Day 7

 I guess we have to keep living life?

In our little 20-person circles?

More and more people seem to be crawling out from their safe hiding places and tentatively checking in on everyone else.  We're all so worried and sad.  I'm mad.

And everything that's going to happen is going to happen to us all now.  And I'm going to blame every single bit of it on the people who were awful - even the stupid ones.  I don't have any patience for willful ignorance.  I'm mad that the ignorance was SO LOUD and now we're all going to have to deal with it.

When it was going to be so easy to not have to deal with it. Why are people so easily conned?  I truly do not understand.  

So I guess where I'm at now is the anger phase?

And still planning planning planning.  We watched Inside Out 2 on Friday - looking for something to distract us.  I'm 100% being driven by the anxiety character - trying to keep me safe from possible bad futures.  So I spin and spin in my plans.

I made cookies today.  I planned a party for Hadrian.  Working was...difficult.  I felt adrift.  I went to lunch with my friend Melissa.  She is amazing.  She designs and makes leather goods - these gorgeously proportioned bags and kits and covers and sacks.  I don't know how she can get the idea and then make that idea with her own hands.  

We talked about the end of America and how to get her designs for sale at the ski resorts.  This is life in Nov 2024.

Day 2

 For three seconds, as soon as I wake up (again at 4am), the world is normal and calm.  And then it remembers, rejects because it can't be true, and then really remembers.

I don't know when I'll be able to breathe again.  Or wake up normal and calm again.  I think about my kids - they're just starting out.  They'll never know a normal, calm America.  I truly do not think that is an exaggeration. I won't, for the rest of my life.  I'm only halfway through my life.  The stress of so much hypocrisy is going to wear me down so fast.  Maybe I'm much more than halfway then.  That's hard.

I went back to work today.  The first thing I did was systematically start deleting all my casual chats to work friends - starting from the most recent and going back.  I don't know why.  It just was what my brain wanted me to do.  Why did I think "yes. Erasing my voice and erasing my relationships. yes. that's going to feel good?"  I really can't explain it.  But it did feel good. Maybe it was like some existential itch - nothing matters anymore, I don't matter anymore, my words don't matter anymore, I don't trust anyone anymore, the internet will kill us all?  Again, I don't know.  But it's funny that I wanted to delete everything there - and I've needed to write everything here.  Trust issues I guess.  I'm safe at least.

I wonder how much longer I will write everything here.  I mean, because maybe someday I'll feel somewhat normaler and somewhat calmer and be somewhat happy and busy again and I won't need to.  But I also mean more seriously... I don't know how much longer I should make a footprint here on The Billionaires' internet.  That will be sad.  Because I'm bad at writing by hand now.  I can get so much more out typing.  Maybe I'll get a typewriter.  Maybe I'll type and type and print and print and collect boxes of loose-leaf papers of my thoughts.  Not that I think anyone will really want to read any of it - it just will be important to get them "out loud" somewhere, especially if I can't out loud them anywhere else.

And I liked connecting with people on the internet.  There's a lot of friends out there.  It will be sad to not have them anymore.

You know what would be so great.  It would be so, so great if I was wrong.

I'm not though. I remember where things were going.  How far they actually, incomprehensibly, went.

Paul said, as we sat in silence in our giant bathtub last night,, "I cared about helping the whole world yesterday and in a few hours, suddenly, everything has shrunk down to 20 people. That's my world now."

It's like what I said to my friend yesterday - I can control my house now.  That's as far as I've got.  And it's going to be our country.  And I'm going to make it very hard to get into the border. 

Day 1

 I want to remember how I felt today - November 6, 2024.

I woke up at 4am, after staying up until midnight.  I had wanted to watch it all end.  I wanted to see the moment the idea of America ended.

And then I watched it again at 4am.  

I don't know when I've been more sad.  I believed in the idea of America - that's why I was critical when we made mistakes.  I believed the big moral arc really would bend towards justice though.  2016 shook me but I tried to believe it was apathy and a minority of hatred and bigotry - a perfect unlucky storm powered by outdated misogyny.  2020 started four years of a nervous rest.  And 2024 just proved what I was afraid was true 8 years ago.  American people are, in the majority, selfish and ignorant and sexist and racist and cruel, actually.  And I live here. With my children.

My second thought - how can I keep them safe?  

I don't know yet.  But what I imagine is that from here on out we are in a fascist/oligarchical state.  Russia in the 90s before the full crackdown.  My kids will become adults when that final phase happens.  How do I keep them kind and broad-thinkers and moral?  And safe.  I think will will learn to camouflage in plain sight - and live differently at home in secret.  Like I've read in so much history.  And we'll do that until we figure out a way to leave.  If we can.  I hope we can.  There will be so many others leaving that countries won't want us I think.  But two educated parents - and maybe we can bring some money to get in - maybe it will be enough.  Maybe we just make it secret for ten more years until they are grown and then give them the money to go.  It will be easier for them an single young men I think.  These are the things I have thought of today.

I haven't thought much about understanding the reasons why this happened.  That's pointless to me.  The reasons are all bad, illogical, and immoral.  I won't waste my time on them anymore. I've wasted ten years of my life on them.  And I'm tired.

More tired than I've ever been?

I took chocolate and shower steamers to a friend who had sinus surgery last week - the fourth and fifth days after that are scary and awful.  I was afraid today she would cry and I couldn't imagine how much worse that would make things.  I tried to give her a reason to not cry.  I don't know if it worked.

Another friend - maybe my oldest best friend - texted to see how I was.  Not many people did that, though I texted a lot of people first.  At 4am.  She asked if I wanted to meet up to try and process things together. At that moment, I couldn't imagine trying to talk about this with anyone.  Let alone a friend, who I love so much, but who I have had somewhat tense conversations with in the past as she would defend a religion's principles that I found indefensible...  And I was scared.  I couldn't risk anything more painful.  So I said maybe later.  That I couldn't right now.  That was true.  But only now am I thinking that maybe she needed someone more than I did...  I am sorry if that was true.  I am sorry about a lot of things today.

I took the laptop and the car and drove to a coffee shop in Provo.  At 4am I had the idea that today I would order coffee.   For the first time in my life.  It felt like something notable at 4am - like something that said, "I've tried for so long to be perfect so that you all would listen to me and see what is wrong and what is hurtful - but now I know it doesn't matter how perfect I am.  Perfect and moral is not what you actually care about.  You just care about loyalty.  And I can't promise unbounded loyalty to anything.  So I won't be perfect in pointless ways anymore."  So I was going to get a small cup of coffee and try it.  

When I got there, I sat in the car for a long time and read through responses from my 4am texts from around the country.  And I didn't really want coffee.  I didn't really want anything.  And I also had a new 9am thought - I'm done doing things in reaction to ignorant, awful people just to show them they don't control me.  I don't want to drink a bunch of caffeine.  I haven't my whole life because I didn't want to.  I won't let them change me now.

So I didn't get coffee.

But I was feeling stronger than I was at 6am.  And another friend hadn't left her bed and cried all morning - but had to get to work at 1pm.  So I drove to our coffee shop in between our houses, got her a coffee, and took it over.  She opened the door and we both cried for a long, long time together.  We're afraid of the same things, and different things.  We are safe for each other.  That's important.

I drove.  All the way around Utah Lake.  I flipped off every Trump sign I saw.  Just to feel anything.

And made it home.  Where I'm writing this, waiting for the kids.  I didn't work today.  I just....didn't.