Hi y’all,
If you're rejoining us from last week, I have unfortunate news for you. Unlike last week’s show & tell installment here on the blog, this week will take a much more serious twist, if the title weren't indicative enough of that. I have had a lot of people reaching out in the last week, specifically asking me when new music is coming out & I feel that I need to fill you in on what my life has looked like & why there has been a bit musical gap in my catalog. A lot of that will have to do with my current mental state as well as the goings on of the world, specifically here in The US. I know a lot of you who actually need to read this blog won’t do so because it may seen hyperbolic, incendiary, inflammatory, farfetched, catastrophizing, ludicrous, or otherwise conflict with something you believe or are just blatantly ignoring. I will let you know that I am not here to pull punches. I’m here to be honest, to write the truth of everything happening & how it is making me feel.
Let me start by addressing the music question. As a fee of you may also have noticed, these blog entries have gotten somewhat inconsistent. That’s not intentional, but it does also tie into the lack of music. You see I have been so stressed out, so anxious, so angry, frustrated, & over encumbered that it has caused me to enter into what basically equates to a state of paralysis most days. My creativity has flown the coop & my body is in a constant state of flight or fight wrestling between maintaining the most pedestrian of states or packing up & selling everything I can to GTFO out of this rotting, bloated whale of a country before it collapses in on me. I am so anxious most days that all I can do to not slide into a full on panic attack is just go numb, do nothing, distract myself any way I can. I literally wake up most days after sleeping through all of my alarms to do my best to make it through the day without booking one way tickets to anywhere & leaving my house to fall to ruin. I go to bed & I have to find something to lull my mind outside of itself for long enough to allow me to finally fall asleep. Typically, from the time I get into bed, to the time I fall asleep, this ends up being about four hours. Additionally, my body wakes me up every thirty minutes to an hour in a panic until Evan wakes up for work & I am able to sleep through knowing full well if something happened he’d come wake me up. It’s exhausting & it’s a horrible way to live if I’m being honest, but that’s how fascism works.
They want us so bogged down with all of the harm that they’re doing to everyone that it overwhelms us. They want us to be in a panic, like a deer in the headlights, not knowing which way to run off for safety. Fascism thrives on it. So, alas, here I am.
I am a queer, chronically depressed, neurodivergent leftist living in a deep red state. In fact, the red state that was just rated to have the lowest quality of life of anywhere in the country. We beat Alabama this year, nuts. I know that I have three things working in my favor at the moment: I’m caucasian, I’m a man, & I have financial resources available to me, but that does very little to placate my fears, & yes, they are fears.
This current administration continues to denigrate & strip the citizens of this country of the fundamental things a government is meant to provide for its people while also vilifying anyone who they deem lesser amongst their constant barrage of misinformation, disinformation, & outright propaganda. They have striped this country of its checks & balances & continue to do so further with every passing day it seems. They’re outright opening concentration camps, which some of you are way too chill with, & send innocent people to their death either through deportation, malnutrition, or starvation all under the banner of “christian values.” It disgusts me & what disgusts me further is the amount of you I know personally that are okay with all of this or at the bare minimum, passive to it. Your passivity is your support. It is abundantly clear what side of history you stand on & unfortunately, I feel it has ruined my ability to respect or trust any of you ever again. You truly should be ashamed of yourselves. God knows I’m ashamed of you.
So that leads us to the anger, which if you haven’t guessed, we’re deep within.
I loathe being an angry, hateful person. It feels like poison to the soul for me, but I can’t escape it & I can’t channel it at the largest, most responsible targets out there, so I am forced to funnel it down into those I know who are complicit in all of this, those who I know voted for this. Those who, despite the horrible things done from 2016-2020, or the continuous stream of lies, slander, divisive politics, & hate, still supported it in 2020 & 2024. I live in cold fury for all of you.
My entire family voted for Trump, My entire family. I’ll announce that, because at the end of all of this, when the damage has been done & we revert away from the authoritarian bullshit, because it’s not sustainable, everyone will deny they had any involvement in it or support of it. My family, who has a son/brother/nephew/grandchild/cousin/etc in a same sex relationship, who profess to love the teachings of Jesus, all voted for a man who actively seeks to do Evan & I harm & all the other people they claim to “love” behind the mask of christianity all voted for one of the most hateful, deceptive candidates in the written history of the globe & still to this day don’t seem to understand why I take issue with that. They don’t understand why it has strained our relationships, why I go on the defense or shut down around them, why I avoided going back to see them as long as I could, why every part of me wants to leave all of this behind & find a corner of the world where people actually care about one another & don’t actively do things to harm those they claim to love. I resent them & I hate that I resent them, but I do, because they go on living their lives like nothing is wrong. Like this is just another presidential cycle & all of this will be undone in four years when in reality people are dying, losing their rights, & being shipped God knows where because of it.
I also have the benefit of education &, honestly, nuerodivergence. I am an expert at pattern recognition & had to take a course at University all about the rise of Nazi Germany, the fall, & the denial of the Holocaust. It’s the second most failed course at Belmont University. Our professor required us to go through the text book at least three times, annotating in different colors each time we did. We are deep in the trenches y’all. But none of it matters. I’m just the squeaky liberal wheel of the family who, for the longest time, they came to with questions about politics. Why? Because I was insanely well versed in them. I could tell you who voted which way on what bill, what’s in the bill, who’s up for reelection, etc., etc., etc.. It didn't matter, because it doesn’t match a narrative. So now, as I reach out for help, trying to impress how much I want to leave this country for mine & Evan’s safety, I get shrugged off. The topic gets changed. My understanding, my expertise, all of the red flags, & the fears amount to nothing because it doesn't support the narrative.
I have friends who I no longer speak with, because I can’t. How can I be friends with someone who is in favor of any of this? From a moral perspective, how? You & I are not aligned as human beings on what a basic human right is & I no longer wish to extend the privilege of my friendship to you because you can’t even do the bare minimum of extending the courtesy of a vote to me. Why would I want you to be a part of my life?
So yes, I’m angry. & I know this is a bit of me airing my dirty laundry on the internet but I can’t keep going on pretending like everything, myself included, is okay. I am exhausted: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually exhausted, because how could I not be? It doesn’t help either that I have to be the one of Evan & I to consistently keep the foot on the gas of us getting our life in order to move when all he wants to do is slam on the brakes. I know it’s out of fear, because it is scary. How do you leave behind everything & everyone you’ve ever known? I get it. Trust me, I’m scared too (see paragraphs about anxiety above). But if no one does anything than nothing gets done & we end up stuck in a place that wants to see us dead. Every survival coded cell in my body is screaming at me to run & instead I sit here renovating my office or doing dishes.
I’m sorry about this post. I really am. I’m sorry because it’s a lot & it’s very personal & it’s not bright & shiny & hopeful. I’m sure this post is going to offend some people, in fact I guarantee it & I’m sure I’ll be fighting the fires I’ve started here all week long but I’m so tired. I’m so tired of pretending I’m okay to the outside world, or that this is a normal way to behave towards the people you profess to love. I’m tired of all the rug sweeping & the playing nice just to save face when inside I feel like I’m literally being ripped apart. I am hurt & maybe this is me lashing out, but I can’t begin to heal if I keep trying to ignore the wound that is festering within me.
Genuinely wishing authentic, nonjudgemental, thoughtful love to you all,
-C