Down

I have to see my Mom. She’s my best friend and she isn’t here. She has not been here for months.

It is crippling my imagination. It makes it sometimes impossible to even think of what I want to write let alone sit with my erasable pen and my notebook, pick a topic and write. I have pieces that I have not published.

What I really want to do is save up money to sign up for that Master Class app/site. I want to listen and watch Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood and absorb everything they have to teach me. This is honestly what I want more than anything.

I did fall off my diet, but I have been steering more into the healthy eating lane. I am trying to make it so that one day a week I get a cheat day. I am training my body to like healthy foods and more protein so that I can cleanse the sugar I eat from my cheat day. I am so used to having a treat every day. I let myself have fast food once a month.

The last fast food I had was Arby’s. I had a crispy chicken sandwich with curly fries, a cherry turnover, one of each of their cookies, and a Sprite. It was wonderful. I think the next time I get to have my fast food day (February 8th) I will get the same only both kinds of turnovers along with the cookies. I will share with my daughter some of it because I really can’t eat all of that myself. (Don’t worry, she only gets fast food the same day I get fast food.)

I have not been exercising either. I am going to change that tomorrow. I have a new machine I can use to help me work out at home.

I need to be as healthy as I can be for my sanity.

Mom is back in the hospital.

Pneumonia. Again.

I’m going to write about it here.

Everything I am going through with my Mom being put into a nursing home. I think it will be therapeutic and might spark discussions. It will be a good thing and hopefully I will start making enough money from this blog to have another supplemental income.

I’m going to call it “My New Normal”, because that’s what it is.

I’m going to let myself process this during the weekend and then I need to start planning.

You will be along for the ride.

My mom is going to a nursing home.

I tried so hard to keep her out of one. We all did.

I feel like I lost my best friend.

Patience is a Virtue

I see people who have it better than I do but do not work a fraction of how hard I work.

My jealousy gets to me sometimes.

I internalize it because I know that although things are rough right now, a peak will soon come.

It is when I feel most jealous that I keep my words to myself.

I could bitch and moan about all of the trauma that I have been forced to deal with. There is some trauma I will be affected by for years to come, probably until I die.

So I take pleasure in the little things. I ride my own melt. Life is in the details. Life is in Hemingway’s six word story.

Small things that go unnoticed are not by default weak. It is the silence where things happen. Loud noises, loud words, loud deeds are often the most empty.

America IS divided: So What Now?

I think it’s safe to say that white supremacy in America has been more out in the open than it has been since the civil right’s movement, only it is now worse thanks to the internet.

Activism against racism is rising to the surface more than ever, thanks to the internet as well.

Where I live, it is a really bad idea to be white and wandering around suburbs late at night by yourself, and it is a much much worse idea to be white and wandering around the apartment complexes in my town. My Dad says it may be gang affiliated, which is a good guess, but it could also be a matter of argument over CI drugs (CI drugs, class one drugs, are “street drugs”). If you are caught by an officer in possession or are in the company of someone possessing them, you go straight to jail.

Last night my Dad told me that a second double homicide was committed a few blocks away from us. Just like the last shooting we had.

Most of the people who are in gangs and are drug dealers are people of color. It is a fact that I am sick to my stomach to say, but it is the truth, and it breaks my heart.

If I ever am held at gun point in my life where I live, I wouldn’t be upset because of the gun pointed at me. I would be upset because the person pointing it would most likely be a person of color trying to get rid of a witness, and that breaks my heart.

Every single time something like this happens near me it breaks my heart. I grew up around here. There are just as many POC as there are white people. That could mean that the person pointing the gun not only might likely be a POC, but somebody I could have grown up with.

That thought doesn’t just break my heart, but shatters it into a million pieces. Over and over again, every time that thought crosses my mind.

Watching people of color destroy each other is the most heartbreaking thing I have ever had to deal with in my life.

It is so painful as a white ally standing against racism, because using your voice while your throat is completely choked up with tears is more difficult than any POC will ever know. Even when I put in the work day to day, stuff like this still happens in a neighborhood like mine.

It affects my mental health.

White people say to me the same old thing over and over: “Don’t talk about racism if it’s going to make you upset every time. Stop trying to be the poster boy/girl for self-righteous indignation. Accept the things you cannot control”.

White people stopping their activism when they realize how dangerous it can be to be a true white ally is the reason the racism keeps happening. Just like men stopping their activism against accused sexual predators when people see the danger or drama you could put yourself in by being a male ally IS WHY IT KEEPS HAPPENING.

Have the balls to amplify your cause regardless of who tries to silence you. The more they try to keep you silent, the closer you get to actual change.

You have to build a very thick skin, but the rewards of growing it are more than worth it. Remind yourself of that the next time you feel your back is against the wall when you have an instinct telling you that you should be the one who finally says something because obviously nobody else will.

Be brave. The rewards of bravery are worth their weight in gold.