How are YOU doing today?
My girlfriend, Rachel, has just informed me that I have not changed my shirt or pants or underpants since Tuesday. My shirt, a T-shirt, says “Loser.” Rachel has also informed me that my belt is “missing at least three loops,” like I just put it on separately after going to bathroom. Rachel says that I am exactly like Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations, who wears her wedding gown all the time because she was once left jilted at the altar.
All 17 antique clocks in my house are set at 20 minutes to nine, the hour everything went to shit.
How are you holding up?
My dog, Lexi, refuses to smell me. “Pull yourself together, man,” she says.
The only time I have left the house in the last five days was to go to Safeway to buy a chicken and then I left the chicken in the store after paying for it.
Twice, I have forgotten to flush.
I keep waking up in the middle of the night, saying “Oh, fuck.”
Rachel’s fingernails are falling off, a result of chemotherapy. She has authorized me to release this information. It’s all fine.
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Also, howzabouts you give me money, okay?
The only thing keeping me sane right now is running. I’m a fat, slow runner so all of the oxygen goes to my heart and lungs and muscles leaving my brain with nothing to use on despair.
You're right. It's shit, and we've all been fucked. We're in for a hellish four years. As of the moment, he's just appointed Elise Stefanik UN ambassador. The consequences may last longer than our lifetimes. I'm a number of years older than you; I may not live to see a woman president. This is not what we signed up for in the 60's when the government PAID ME tuition, room, board, AND a stipend to go to grad school.
But you've got Rachel and Molly and Lexi, and I've got my beloveds. And so did all those German folks in 1933. A hell of a lot of folks are going to die who might not if Harris had been elected. And that could have been otherwise. But read a book called When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron who is an American named Deirdre Something, if you haven't already. It's not very long. Its message in a nutshell is Rest in Uncertainty Cheerfully and See What Happens. It's not anodyne self-care advice; it doesn't tell you to stay positive and look on the bright side. It tells you to start with a broken heart and then it tells you how. We're neck deep in the big muddy, and nothing else has worked. Love to everybody who reads and writes this Gene Pool.