Everything is Different, Nothing has Changed.

Disjointed first day of the year thoughts, back pain, and all the things I will not be doing.

Im gonna be real with whoever might be reading this. I used to go running into a New Year with aggressive goals and plans for greatness, most of which were bred from shame of who I hadn’t become and all that I hadn’t accomplished by then. Think ritual shopping for planners, color coded calendars, meal prepping, 5am gym sessions, and the subtle elitism of considering oneself more disciplined than other people. Pandemic season one (2020) changed that for me and this year I am walking slowly into the new year because to be frank, my back hurts. 

There are so many things that I do not want to feel that I have carried on my back for years at a time. They’ve been screaming from the knots in my shoulders, from the way I have not been able to feel my spine in months, from the knots in my glutes, and the inflammation in my neck that is so intense it hurts to the touch. 

I have been pushing with rigid goals and shame for so long that I actually cannot any more. I do not even want to. 

My work isn’t losing weight so someone will find me attractive enough to love or keep loving. It isn’t working 40 hour work weeks so I can be a better and richer capitalist. 

And it certainly isn’t denying the existence and experiences of others in misguided pursuit of a less painful life. 

Not feeling has been breaking me and everything hurts. 

So catch me, and all the selves I have ever been walking slowly. 

Catch me dancing with and through heartbreak and grief. 

Catch me laughing to keep from crying because this SHIT- 

this world. This life. 

This climate change.  These billionaires. This AmeriKKK. Our elected officials. This political polarization. This tolerance for the dead bodies and suffering of the black and brown peoples of the global majority. This necrophilia. These unhoused populations. Those genocides. That killing in the name of capitalism. These privileges paid for in blood.

This lack of care. This commitment to violences big and small. The way these kids are hurting. The way these adults are hurting. 

The way I’m supposed to go on just working. My family. The way my trauma talks back to me. The way some days it takes everything I’ve got just to get the fuck up out of bed. 

That SHIT. That shit is wilder than I could have ever imagined.  

Matter fact, catch me crying too. 

Catch me honoring the dead by living and fighting to stay in my body despite so much constriction.

It is the first day of a new year.

I am still carrying my grief. 

I am still raising the child in me. 

I am still looking at the world and feeling my heart break wider. 

My desires speak to me in familiar whispers.

My very existence is the work. 

Our very existence is the work. 

The love we build across the cracks is our survival. 

And also running aggressively into a new year is probably ableist and fat-phobic anyway. And land back. And Free Palestine. And free Sudan. And free the Congo. And keep reading books to learn how America and Canada and Europe have supported the impoverishment and destruction of so many countries and lives and families and children. 

Thats it. Thats the post.

Happy New Year and All of That.