Once upon another lifetime (March 2013), I started this blog. Now that I think of it, it really WAS another lifetime, before any of the crazy stuff with my mom and grandmother began. I'm definitely not the same person now that I was back then. Are you? Probably not, no matter what has or hasn't been going on in your life.
2016 has been a year of way too many endings and beginnings, at least for me: losing my mother, losing a beloved cat, buying a car, starting my online museum certificate program, finding out that we will probably have to move soon as our apartment complex is being sold to people who want to renovate it and raise the rents through the roof, and now that travesty of a presidential election. Even though two of those events are good things, it's still too much change all at once, especially after the previous two years of mostly loss. It's enough to want to make one want to just give up and crawl in a hole for at least the next four years, when hopefully all those nasty problems will have gone away.
Except they won't have, of course. That's the problem with cowering in a corner, in a hole, or under the desk. Those nasty problems just wait quietly until you poke your head out to see if they are gone, and then POW... right between the eyes.
But we can we do? We're just average people, right? Wrong; we're GOTHS, and if we were average, we wouldn't be wearing killer boots and lots of black, wandering around
in cemeteries, and listening to The Sisters of Mercy, London After
Midnight, and Siouxsie Sioux. Some of us have had to deal with hate and
prejudice more than others, but at some point ALL of us have felt (and
may still feel) that we were 'different' from the sheep in the local
flock. We have all worked for, and earned, the right to think outside
the box.
Unfortunately, the election seems to have given some people the idea that it's now okay to voice hatred to anyone they don't like or who is different from them, and to promote physical and verbal violence even more than usual. We don't need this, and we definitely don't need the US government to support it!
If ever there was a time for Goths to show solidarity and support for what we believe in,
THIS IS IT.
While I'm trying to think outside that box and find a constructive and useful way to confront these problems, I've been signing every petition to support ballot recounts, disband the Electoral College, defend Standing Rock, and stop the new government from messing with Medicare that I've been able to click a mouse on. I've sent money to some of them, too, which I never used to do. I'm THAT worried... But we can all do more, and I'd like to, if I could figure out what needs to be done. Share your thoughts and ideas here, please!!
And if anyone reading this actually voted for Chump and thinks he will be just what this country needs to become 'great' again, I give you this quote from British author Evelyn Beatrice Hall:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
May we never lose that right, especially by our own hands.
