I woke up late in the day, relying on my trusty drug store brand NyQuil knock off to keep my cold symptoms in check enough for me to get some healing sleep. I wipe the sleep dust from my eyes and roll over to grab my water bottle. The puggyman stirs in his slumber until he hears the click of my water bottle and then jumps up and into a downward dog stretch supreme. I say, “Oh good boy! Stretch it out!” in my scratchy-sick-just-woke-up voice. He leaps off the bed and goes into a stretch again as I pull on my robe and shuffle my slippers onto my feet. I go to the bathroom and return to my bed to grab my phone, glasses, kleenex and daytime cold medicine.

I grab an iced coffee from my fridge and set it beside my laptop. I open the laptop and it instantly flicks on (I love my chromebook!) and is ready for whatever task I give it. I check my email in a couple of accounts and notice a flood of spam hit my blog last night, I wonder why but move on. I open a tab to check facebook for messages or comments I may have missed. Always prefer to have it sorted to “most recent” for my feed over their “top stories” option but for some reason it doesn’t always stick. Today it didn’t and I was met with a harrowing image of police and guns at the top of my feed. “Mass shooting in California” my heart drops into my stomach. My throat begins to tighten. I click the link for the CNN story coverage but mute/pause all video, I know I can’t handle that shit yet. I read the updates on the page to find that the shooters used assault rifles and ak-47’s, they shot up a care center for the developmentally challenged and that they drove off in a black SUV. “White men!” my brain screams at me.

I close the tab and return to facebook, hoping for something positive in my feed to distract me from the tension I feel building inside of me. Cute hamster eating a carrot inside a blanket. So cute, but it doesn’t touch the sick-dark-hateful feelings in my guts. “UK okays airstrikes in Syria.” I scroll further into my feed. I feel my breaths shorten and push my laptop away for a minute to ground myself, to even out my breaths and hopefully loosen some of this tension. Nope. I stand up, as hard as it is with every muscle and joint in my body aching from this stupid cold. I tell myself to do power poses to trick my brain into not feeling like dying (science!). I do the Olympic gymnast landing pose, the wonder woman pose, the superman pose. Nothing is working and I feel dizzy now from the daytime cold meds. I worry about a panic attack coming on from this.

I see my bff pops up in my chats on the right of my screen as “online” and I hit her up with a, “hey” and we chat briefly about this feeling of being overwhelmed. She was about to suggest the power poses but I tell her I just did them. It’s all too much. The guns. The white men destroying our world with no one to take away their power or at the very least their guns. Nothing feels real, it just can’t be real, all that is happening in the world RIGHT NOW! Another shooting. Floods killing thousands. Powers that be twiddling their thumbs, blaming anyone but themselves, thinly veiled excitement in their eyes as their money keeps them and only them warm at night. I wonder what the point in anything is. I take a deep breath and remind myself that am real, I am loved, pugs exist and my little puggo is here and loves me unconditionally.

I finish my breakfast of toasted crumpets with Irish butter and cookie butter (from Trader Joe’s) and finish my coffee. My head is now pounding. Can I take Advil with the Sudafed? Best not. Maybe just water and more coffee for now for the headache. Political parties no longer matter when they’re all bought and sold and wrapped up in a bow of wealth and privilege. I worry to much and too hard. I put on Pandora in the hopes that music will soothe the savage beast that is this growing anxiety in me. Please, let’s not have a panic attack today, I say in my head. I open the dashboard for my blog to investigate the deluge of spam comments and find that they all have similar email addresses and time stamps and dump them into the abyss (that’s where spam goes, yes?) for good. I open a blank new post document. I think to myself that I never did upload the pics and things I’d wanted to from Halloween and how I’d meant to update before now.

Life. It’s too precious and yet too much all at once. Another shooting just reported in Houston, Texas at a women’s clinic. It feels very unsafe to exist in this world unless you are white, cis-gendered, heterosexual and male. My stomach flips over onto itself. My mind flashes back to the difficult time I had at the grocery store last night when I finally ventured out for supplies using every ounce of energy I had left in me and collapsed in tears when I finally returned home. The looks from people as we crossed paths in the produce section. The older white man that gave me hard eye contact until I looked away and dropped my head down. I hated that moment and myself for doing what felt like exactly what this stranger wanted. The hot guy that gave me three passing glances in different departments of the store as my imagination danced with sultry images of he and I and a thing ensuing. “As if!” I tell myself.

Everything is too much! Everything hurts, I know I’m sick but I’m overwhelmed with all it’s doing to my body. I haven’t been sick in over a year, surprisingly. I never imagined I would be out of work for this long. This frightens me so. Going into December without a job, realizing that I have been out of work more months than I have been working this past year brings the tightness back to my throat. “My problems are small compared to folks losing and risking their lives everyday”, I tell myself over and over. I take a deep breath in gratitude for the few privileges I am afforded by my state’s unemployment benefits program and knowing that my new covered California health insurance will kick in soon. I look at my sleeping puggyman, breathing in and out again to match his.

What does it mean to be a fat, cis-gendered, bi-sexual, mentally ill, unemployed female? It means living in fear. I have not known a single moment without at least a trace of fear. It sits deep down within my core. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t create it, no more than I created my mental illnesses or the disgusting elitist culture that has overtaken the bay area where I live. I have been displaced, but back to where I came from, only it’s not my home. My home is in the hearts of those I Love. My home is spread far and wide across this incredible planet. I see very clearly the very thing that is destroying our world and it is the very thing that is waging war everywhere and every day. White men in power unchecked and unaccountable. As long as this is so, our world will be destroyed. I don’t know what the answer or solution is. We’ve seen enough death and destruction. Some have said the only solution is love. How do you love what would choose to kill you with their bare hands? How do you find that love to give warmongers? I can’t find it. I am not strong enough. I want to believe that good will prevail, but the hate is too deep, the money and power too great. I feel defeated.

Truthfully, I feel too much. That could be said of me any day, but today it’s left me shaking and gasping and tearfully pleading into the universe for humanity to save itself before it burns this planet to the ground. I am too weak to leave the house today, but I am almost grateful for that. I don’t have it in me to meet the eyes of a stranger and not fall into a puddle of tears before them. The things I have survived were horrific, but I was so young. Seeing these things play out in the world now? It’s more than I can handle. That in itself must be a privilege. I am humbled and I am in awe of those who fight on each day without ever looking back. My spirit is with you! Fight on!

<3
S