What Is To Be Done:

Brutal Honesty

I thought about eating a gun last night. I am scared, deeply scared, because I do understand the process of history. I have been told many times that my English classes are more like history classes. I always said that it only seems like that because I do not have to teach official history. I need to provide context, and that context means a real analysis of the past. One that includes opinions but does not tell people what to think. One that values as many voices and perspectives as possible, as long as those voices do not shout down the vast and beautiful differences of many different people.

I woke up this morning to the results of the election, though last night it was clear to see what America had chosen.
Hatred for women.
Hatred for minorities.
A death wish against trans people.
Hatred for anyone who doesn't fit the toxic mold that this country was always built on.

There never was a gentlemen's agreement, only the veneer of gentlemen. I've explained this to students before, but one of the major problems with the court system is that the police, lawyers, and judges all work together within the same system. Because they are within the same system, they are colleagues, and therefore everything they do will preserve that system. Will preserve that power. Lord Acton's dictum holds true.

My mistake, though this time I neither called the election ahead of time nor voted protest, especially due to living in a battleground state, was forgetting just how much Americans all think that but for one small thing, they would be the person in power. Even I, especially in youth, thought of myself as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. And then life settled down, I found a job, I made it through. With family support, I make enough to live, though I must admit I am hiding the trans-woman part of myself.

I think I may have to for a while longer, despite knowing the exact meaning of the end of I Saw the TV Glow, that we cannot let Mr. Melancholy win. So I thought about it last night, as I'm sure many people did.

Then I thought about my friends who didn't make it. The ones who, due to COVID or actions resulting from the response to COVID, didn't make it through. They were braver, kinder, less melancholy than myself. And I wish they were here to guide us through this. I can project what I think they might say, but they are not here. Since they are not here, I guess I'll have to go on in my usual way. I guess I'll have to do the thing that I've got scratched into my skin.

Suicidal ideations are not a joke, and I am not saying this lightly. Way back in high school, I made a promise to a girlfriend at the time because I was prone—am prone—to mood swings and depression. But I also believe in that promise: I am still here, and I will still try.

What can I do? I can use my small platform to make students think. Not tell them what to think, though I know certain elements in the world mistake analysis and clear arguments as pushing views on people—but to think for themselves. To start with what we want from this world.

Right now, America's mass seems to have chosen that they hate women more than they hate a bully. But is that really such a new truth? Or is the veneer just stripped away?

I don't know. I don't have the answer. I didn't call the election because it was way closer than was comfortable. Last time was closer than was comfortable too.

I'm returning to poetry, I think. There is no answer but to TRY. As I said, I have that motto emblazoned on my very body. I can't lie to my own soul now. But I can take solace in words, which have often been a comfort to me:

The plusorminus movie to end moving, the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality, the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king, hasn’t a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus, would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn’t a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation, or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex, a naturally homogenous, citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture, his any birth of breathing, insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything, he is democracy; he is alive: he is ourselves.

—E.E. Cummings

Resources for Immediate Help