me at the end of the world (that has been ending for as long as i've known it)

last night, i turned off the election at eleven thirty. i turned on the big light and began to organize my closet so fervently that it scared me to slide its doors open today. everything is in its right place. things that have never had a place had been suddenly assigned order. in the corner is a large cardboard box filled with clothes that i decided should go to someone else, or simply just get out of my house. the process of choosing an outfit is the only thing that is easier than usual today. i go out to meet the silent world.

at the coffee shop, my boyfriend hands me a 20 that dropped out of my pants pocket. i haven’t worn these pants since may, on account of them being trapped in the endless limbo that used to be my closet. i look at the bill and have trouble deciphering it. i drop it in the tip jar, figuring that i won’t miss something now that i haven’t known was missing for months.

there’s really nothing to say, and yet i still write. we have been living through the end of the great hoax of neoliberalism and watching genocide through our screens. the emptiness that permeated the streets today — in my suburbanesque Brooklyn neighborhood — did not begin with the election results that trickled in early this morning. there is something rotten here, within and without all of us. i know that our work does not change. i know that our mission must remain focused.

i am reminded of how much we must swat away in order to maintain this world built on blood. how everything has the illusion of crashing down only when the iron seems hot enough to burn us personally. i am reminded of how much of my own humanity i am continually encouraged to press down for the sake of getting on with it. i have heard it said that you can’t walk around like a raw nerve all the time, gaping and crying at the indignity. when people say this, they mean it in encouraging, practical terms. they mean that you have to get on with everything else, in spite of circumstance. but my question is in practical terms, too: can we not do this because we have lost the ability? do we know how to grieve? how to discern which things must be accepted, and which we must stop the world for? what is the value of “everything else” when the ability to shift our focus necessarily depends on the stifling of our humanity?

i cannot be the answer. i can barely be the question. and the questions pain me, especially those i have for myself about the capacity of my own selfishness and ignorance. i know that there have been many times throughout history where people(s) have predicted the ending of the world. i know also that it has not yet ended. or rather, that it has not ended only once.

in the park, i see a newborn baby on a bench with both its parents. for as long as human beings will walk this earth, this is the truth. there will always be babies born.

my work in the entertainment and artistic spaces has not seemed like enough to me for a long while. it is a frankly repulsive belief that the work of an artist can be done only through their projects, communicated solely through small contributions to the gradual shifting of the collective consciousness. my aim was never to report from higher ground. i will and i must be as involved — if not more — tangibly as i am in my translations from the emotional ether down to the physical world.

so i come back to the babies who will be born until the very end of time. to the people who will be needing abortions. to the people who will be dying.

i have spent the better part of my day today studying in preparation for my continuing doula training. it is the only thing that feels useful to me at this moment. to be a part of this last gasp of certainty, to return to community, to learn what will be necessary in order to face the world that becomes more hostile to children and birthing people by the second. to not only believe in the sanctity of human life, but to aid in its survival. selfishly, also, to have a task at the end of the world.

i love you and i have been loving you. i am so, unbearably sorry for all of the moments my cowardice has prevented me from facing you fully. i am not afraid to say that i am scared and that i am ignorant and also that i am trying. i hope you are trying too.