May 20, 2025.

I read an article about another round of dismembered Palestinian babies before I watched a bee bumble from flower to flower. She doesn’t know what a credit score is, she doesn’t have debt or worry about losing her rights as a woman.

I read about the Christian white nationalist group behind project 2025 and felt my heart race as I imagined myself in a real-life Gilead scenario.

Colonies or the wall for me for sure .

I smoke too many cigarettes and hate men too much to be a handmaid.

I saw a Robin catch a worm, a frog or salamander shuffle into the grass as I watched the rain hit the water in the marshlands beside my office.

The reality and duality of life in 2025 is a constant source of whiplash.

I focus on my stupid little tasks but worry that I’m becoming one of those complacent idiots, blissfully unaware until They literally and figuratively come for me too, as the story goes.

The guilt from being happy in such a horrific time in American history is intense. I spent the last 5 years in Idaho wanting to rearrange my brains and now I listen to the beach, the birds, and the state pays me to aide campers in the forest.

I have empathy and patience for republicans now. I understand the need to come together and find community with anyone willing to trade resources in the Worst Case Scenario. I don’t care what they believe anymore as long as they believe in collective survival.

And this isn’t some bullshit to convince you to do or feel the same, it’s just a check-in with my own current mentality and ever changing understanding of the world.

I need to know that people are good. I won’t tell them I told you so, I will only remind them that we have more in common than we know.

Maybe it’s my pathetic optimism, but I still see the good. I still have hope and feel close to the people around me.