This has been a stress filled week. If things could go wrong they did. We are trying to keep our mind in the head where it belongs, but this is not an easy task some days. Between the stress…the loss of yet another pet (we had a baby chicken drown in the duck pool) and the world political stuff blasting over every screen we turn on….it makes it hard to relax. I find myself wanting to hide. I can’t even write more poetry about it, because there is only so many times I can scream the same thing in poetry form before I feel like it is a pointless endeavor. And I am screaming in poetry the same thing the women of my grandmother’s generation screamed. It is starting to feel a bit hopeless. I am starting to hate living in a country that speaks out of one side of it’s mouth about freedom while it speaks about inequity out of the other. And I don’t have the money to afford to move anywhere else. I don’t know if I could live anywhere else.

I say that because I spent ten years in another part of this country. Away from the Appalachian mountains. I was miserable. Those mountains are such a huge part of my life. I have so many memories attached to them, that the idea of not seeing the mountains…it broke parts of me.

There is a life force in those mountains. And they sustain those who live here. I cannot explain it differently.

I have no interest in the Project 2025. or Agenda 47… or whatever they are branding it these days. To be honest it is trash…and everyone who thinks logically will be able to see that. It is taking the country beyond backwards. It is going into something more akin to Hitler’s Germany. Someone suggested that I might survive it by pretending to be straight and Christian. Wear more dresses. And that I would see less minorities. Well, I don’t want that.

First off, My neighbor is a nice little black lady with a son my age named Budda. Budda comes by and mows her grass and we talk. I have been friends with Budda for damn near 30 years now. I don’t want him to disappear.

Second, My kid is trans and I am non binary. Neither of us should have to “pretend” to be something we are not. That is horrific. And abusive.

Third, Why should I have to pretend to be Christian? The churches kicked me out when I needed help the most. I started out Baptist. I was baptised. I went to church against my mom’s wishes because I wanted to. Then when I was 14 and pregnant…without asking the circumstance, the church I had been at for the last two years asked me not to return. I was apparently a bad influence on their children. They did not ask me questions. It didn’t matter to them.

Several years later I went to a church food bank because I was homeless. I was turned away because I was dating the same man I still do. We were living in a garage. Sometimes my car, or his. But The pastor said since I was living in Sin with my boyfriend I did not deserve food.

I refuse to pretend to be Christian if that is what Christian is.

But that is what would protect me according to that person from the politics going into place. What I am hearing is the NAZI’s are going to be taking over and for my own safety I must blend in. I would rather die as myself than to live as a doll someone else poses.

I have lived a life where others controlled what I did and did not do. I have been miserable. I am 49 years old. I am too old for that bullshit. So understand this clearly… I DISSENT!