The 48 Hours from Hell
Happy 2021. I’ve had the 48 hours from hell within the first week of the new year. It all started with an employment scheme that I almost fell for. Thank goodness my bank flagged something that caused me to question everything before I reached a point of no return. So I spent all day trying to fix that and deal with the police until, finally, that was resolved. Then that night, I found out my ex was seeing someone new less than a week after we officially broke up. I was heartbroken. She was my first love and I was holding out hope that she was going to come around and see that she was stupid for breaking up with me, but clearly, I was the stupid one for believing that. I cried for a night, but now it’s time to move on.
That takes us to January 6th, 2021. What should have been a great day, turned so very very bad. I remember waking up on November 4th, 2016, and seeing the House, Senate, and President were Republican-controlled. I remember the heartbreak at feeling like my rights and livelihood were in jeopardy. On January 6th, the special election in Georgia to determine their Senators was going to restore my hope that was crushed over four years earlier. And it’s not that I didn’t get the results I wanted (all hail Stacey Abrams) but none of that seemed to cancel out the fear of watching a coup happen in the Capitol Building on live TV. What started as a bomb threat escalated to a deadly riot. Put aside the racism and blatant white privilege (which were very evident), I didn’t know how it was going to end as I was watching it on TV. Surely there was no way these psychotic people would actually affecting the outcome of the election or do any permanent damage, I thought, but watching the windows of the Capitol get smashed in proved to be more jarring than I anticipated. It was hours of fear and near puking. My mom compared the feeling to 9/11, where she was across the river from the Pentagon as it was attacked. I was only one at the time of the 9/11 attack, but somehow I knew what she meant. The pit in my stomach, that feeling that the foundation of our country was so easily attacked. What was supposed to be the last remaining superpower country in the world, could somehow have their capitol building be overrun by a few thousand crazies. It was scary.
Emotions, so many emotions. I can’t even put it all into words. But, I’m going to keep writing here for the next few months while I take a semester off from school to try to figure out this life thing and how I’m going to live it. All I know right now is I’m trying…
