June 20, 2022
Today I am fury. I don’t feel fury. I am not furious. I fucking am fury!
Today my Mom is still dead, Day 32, and I hate God. That is to say, I would hate God, if I believed in him—or her—or them, which actually makes the most sense if you think about it, because why would God, if they exist, be limited to the binary? Even people are not binary-limited—except in Texas, which, rather ridiculously, has come out with its absolutely disgusting position that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice,” which it isn’t, and that it can be “treated” with conversion therapy, which it can’t. And, right now, the only thing that I hate as much as the sad fact that my Mom has been dead since May 20, 2022 is fucking Texas. So there!
Of course, the only reason that I can hate Texas as much as my Mom being dead is that her state of death is, in fact, a fact. There are two parts to that. First: it is a fact that she is dead, therefore unchangeable, so there is nothing I can do about it. That’s what facts are. True. (For example, Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election. Even Trump’s Supreme Court agreed). In Texas, however, according to the Detroit News and other sources, today the Republican party convention agreed to a resolution that rejects the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and refers to Joe Biden as an illegitimate president. WTF, Texas?! Seriously?
Of course, the reason we even have the Juneteenth holiday (celebrated today, but actually yesterday, on, you know, the 19th of June) is because “thanks” to Texas, slaves were not freed even though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed TWO AND A HALF YEARS earlier! For 2 1/2 years after slavery was outlawed, and it was finally illegal for people to “own” other people in the United States. (It always should have been illegal, of course, but sadly the world’s history books tell us otherwise.) However, in Texas, well, sir, they just didn’t bother telling anybody, or at least not the enslaved, black people. It wasn’t convenient for the white folk, I reckon. June 19, 1865 finally ended that travesty. (There were plenty more to come, of course. There still are). Remember the whole idea of trying to end black voters rights just a few paragraphs ago? Well, um, yeah, so, there’s still that.
Second, the thing I can do about it my Mom’s death is… nothing, because she is dead. The only thing I can actually do is manage the stories inside my head, and how I choose to feel in this moment. I can choose not only what those emotions are, but how I would like to manage, notice, or act/not act upon them. In other words, I can also decide what I want to do with my aforementioned emotions (aka feelings), if anything. Thus, today, or, at least in this moment, I am choosing to surrender to my fury, and allow my utter one-ness with my fury for two reasons:
- Mom is still dead.
- Texas is an asshole. I am not saying that every single person who lives in Texas is an asshole (I love you, Kim), but a great many of them are, or at least they must be, right? So very many Texans must be assholes, given the state of their anti-black, anti-Queer, anti-science, and anti-women’s rights officials. (Did I miss anything? Probably.) Also, according to today’s same Detroit News article, it became an official Republican call (in Texas) that: “The delegates also called for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed to end discrimination against Black Americans at the polls.” Can we say double WTF, Texas? No, seriously, WTF, Texas?! Wait, it’s Juneteenth, and Republicans want to repeal the voting rights act? What? No, seriously, what?!?
So yeah, there’s that. This is only one of the many, many reasons I can hate Texas with equal ferocity as hating the fact of my Mother’s death. Let’s be honest, I know hating Texas is a welcome distraction for me, because, hey, I’d rather spend some time spewing my fury toward, and about, the horror of the state of Texas (in both senses of the word). Like my Mom’s Big D, I can also do fairly little about Texas, but it’s sure easier than concentrating all of my fury at the big, immutable, hard fact about Death, which is that it’s final. It’s what Death is. Final.
I can, of course, write letters to Republican Texas officials about the horror of the RNC’s policies, their platform, and their positions on all of the above, but I am not sure it would make very much difference since I don’t live in Texas. (In other words, it wouldn’t accomplish crap). With such Texan ignorance and hate, there is zero evidence whatsoever that anybody would give a damn about a Californian and fellow US citizen, given the above examples, (e.g., mass shootings coupled with a “Fuck you, we’re keeping our guns anyway,” mentality. Let’s not forget anti-science, anti-black, anti-women’s rights, anti-LGBT and basically, anti-all kinds of human beings, except white, Christian Republicans! It seems unlikely I could make an iota of difference, no matter if I wrote the best letters a person could ever, ever write. Further, given all of the hate and the ignorance of Texans can we really be sure anyone would read my letters? Or that they even can?
So, yes, today I am fury. I hate Texas, I hate idiots, and I hate Death. Grrrr! And that’s today’s Feisty Quill.
