Some unsolicited advice:
I'm sure plenty of you are pretty upset about the election results, and that's OK. You're allowed to grieve. Fascism blows. But don't wallow in depression for days on end. In the end the only thing that we really have is each other, and let me tell you, being sad really sucks when you don't have anyone else who gets it like you do. So...
Go. Make. Some. Friends.
Build your community. One you feel safe and accepted in. Find people you can count on (and who can count on you) when things get rough.
I say this as someone who had almost nobody but some family (who still didn't 'get' it) in 2020 when things really sucked as well.
Find friends who are into helping others out. Seek out mutual aid groups (Food Not Bombs as an example) and/or people who would want to do that kind of work. The founder of my FNB chapter literally started out with a grocery cart of produce on a street corner with some friends handing it out.
Try to think outside the box of your current situation:
Why do we even let these politician fucks tell us what to do?
Is the traditional family something that is really benefiting you?
What other systems might benefit us better than what exists right now?
Question how things are. Do they need to remain like this in your life?
Want to leave the country? Go for it. I don't blame you at all. But when you arrive at your new place do the same things talked about above.
Revolution doesn't have to be all guillotines and molotovs.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
This is good advice, it legit helped me.
I was in pretty bad shape Wednesday morning, so I dm’d seahorse (knowing that he and I share similar interests such as guillotines). We talked a bit and he directed me to someone he knows in https://linktr.ee/servethepeopleakron
I contacted them, signed up to volunteer, bought a bunch of packaged food at Costco, and went to the Sunday serve to hand it out with the group.
I will say that doing this was far beyond my comfort zone so I was pretty nervous due to social anxiety, but once I got there and it started rolling, it was nothing to worry about. Took about an hour, we handed out a bunch of food and supplies to the needy, and that was that.
Afterward I kind of felt like crying, but not necessarily in a bad way; it was good to use my pent up angst to help people instead of just seething, and I’m not used to that kind of emotional outlet. And the members of STP all share the same basic attitude I have so it was awesome meeting them.
What I WANT to do is burn cop cars and throw bricks, but realistically I am 44 and have a wife and kids. I can’t exactly act like I did when I was in my 20s with no responsibilities; so I will volunteer with STP when I can, and when I can’t volunteer I will support them monetarily and via food donations.
Hell yeah! So glad to hear about this. This is exactly what I'm talking about. If we want to make the world better we need to start in our own backyards and actually take some responsibility for it by putting in the work doing what we can when we can.
As an aside, when I talked to my therapist this week about the volunteering, she was surprised I went so far outside my comfort zone, and she was proud of me for taking the initiative to reach out to someone I don’t really know.
She also says that I seem to be handling everything much better than some of the other people she talks to, and that’s 100% because I used my energy to help. Had we talked 2 weeks ago, it would have been a vastly different story.
Guess I owe seahorse a fee for his impromptu therapy session over signal :D