I need to stop waiting for a return to normal

My mood this week is not a standard Thursday Thoughts mood. It's more of a fuck all this shit Thursday Thoughts mood. 

It's not specifically pandemic related…I do pretty much what I want (with care) aside from traveling, and it's not like that was a daily or weekly or even monthly thing for me. I have not been impacted by this pandemic like so many people have. 

I do feel stuck in a loop in some ways and need to either realize how things are are how they are going to be or...I don't know. It's like part of my brain thinks this is still temporary, the working from home, and the fighting over public health and all? And for me, the work from home does not go away. And the fighting over public health and all? That seems to be here to stay too.

This goes beyond the temporary or permanent shifts due to the pandemic.

I have to stop waiting for a return to normal in the sense of what normal used to mean to me and no longer does. 

Let's be real. People have not TEMPORARILY lost their ability to be good humans and care for others in the public health sense or in ways related to equality and equity. I have always been a person who thought people’s minds and hearts were open to change and that people were generally good at the core and they’re not. I think in actuality people have always not been great and I am just white lady disgruntled to know that so well now, what so many marginalized people have known all along. To know clearly that a lot of people cannot be moved even when shown video, empirical, or lived experience evidence of shit has been world view shifting. 

Man, but how I have struggled against that shift. It goes against how I have lived all of my life so far.

I place no value whatsoever on niceness. Kindness, yes. Niceness, no. Kindness is actively supporting societal shifts that are best for the health, wellness, and future of people.  Being a good neighbor and community member. Niceness is smiling silently while doing nothing. Except voting for people who make it their life's work to do the opposite of lifting people up to a place of health and wellness for all citizens.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Systemic racism and misogyny, doubling down on white supremacy, voter suppression, an inhumane and corrupt for profit prison system, hypocrisy and straight fucking lies, the promise of social change after demonstrations in the street against systemic racism not resulting in any goddamn change, the willingness of so many to sacrifice disabled people, false outrage, Fox News, the trump effect, January 6 treason, late stage capitalism, a rise in anti-semitism, no recognition of colonialism, lack of mental health care in availability and affordability and ease, a lack of help for those struggling with substance use in availability and affordability and ease, people still acting like LGBTQ lives are misguided or wrong, Roe about to be cut at the knees despite know it all fools saying that would never happen, the hero hailing then derision for healthcare workers, a complete lack of action on gun violence, the hero hailing then derision for teachers, not enough separation of church snd state, crazy white people trying to keep our racist history out of schools, major visual effects of climate change, people flying bastardized American flags, the fucking absurd wealth gap, the pandemic and all the inequities and vileness it unearthed in us as a people, etc., compressed into a small and painful time period have changed a lot of us. As these things cumulatively should have. What the hell else does anyone need to open their eyes to the fact that there is a better way to operate? 

I know what to do with people who have been radicalized in a way that is oppositional to my way: step away slowly, let them to their ways and me to mine. There's no rule saying we need to be in contact with people we knew at one point in our lives forever, or that the break needs to be a big thing. Social media has us thinking we need to know everyone forever and we simply do not, and aren't meant to - some people are with us for only a season and that's no harm and no foul. But at this point I don't know what to do with the people who seem totally unchanged. Like they've over it, or like they've never seen any inequities or pain in their communities and everything is operating as it always has or even worse that we should immediately return to how everything was even though this is a great opportunity overall to change things for the better for everyone. We're all fucking over it, folks. But the societal unrest caused by the above paragraph is not over. What are we going to do about it in this moment?

On the national stage we worked hard to get a Democrat elected and to win House and Senate majorities and absolutely nothing is being done in a time when we needed big sweeping new deal level change. I am fucking furious at the lot of them. Fuck your centrist policies and niceties while people's lives are on the line. Fuck cockblocking republicans too. Fuck all of them collecting quite a nice salary and benefits and doing literally NOTHING. None of  them are doing jack fucking shit except bantering back and forth. And yes, Breyer is retiring but I'm tired in advance of the shitshow on deck here. I would typically be well amped up over this announcement but I'm not. What validity does a court with Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on it even have?  

It is heavy and spring 2020 exhausting feeling out there right now. Like trying to walk a normal straight line after existing for two years in a washer stuck on the spin cycle.  As discussed, what the hell is normal? Is this bullshit way of being all the new normal? Do not accept. Everything feels a little pointless even though I know on an intellectual and visceral level that that is not the case.

It would be nice to turn it all off and read and eat and be with people I love and out in nature and live in a society that costs no one anything. We were intensely stupid as a human race to invent the concept of money and create any sort of have and have not scenarios. Intensely stupid. 

I'm fucking fed up. Sick of even thinking about it, so the best way to get over that at least for me is to write it out and let it go. I'm sure you're sick of thinking about shit or reading it too. It feels like a struggle right now even for those of us who are not actually struggling so I know it is a low low for people who are. If you wonder what the fuck I'm talking about because everything is fine and has been fine, probably a good time to unfollow or part ways because you think I sound nuts? LOL. If you resemble any of this post, you are not alone. There's a strange comfort in that, right? Hang in there. Take care of each other. Find joy where you can. Regroup. Dust off. Move forward. Try again tomorrow. That's all we can do.