Downer

Don't read this. I wouldn't advise it, anyway.

It's the day before Christmas eve. It's a very stressful time for me. I should be the happiest I've ever been, but there are a lot of stressors in my life right now. I keep realizing more and more how abusive a past relationship was.

I've been anxious since I left it. Now I've started having dreams about it. I wake up from them thinking about things that really happened. It's hard to explain without a lot of backstory.

But basically, I have terrible eyesight. I voluntarily gave up driving on the highway because I didn't feel I could drive safely at high speeds. My husband at the time knew this, yet there were occasions when he would ask me to drive on the highway, while he drove another vehicle. In panic mode, I would follow him, carefully obeying the speed limits, trying to make sure I didn't lose him or drive into anyone. He would call me on my cell phone and tell me I wasn't driving fast enough. I'd be driving 65. He'd be going 80. Anyone who's seen me struggle with visual things would get that I shouldn't be driving that fast. I could see fine, but I couldn't read signs at high speed and I had to really pay attention to things on the periphery because my peripheral vision is quite impaired. He would yell at me to drive faster  or he was going to leave me behind. How did I stay so long with someone who made me feel so unsafe?

At the end of one of these drives, he'd be angry with me because I didn't drive faster automatically.

I've been away from him for three years and it's only now hitting me how badly he treated me.

I see this relationship as similar to the way the government treats people. People stay. They accept. They don't know any better.

Peace on earth

I'm a peace lover. I don't tend to fight about things. 

I'd like to see the world more peaceful, fairer, more just.

And not all imposed from above.

Some people don't want peace. That was a shocking thing for me to accept. There are people in the world who don't want peace, because they gain from violence. There are people who don't want fairness, because they want advantage.

I'm not saying I think all worldly goods should be distributed equally. It feels as if, if there were no way to get ahead by effort and ambition, the world would be depressing. We're a curious species. We want to see what happens when we do this. And we like being rewarded for effort.

But I also think that people who can't or don't want to work their butts off, who can be satisfied with a simple life, for whatever reason should still have minimal resources to feed themselves, stay warm, be safe. I think we'd achieve more as a species if we felt safe and supported.


I don't expect us to achieve perfection over night, but I feel like now we're moving in the wrong direction entirely.


I'm just going to write here, anonymously, because this is stuff I don't feel like I can say in this politically hostile time. I've had way too much shouting and dealing with hostile people. But there is a part of me that needs to speak up, to be responsible, to help make a change. Maybe I'm just a voice crying in the dark. But maybe my voice will give others courage. Not to fight, but to speak. 

The pen is mightier than the sword. Education is more powerful than war. There's a lot of darkness right now, on this the darkest day of the year in the Western Hemisphere. With the trip back toward longer days, I hope we will begin to move toward the light in other ways.

Love to all.