who step up and claim their ugliness with pride. I wish I could only be angry with that half of the country which elected a monster endorsed by modern Nazis and the Klansmen we all pretend don't exist. 

But to do so would lack honesty, because this is our country. This is the way we live. We created and venerated the smiling lies of freedom and blind patriotism, and we have benefited from them. 

Complacency, privilege, and fear won the day. This is America.

We are a country built metaphorically and literally on the graves of Native Americans, on the backs of slaves, on the continued disenfranchisement of minorities. We are built on an educational system which consistently benefits the privileged and fails the poor - and fails all of us as textbooks teach more smiling lies about the glorious American past. We are a country which allows so-called Christian evangelism in our classrooms, in our government, in our healthcare, and in our bedrooms. We are a country of dogmatic belief, a country of preachers and politicians who worship the dollar, worship power, more than they do any loving God. 

We attempt to balance our shameful history with the light of civilization and civility, and in some ways, we succeed. The world is better than it was. But the progress we have made - more women in government, more minority representatives, gay marriage, (supposed) access to healthcare and abortion services - seems hollow and insincere when confronted with the truth that half of Americans want to take all of that away. The progress is necessary, the progress is important, and too many Americans hate it. 

Today we witness the reaction of white America to a changing world. And if you, like me, have been given the gift of racial and economic privilege, you have been yet another cog in a capitalist, revisionist, and eternally hungry machine. Political pundits frame this election as a rejection of the status quo; the horrible truth is that this day of sorrow is a return to America's birth. Complacency, privilege, and fear. Freedom for white men and women at the expense of so many others.

I did not cause these things. You, my readers, did not bring these events forth. We are not entirely to blame. But any time we accepted an unjust death, when we changed the channel as protests occupied our streets, when we listened to an off-color joke, when we allowed our children to succeed while others failed, when we separated ourselves from those who suffer - we played into a long history of shameful atrocities and set the stage for today. 

This post is not an epitaph. My sentiments are grim - they are not final. I do have hope. This country must improve, and it will improve when all of us together stand up and say, enough. Enough of this legacy of slavery and genocide; enough of a system which allows widespread injustice and incarceration; enough murdered Black men and women, transwomen; enough bigotry and hate. Let us not allow one more moment of pain and stupidity and disgust. Let us rise up and say honestly, we want a better world.  

Let's not pretend for one more second that we don't see where we fail. We must look into our selves and do better. 

Today we grieve. Tomorrow, we change. We wake up and we say, this is not my America. 

My America is going to be better.