Out of Hiding

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Truthfully, I’ve been very reluctant to post anything. It’s a hyper-sensitive time – for everyone. Writing my feelings about the outcome of this election is heavily complicated. On one hand, I’d like to address it – process my feelings as I type. Perhaps come out from the shadows. One the other hand, it’s really nobody’s business what I think. No one really cares anyway, and it doesn’t even matter. Or does it?

I’m not openly political. In fact, I make meaningful efforts to make sure no one really knows my political outlook. My views, and what “side” of the aisle I stand on, seems automatically assumed by whomever I happen to be sitting with at the time. And I definitely don’t tell a living soul who I have voted for. Nobody. Having that privacy is my right as an American. And that’s been my usual M.O.

People have the right to be as vocal as they want of course. Protest away! I love activists, of all flavors. It’s the American way. It was just never my thing to hop on board the latest Facebook meme and pass it on. And I’d rather not find out what meme turns you on either. I also don’t want to see your bumper stickers advertising which candidates you support. I look at those things and wonder, does the driver of that car really think their sticker is going to change people’s minds? If anything, a campaign sticker on your car only targets you to be hated by half of your fellow drivers.

Okay, so I think I’ve painted the picture here – I haven’t been a very good role model for people to get up, stand up. I have either been too fearful or I didn’t think my voice mattered. And I now I see that both of these things stem from the same insidious root: having a low sense of self-worth, which of course comes from my happy childhood. Being neglected, sexually abused, dismissed for being female, unsupported in my endeavors, and literally unseen – and even taken as some kind of joke. All of this is a disastrous recipe for anyone to want to run into a closet and lock the door.  So I’ve been closeted, or hiding, for a long time, about a lot of things. I fear that in disclosing some of my political views and feelings, I won’t just make enemies, but it will set off a chain reaction for all kinds of other things that I’ll want to speak up about.

Now is the time though. I mean, look at what happened this morning from McArthur Park to Downtown on Wilshire Blvd:

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This was a peaceful protest too. Now I kind of wish I was there. Me. Of all people.  However, it’s not that I am so anti-Trump. It’s that I was and still am pro-Hillary. I always was. And I was never anti-Bernie or anything, but most of my friends were all for him. I didn’t say anything. They just assumed I was too and wondered why I didn’t show up when they went canvasing door to door, or went putting up signs in people’s neighborhoods.

It pained me every time I heard people call her a crook, or, once she got the democratic nomination, they said they were only voting for her because it was the “lesser of two evils.” In my opinion, there was only one true reason most of half of the country did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton. Sadly, I knew in my heart of hearts that Trump was going to win the election though, but I proposed this long before October. For a brief moment I thought, maybe, Hillary had a chance after the shock of October 8th. And it wasn’t just a shock, it was fucking traumatic!

But since then, I started to have little epiphanies. Epiphanies about my surroundings, society, myself. Unfortunately, I started to have hope, dammit, even though I started to see the true colors of the people in my own backyard – their views of women, people of color, the queer and trans community, and their fear of a non-existent war on Christianity and guns.  Whatever. Then she lost the election, and all went dark. Hope was broken and I mourned something awful – just like more than half of America did. Please, commiserate with me.

During her concession speech, I burst into tears again when she spoke of there being a female president — one day. She tried so hard (she even apologized, which pained me to pieces because she really did not need to be sorry for anything), and she still had hope. If she has hope, I have to keep mine intact, somehow. And I see that I will have all the support I need, obviously. If we all just band together and continue to be positive and create positive things, maybe we can make some small differences and try again.

In the meantime, expect to hear more from me about how women rule.

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