“Exhausted”

I wish I could say that I am just returning from a more than a year break from the internet, but that’s hardly true. I stopped fashion blogging in 2017 when I decided to run for office (State Representative: Did Not Win) and had to convince people that I am really serious and palatable. I deleted my tumblr, even. I was pretty serious about it.

Palatable is now officially over.

Everything about the world right now is fucking unpalatable so…what’s the point in being plain or quiet? There isn’t one.

After I lost my primary I spent some time recovering and started a huge new art project that will take years (especially since I’m not working on it enough right now). I started, for a second, a group I hoped would become a Political Action Committee and we had some meetings and got fired up and all that and……Then my oldest kid got fired from his job that he loved and then he got really sick.

Really, really sick. Endocarditis, undiagnosed for months (I guessed literally 4 weeks before they confirmed it), emboli to the brain (tiny bits of infection causing teensy-but-no-less-alarming-for-the-size strokes—“innumerable” is how they reported it), 7 hospitalizations in an 8 week period, a million ER visits and finally double heart valve replacement on February 11 of this year. So absolutely everything in my life stopped for that.

Then there was caring for him for the 6 weeks of recovery. And the dog had to have knee surgery so I had to take care of her, too (yes more knee surgery on a now two year old dog). Then, we went on a cruise my mother had planned for the whole fam damily and it actually took emotional energy I didn’t have to have fun because: I’m dead inside. Mostly. And that kid went back home but he’s still unemployed and broke up with his girlfriend and I’m exhausted. Really, “exhausted” should be a punctuation mark, like instead of a period each sentence ends with “exhausted”

So it’s likely no big surprise that I just lost my juju and am still feeling really directionless “exhausted” See? It kind of works “exhausted”

Then there’s the pesky issue of the world right now, and the death of Democracy and watching as my personhood and equality (which we weren’t even done getting, dammit) are, along with many others in other groups people like to be mean to, being dismantled. What do you do with your day when you are just watching the world in flames from your comfortable living room and you cannot find the person you were who ran for office who was tough and optimistic and ready to take on the world?

Maybe for the moment, the answer to that is write. Figure it out “exhausted” And then get my groove back, when I’m not “exhausted”