Stories Can Save Us

 

I didn't have stories to help me survive when I was growing up, but (thankfully), since my mid-20s I have and I am eternally grateful to them and hopeful they will still be here in the future, even if the worse happens next week.

 …And it sucks. I also don’t think I am ugly at all, so I don’t understand why I can’t find a woman who would like to be with me. I don’t think I have ever been loved by a woman, or by any romantic interest, as a matter of fact. It hurts. Sometimes my heart aches because of that silent rejection. Somehow, I feel lonely thinking about the fact that I can’t find a female match on Tinder or Bumble, or in real life. It used to be easy on apps, for me. But now, it doesn’t work. I sometimes feel I am in the wrong place and maybe also the wrong time.--From Want

I finally got a copy of Want and am so excited to discover that women who think and feel like I do have contributed to the collection. I know I will never meet them, but it still just feels good. I never imagined before I opened the book that I would relate to so many of the words inside it.

My cat sauntered around the kitchen corner earlier tonight and had a mouse wiggling in his mouth and I screamed and he dropped the mouse and now I don’t know where the mouse is.

Mouser that he is, my cat is on extra intense patrol right now. I already felt queasy before this happened and I am just feeling worse because I hate knowing there’s a mouse here and I don’t know where they are.

Rationally, I shouldn’t be afraid of a mouse, right?

Why am I so nervous that there’s a mouse in my house? 

I think it’s the way they move; it’s so weird how quickly and unpredictably they move 

And then there are the germs 

Otherwise, though, they’re kind of cute 

Updated

This article makes me think I wasn’t imagining the feelings behind what I first wrote:

https://www.leefang.com/p/democratic-consultants-deceived-donors

I have donated to Kamala Harris‘s campaign more than a couple of times, but I am at the point where I just can’t afford to anymore.

As much as I want her to win, as much as I need her to win, I resent the wording of the emails and texts I receive each time a further donation request is made. 

Most people can’t afford to donate more than a few times and even then only $20 or $30 each donation, if that.

I don’t begin to understand how campaign finance works, but it just feels like candidates are not reading the room. 

The average American does not have endless pockets, no matter which side they want to donate to for the presidential election.

I just don't understand how we are where we are, right now, in our country. How did someone like Trump get here, not once, twice, but three times? A candidate for presidency, yet again.

I fear, to a nauseating level, that he is going to win. I am almost positive he will. And with that win comes Vance (even worse than Trump, if possible) and Project 2025.

What will happen to so many of my friends and me, so many other people all across the country, who are "The Other," who don't support Trump and are parts of marginalized communities? 

I also fear for the field I work in: libraries.

I fear for nurses and doctors and any one else in the medical profession who 100 percent support women in all areas of their health.

My mental list of fears has grown so strong in the past few months that I am never relaxed (and I pretty much came out of the womb a very un-relaxed being.)

I find myself wondering what the parameters will be to quality as a "enemy from within." Will the military be used to oppose anyone who dares to object to what could possibly become a dictatorship?

When I get like this, I lose all sense of how to write down my thoughts and feelings. On paper and even more in my own mind, I sound almost unhinged. And that scares me too.