The world is falling apart and I don’t know how to keep doing the same things over and over.

This isn’t just a sentiment from me, but from every single person I see around me.

It isn’t just about the supreme court bullshit that has ripped this country to hell, but it’s also everything else going on around us at all times. We’re still very much in the middle of a pandemic, a pandemic that isn’t just making people sick, it’s also killing them. If it isn’t killing them, it’s causing long-term disabilities that we’re only just beginning to understand.

Looking around and seeing that the majority of people don’t want to wear a mask indoors, let alone get vaccinated, let alone allow for people who might become pregnant to be allowed a decision of autonomy over their own bodies. The rights of people who can become pregnant are being ripped away, but that isn’t new.

What also isn’t new is the rights of trans folks being absolutely demolished as well. It’s all for the same reason – for the kids.

Save the children. Right? It’s for them.

It sucks and there’s no way around that. This sucks and we’re supposed to just function like normal. The supreme court ruling on Roe v Wade isn’t the final straw, it’s been hard, it’s been awful, and it’s been this way for BIPOC individuals, especially women, especially trans women, for a long time. We didn’t wake up in a sudden dystopia on Friday, June 24th, we’ve been there.

This isn’t some feel-good, don’t lose hope post. Granted, I am begging you not to lose hope and not to give up, please for the love of god don’t give up.

I’m fucking angry. And I’m not just angry about one thing or another, I’m angry that this is life for so many of us right now, and that it’s been that way. Being poor, being working class, being non-white, being a woman, being trans, being anything that isn’t a cis white person in this country isn’t really safe and it hasn’t ever been.

I’m not angry because something bad happened. I’m angry because bad things keep happening and the rhetoric is to vote in order to save ourselves from something that the people we’ve already voted into office were supposed to take care of. Why is the answer to tell us to do something we’ve been doing and have no intention not to do? Why is the answer to tell us essentially that we’ve done something wrong when gerrymandering and the electoral college exist to make so many votes matter less.

What do I do? How do I keep hope alive? How do I keep this up when the people around me are barely holding on? When my entire life has been barely holding on, how am I supposed to rally and keep it up?

How am I supposed to make art, and to pay rent, and to stay hopeful? How?

Somebody, please tell me how. And if the answer is “you just do” then I don’t want to hear it, because it’s not good enough anymore. Just because isn’t a good enough reason for this anymore. It hasn’t been good enough for a very long time. I’m tired, and I think so many of us deserve better than this.