Boxing Gloves

The heaviness is palpable. You’re trying to see through the fog but can only make out twenty feet in front of you.

These times are heavy. We probably needed it. Finding a way to weed out the garbage is a necessity in life. But there’s so…much…garbage.

When I said nearly four years ago on election night,”congrats America-Mr. Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief is at your service”, I honestly thought it would be bad, but that eventually things would calm down.

Michelle-I feel you and love you and have got the shirt, but I don’t feel like going high, anymore. This all feels so, so, low. The shit stain on America we can’t get off.

I’ve become swear-y. Maybe it’s the peri-menopause, or hitting my forties, or that we live in the Twilight Zone every damn day, but “FUCK” comes out of my mouth, a lot. I don’t even care, anymore. It feels appropriate for the times.

These times have changed me, but they’ve changed us all. They’ve made me a fighter, and I’m ok with that. Whether it’s someone sitting in my chair or someone I’ve had in my life for years-I can’t let it lie, anymore.

People say we should combat the hate with love, and while I agree with that, I believe we can use our anger to fight for those we love. We can fight for justice. We can fight for equality.

You can say you don’t want your white son being blamed for something because he’s white and I’m gonna say you’ll never know how it feels to be a black mother, afraid her son won’t come home because he got shot for being black.

If you say you don’t want your taxes going up when you’ve never hurt for anything in your life, I’m gonna tell you to think about the person who can’t afford their medical bills and a break on their taxes would’ve paid for their insulin.

If you say we have to be careful about who we let in this country but there are children dying at the border and white men continue to use guns to slaughter us every day, I’m gonna tell you to check your racist behavior.

Before you say,”but I’m not THAT person”, remember that you are. If you got offended by any of that-you are.

We’ve all allowed it. Contributed to it. I’ve excused conversations in my chair because I didn’t want an uncomfortable situation. It’s time for us to be uncomfortable, though and face this shit.

This shit. The shit we turn a blind eye to every day. The shit we allow at our holiday meals and “friends” on Facebook who aren’t really your friends and in our spaces every day, we allow it.

We have to get uncomfortable to change this. Change is uncomfortable and you have to wrestle with it and yourself. It will be fucking ugly because nothing’s pretty, anymore.

We’ve allowed it.

The people who scream,”I’d love to come sit with you at the table, but I can’t even get in the room.”

We’ve allowed it.

We know what it says in red by the almighty but we turn a blind eye and judge and cast out the least of these.

We allowed it.

We watch as babies get slaughtered in our classrooms but the number two in the Constitution says we have the right.

We allowed it.

We watch the LGBTQ die and be denied who they love and they take their lives.

We allowed it.

We send soldiers to fight endless wars and they, too, come back broken and die by their own hands.

We allowed it.

We must stop allowing it. It’s breaking Lady Liberty. Her flame flickers, only to remind us of the possibility we have to save her, but she’s dying.

So now-I fight. I’ll fight with whatever I have. I’ll break my knuckles to do it. I’ll use my words. I’ll use my energy-I’ll spend it all, but I will not allow it. Not in my chair or my house or in my space. No more.

When we look back on this time, years from now, what did you allow?