Life Is Chaos And So Is Dinner

to see delta slim, who met sammie HOURS PRIOR and gave his life to make sure sammie was able to live and shine with his gifts forever

to see smoke and annie, separated by love and grief over the death of their infant daughter and united by the same things

to see stack and mary separated by the racial dynamics of their time and the dangers of society, given a second chance in death to walk the world together forever

to see grace fucking chow!!!! literally kill her husband and go down with him in flames because of the love for her daughter

to see sammie! sweet sammie moore the preacher boy who only wanted to play his music and let his light shine, unknowingly piercing the veil between life and death, inviting the ancestors and descendants to every party he plays, who was willing to die for the love of music and his freedom! who defeated the evil with the power of music and ancestry and got to LIVE!

to see smoke die in acceptance after slaying the kkk after fighting off vampires for the entire night and having to stab the love of his life in the chest, to see him reunite with her and their child after a night of horror

to see smoke and stack lovingly embrace and try to build a communal space for their community and family to be free of all struggles just for a few hours and be torn apart

in this mindset, the only useful thing i could do was die. i didn't want to. i wasn't generally suicidal (although i do consider this mindset a form of... abstract suicidal thought). but i believed my life was the only meaningful thing i had to offer.

now i'm a member of a community who values me and values my contributions even if i can't contribute as much as i'd like -- a community that emphasizes that every single good deed matters, every compassionate act changes the world. a community where just showing up is enough.

now i know that i can change so much more while i'm alive than i'd ever be able to as a corpse on a battlefield. i know that if i keep showing up, i will find or someone will show me a way to make a difference. i know that i am valued as more than a hypothetical martyr in some grand final battle. i know that i am missed when i'm gone. i know that the actual work is done by regular people with a goal in mind, and i know that that work is unglamorous. i know the unglamorous work is often the most meaningful and the most fulfilling.

the "revolution or nothing" mindset is rendering my generation hopeless. a very loud portion of gen z now believes the only contribution they have to offer is their life. this belief effectively nullifies a person's capacity to create meaningful change; any action they could take while alive is not worthwhile because it won't fix the world's myriad problems in one fell swoop -- better to burn it all down and yourself with it.

i am not blaming the people who are in this place. it's a terrifying, dark place to be in, and when you're there it really does feel like it's the only thing that exists. this is the place where people kill themselves.

i think, though, that this phenomenon, scaled up to apply to politics and activism, undergirds so much of what we see from the left now -- the world is dark and terrifying, and in the 24-hour news cycle, social media doomscrolling era we live in it's so so easy to only see the bad, and when you surround yourself with other scared, overwhelmed people, it can form a sort of 2014-tumblr-depression-tag echo chamber where that hopelessness is glorified and lauded and propped up as Correct And Enlightened.

'I LOVE that you just said that. That you said "right now"!' he said. 'So many of my homeless patients say they're homeless like it's their job, and that means they never see a way out of it.'

'Well,' I said, knowing the statistics. 'Most people are on the street for a year on average. It's not forever, it can't be. nothing is.'

And because I had the audacity, the boldness, to assume I was only homeless right now, I actively kept living like it was a temporary state, like I deserved housing and deserved care and deserved better than i had right now. Because it was only for right now. It wasn't forever. It couldn't be. Nothing is.

I was homeless for about a year and a half. And then I got housed. And right now I live IN a house, with good friends.

But it's only for right now. It isn't forever. It can't be. Nothing is. And whatever's coming next is going to be better! Because I have the audacity, the boldness, to assume it will be and that I deserve it.

And you do too.

But you HAVE to start thinking of misfortune as only being temporary. It's just bad right now. Practise that. "It sucks--right now" "I'm miserable--right now". Just a small thing. But it makes a big difference. It makes all the difference.

Because if you always put "right now" at the end, no matter how miserable you get, you have left a little crack.

I won.

The boys immediately started making an excuse that I only won because the boy had had to slow down when swinging his leg over so he wouldn't hit his balls.