America the Broken…

It’s amazing to me what’s happened over the last nine months.

Nearly nine months ago, I was getting ready to do a production of The Vagina Monologues.

It was the first theater I had done since I was a child and I was scared shitless. Even though we didn’t have to necessarily memorize our lines, we had to act them out in dramatic fashion and I had a monologue called “Reclaiming Cunt”. Imagine THAT conversation with my mom and boyfriend.

In February, I remember my mom telling me about a virus everyone was talking about. While it wasn’t nationally known yet, she said she read how dangerous it would be and she thought it best if she not attend the production, after all. At the time I thought she was over reacting, but by the middle of March and with our shut down imminent, I soon realized after searching seven stores and no toilet paper in sight, something was really wrong.

I’ve tried to extrapolate all the situations where we might have turned a corner. “Rounding the corner” as Trump likes to call it, but the bend never happened.

Like most of you, I vacillate between feeling like I’m doing fine and then I feel like I have zero energy for anything. Anger. Sadness. Anger. More anger.

I watch the news and the thing we needed to get out of this never happened. Leadership. It never came.

Instead, we had a malevolent Commander-In-Chief who never did the work. He never tried to help us all understand how serious this would be. He failed to have faith in us that we can do hard things. He failed to be the beacon of hope we needed, as 250,000 died. He just…failed. So did we.

As I watch us getting closer to falling off this cliff, I’m angry. Like blinding-rage-angry.

The workers who packed and delivered our groceries while being at risk. They never even got a livable wage.

The teachers who should never have to sacrifice their health for our children, although we’ve watched them do it with school shootings for years now, so why wouldn’t we expect them to teach in these conditions? They cry and are exhausted because they’re trying to do the impossible with less than they’ve ever had, before.

And our healthcare workers. God, our healthcare workers. They’ve gone into a battle without armor and they’re at the end of their ropes. They haven’t slept and they watch people die, sometimes hourly and there’s absolute no end in sight.

For you-for anyone reading this now-the anti-maskers-I’m talking to you. The ones who cry “support our troops” but have zero desire to sacrifice for your fellow Americans, when asked. The selfishness, as you protest your rights because you don’t want someone telling you to wear a piece of cloth over your angry, hateful face. The tyrant you follow that laughs at the doctors and scientists, trying to save us all.

What happened to you? What gives you the right to put our families at risk? Our teachers at risk? Our nurses at risk? What I see you doing and who you’ve become isn’t American at all.

America is putting together jobs and families after World War ll, to rebuild our country. America is helping your neighbors after the housing market crashed and people were out of work. America is crying, together as we watched the Twin Towers fall. America is doing hard things, because that’s what we’ve always done.

But you-the anti-masker. The anti-science. The Q-Anon conspiracy theorist-you’ve helped kill us. How insulting you are to every frontline worker. To every teacher. To every military family who knows what true sacrifice is. How insulting you are. How careless.

I know this all sounds angry and mean but I no longer care. You get to have your feelings about having to wear a mask and I get to have my feelings about the insanity you’ve placed on the rest of us because of your stupidity and callousness.

You followed a narcissistic, selfish man who cares for nothing but himself. You drank up his lies and we are all paying the price. He could’ve helped us be in a better place but a person like him isn’t capable of empathy and I’ve realized, neither are you.

When my daughter graduated last year, I was so incredibly proud of her. She’s wanted to be a nurse her entire life. There’s nothing more she’s ever wanted to do than to help people. I never imagined she’d spend her first year as a nurse in a pandemic.

While I worry about her, I know she’s well trained and she’s doing it with amazing people. They all work together to save people and keep themselves safe every second of the day. I wish I could say the same for the careless Americans that have chosen to put lives at stake.

What happened to us? When did we stop caring about the safety of America? We care about its safety when we don’t want immigrants here because they’re “rapist and drug dealers”. We care about America’s safety when a Muslim ban happens. When a virus comes and we have eighty four 9/11s in nine months, where’s our outrage? Why are we not all screaming bloody murder to stop this, no matter what?

I wish I had faith in our country, anymore, but I don’t. I want to believe in the good, but I don’t-not right now. In the last nine months when I’ve seen anti-mask protesters spitting in the faces of nurses trying to save lives, I don’t have faith anymore. I really want to, though.

For now-all I feel is shame….