I sit here in the unusual, Chicago, November 70 degree sunshine; on my lanai with my cat and cup of coffee and for the first time, in a long time, I feel relief. I have encountered too many obstacles in my life that smacked me back into a dark pit where I waited and waited for the light to come again. And each time I was forced to do this, I had to retell myself that light DOES actually come. No really, it does. And no matter how many times that has been proven to me, I still regress to disbelief whilst going through whatever new shitstorm life throws at me. I blame that on my mother who sucked almost all of the positivity out of my body when I was in single digits. So now I sit here and finally, there’s the light again! No, seriously, it’s really the light again. And I feel so good. It’s like a brick layer of fear has been lifted off of my chest. I feel lighter and I can breathe again.
Just having this one bit of life turn in a positive way has given me hope about the possibilities of what’s to come for us. No, Joe Biden ain’t gonna guarantee me or my husband a job, but we can concentrate better on finding one when we’re not worrying that a diseased, petulant toddler is carrying around the nuclear football. Everything that has been dumped on us this year, feels like it happened 800 hundred years ago or 2 seconds ago. There was really no time to let ourselves dwell on being negative or even dwell on what was going on because there was no time in between crises. But we are lucky. We have medical benefits. We own our home and we aren’t worried about paying the mortgage and we can put food on the table. There are millions of Americans on BOTH sides of the aisle who cant. Joe Biden may not be the messiah/magician to fix everything wrong with this country, but I have FAITH that he’s gonna do his best to get this pandemic under control. He’s not gonna withhold relief from states in this country because he’s holding a grudge. He’s not going to go golfing or get in Twitter fights while 240,000 people die in America. I believe he’s gonna give relief to EVERYONE.
Yes, I am a die hard democrat. I was born that way. My mother may have been a negative, bitter, self-esteem crushing little pill, but she was a die hard Democrat and she instilled within us from birth the importance of voting. The first election I can remember staying up late to watch, was when Jimmy Carter won. We were wearing “Carter Flair” peanut necklaces that my mom got us and we watched returns as a family. My dad too. I’m thankful he died before Trump was even a possibility for president. My mother, on the other hand, lived to see it and then spent the last years of her life locked in her apartment glued to MSNBC absorbing every awful news story after news story. She ABHORED Trump. My mother worked for the Jesse Jackson Campaign and she and my sister canvassed for him. When the thought of a black candidate was still “progressive” and the VERY White suburb of Pittsburgh we lived in looked at her like she was crazy. Probably the only thing that my mother and I could talk about before she died was politics. I know she loved Joe Biden since he entered the senate and I know she would be very emotional about Kamala. This would’ve perhaps actually been a day she let herself be happy. Because of my mom, I grew up thinking that a woman could do anything because she always told us that we could. Unfortunately, she also told me to start smoking cigarettes in order to lose weight before my first wedding. So… Yin Yang.
I’m learning to find the positive. I’m still fighting the negative. I still wait for the other shoe to drop. But today I breathe easier. I don’t have to take extra anxiety meds. I actually WANT to get out bed. So I’m hopeful for the coming year. I’m hoping that millions of us without jobs find one again, but more importantly I’m hoping that people stop dying in this pandemic. The economy is going to SUCK until we get this disease under control. End of story. I can only hope that the petulant toddler currently in the White House doesn’t burn down anything of value before he’s kicked to the curb.
I feel proud to fly the American flag again. Because come January 20th, there will be logic, compassion, TRUTH and science in the White house again. Plus 2 dogs! And one is a rescue puppy!!!
That's What SHE Said 