Skip to main content

The Real Horror

I'm scheduled to write a blog post today on the literary history of the horror genre, but I just can't focus.

My country elected a monster.  Someone who is a bully, and ran his entire campaign on hate speech and fear mongering.

I based the villain in my novel on him.  And now he is our President.  And I want so much to scrap my project because I write fiction. Not Nonfiction.

I haven't slept. I've barely eaten. I've almost thrown up. I've cried. A lot.  And what makes it worse is that half of my family, maybe even more, voted for him.

I've always been politically divided from my family.  But most of the time during election season we just agree to not talk politics, and we continue to be a loving happy family. Because most of the time its policy that we disagree on.  And that's okay.  That's what makes us human.  I don't want people to agree with me all the time. I don't want to live in an echo chamber.

But not this time.  This time its personal.  This time, I blocked family on Facebook.  I argued.  I am having a hard time separating them from their vote, because the man they voted for doesn't give a shit about me.  Or POC, or Latinx people, or LGBTQ people, or people with disabilities.  They say he cares about working middle class, but what the hell does he know about them? Has he worked 60 hours at a job that he hates to support his family? Because that's the life I grew up in, and we sure as hell didn't have his beliefs.  We would never associate ourselves with people who yell "Hang the N***ger" and get cheers.  But our new president does.

I will never understand.  And I don't know if I can ever forgive. I hope so.  I hope this anger goes away.  Because I miss my loving happy family.

How did we go from the first African American President to one who was endorsed by the KKK?

How. On. Earth. Did. This. Happen?

I don't know when I'll post again, to be honest.

Until next time, stay well.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Deep Waters and Deep Writing

Get ready folks, this is gonna be kind of a long one. Also, for those who only prefer to read about my writing and not so much my political and spiritual life, scroll down.  I'll get there eventually. So I've been thinking a lot about water lately.  My dreams have been full of it, I've been drinking a lot of it, and since it's January in Oregon, there's just a lot of it around. Water has a lot of symbolism. America's new President was sworn in earlier this week and as it was happening, it started to rain.  Many people thought it was a sign from God.  A positive thing.  Of course the reason behind this wasn't something divine.  It has to do with precipitation and clouds, I remember at least that much from public school science class (I also did an interpretive dance about the water cycle in Outdoor School when I was in 6th grade). But even so, the first thought I had was a divine one.  I thought about John 11:35: "Jesus Wept." Counter th...

Inspiration: Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes you just have to reread something to remember why you love it. I was shelving books in the little library I work at, and I picked up a collection of short stories by Ernest Hemingway.  I haven't read Hemingway in a long long time and as I was holding the bookand remembering a short story that I had read in college when I was working towards my undergrad. I flipped through the book looking for the story: "Hills Like White Elephants" and found it.  I re-read it, and I realized why, after it had been 5ish years since I first read it, why I remembered it. It is just so damn good. I will do my best to not spoil it for you here, you have to read it for yourself. The premise is really simple: two people (a man and a woman) are talking at a Spanish train station while waiting for their train.  That's it.  But it is WHAT they are talking about that makes this story so powerful.  And not just what, but also how.  Again, I don't want to spoi...

2018!

It is 2018! There will be some exciting things happening here on the blog. New Things: Book reviews! If you're not following me on Goodreads yet, you should be.  I will be posting reviews of the books I read both on Goodreads and here on the blog.  If you wanna be a writer,  you gotta be a reader. More Flash Fiction! I'm on Scribophile now so if you want small tastes of my spooky short writing - you can find it there or here on the blog. Updates: Twice weekly posts! These will be updates, movie reviews, video game reviews, horror history, and whatever other nonsense I want to post. They will be Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am going through this book  so I will record my progress here on the blog too during those Tuesday or Thursday posts. Last thing: 2018 is the year of the (online serial) novel! The first chapters will post THIS YEAR. More teasers to my online serial novel later. Share in the comments what your reading & writing go...