girlonahalfshill

These questions are less for my usual audience and more for those who I’ve lost an ability to talk to directly. They’re questions I feel like I should’ve asked – oh, about ten or twelve years ago, but most of us didn’t think to ask then. They didn’t feel relevant then. Now they feel too late and insignificant to be asked, but I can’t help feeling that they’re part of what’s been missed.

This post is for those who’ve looked past my content for the last decade and rolled your eyes or felt sorry for me – being caught up in a liberal news bubble and not being aware of how the system is “actually” using me. We’re Facebook acquaintances, somewhat distant relatives or former co-workers. You hold dim memories of me perhaps being friendly, competent or reasonable, but those associations have been eroded beneath the salty, wordy comments I’ve intermittently left on your posts, which tended to leave you exhausted.

If you’re defending this administration’s use of ICE, DHS and Border Patrol, my questions for you aren’t the ones you’re getting peppered with, they’re these:

What happened to you that never healed from? What pain and loss are you living with? What have you been feeling insecure about for years? I understand the powerful comfort of being part of a group. Does this give you that? What was it like before you found this? Was it one specific experience that soured you on DEI or immigration or a bunch of minor inconveniences? When was the first time you heard the word “trans”?

Economic stresses are real. That sense of scarcity – of opportunity, financial stability, housing, connection, time – all real for many of us. The reasons are complex. Lots of us right now want easy answers – whether we point at capitalism, communism, immigrants, corporations, social media or the like. Very few of us are in the mood or have the stomach to break down our challenges into the multi-pronged, layered difficulties that internationally-entwined 2026 brings us. But, I digress, what was the moment when it crystalized for you – that the problem was “x”?

I’m not suggesting anyone reply to this post here. They’re personal questions to ask ourselves. This is the internet. I’m not asking anyone to make themselves publicly vulnerable. There aren’t wrong answers to these questions. We aren’t wrong for being affected by our experiences. We ALL are. I’m asking to pause and ask ourselves how we’ve gotten entrenched in the bunkers that we’re in. Instead of putting out blanket statements walling off people I don’t agree with, I’m asking myself and them to look at the roots of what brought us here. I’m not blaming myself or anyone else for experiencing what we have. I’m simply suggesting a little political therapy.

I can’t go back and ask all of you in 2016 if you’re okay. A lot of us weren’t fully okay then. I’d wager even more of us aren’t okay now. I’m not going to get mired in regrets and I’m even more resistant to partisanship in this moment. For those of you who’ve told me through the years that you don’t “do” politics, I want to suggest that it’s been affecting you this whole time. Your lack of participation won’t protect you. We all have skin in this game.

If there are some of you who generously subscribed to my blog a couple of years ago when I was working on my manuscript, I wish I was writing that instead of this. I haven’t stopped caring about that project, but… priorities. Priorities keep making other demands and clamoring too loudly for me to do the other thing right now.

More than anything, I hope that you’re all safe and well, but perhaps not too safe and not too well. Not safe from empathy and self-awareness. Not safe from noticing the year you’re in and the state of our country and the world. I don’t have the energy to write to you all every day like this. You don’t have to lead the protest in your town. If that’s what you’re in a position to do, I’ll keep you company, but I recognize that’s not where all of us will ever be. At our best, we’re a messy, mixed-up, plurality. A chaotic, contradictory assemblage of viewpoints, needs, demographics, backgrounds and circumstances. We’ve almost made it to the 250-year mark. We’re so close…

We’re not Nazi Germany and this isn’t the same as the slave patrols either. We can see precursors in history and I acknowledge the parallels, but the problem with using those now is that there will always be distinctions. It’s always possible for someone on the other side to point out discrepancies. That doesn’t mean that what’s happening now is less alarming, less concerning or less worthy of grief and outrage. We can resist and fight for our democracy without claiming that we’re the Allies in the 1930s and without calling “our enemies” the Nazis. We don’t have enemies. Sure, there are people in power who I personally feel are abusing those powers, but among one another, I don’t see enemies. I see my fellow neighbors, citizens and residents. I see people getting hurt and I see people coming from a place of hurt, fear and insecurity.

I’m afraid too.