I am not a tankie I swear

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And unfortunately, human accomplishments tend to fall under "beliefs"

Which can change by whim.

I suppose that sort of flexibility is healthy, on an evolutionary basis.

"The watering hole is safe" is a fact until the tigers come and then no matter how much history you have with that watering hole, the fact that the tigers are there now means the water isn't safe anymore.

It might be worthwhile to revisit the watering hole again later to see if the danger is still present

If the tigers leave and don't come back, then it kinda feels like the watering hole was always safe... except that one time.

That flexibility becomes a problem, though, when it comes to stuff like Y2K and the ozone layer.

I still remember both of these as I actually lived through them. The ozone especially.

I remember thinking that I was going to see the end of humanity in my lifetime because we were gonna be too stupid to actually get our collective shit together and figure out how to fix the ozone layer

Some years back, I remembered and looked and figured out that like, yeah, we fixed it.

And now.... now it's climate change.

I actually got to have a hand in that one.

I helped electrify ships in Norway and saved one company $5.2 million just by fixing their communication equipment in a week. Then I went on to do at least 5x more over the next 10 months

Not just money. I stopped so much diesel from being used that the temperature over Norway that year went DOWN.

It's one of my biggest claims to fame. I altered the earth's climate. By myself.

My reward? My boss was a racist piece of shit to me and overworked and badgered and belittled me so hard that I got physically sick and had to leave the INDUSTRY.

So instead of this being the timeline where "that black trans girl showed the world how to save itself and all industrial businesses noticed that they could save the world AND save themselves money at the same time"

This is now "the timeline where there was a weird anomaly in the climate data exactly once and actually things went back to being just as bad as they were soon after"

We COULD fix the climate.

It literally wouldn't be hard.

The people in charge

Don't

it takes an average of 7 tries to leave an abusive relationship! 77% of domestic violence homicides occur upon separation

i wrote this while working in a program for new writers. on wednesdays, two of the teachers would be contractually obligated to read our writing aloud to the group of 300+ teens. i had never read my work in public before. i had something like 6k poems and was panicking about it. none of them are good enough. sometimes the train is howling. it is hard, actually, sometimes, even as an adult.

and then i thought - what is one thing i wish i could tell all of them. each of these 300 kids. what did i need to hear, at 16?

i wanted to tell them about the day you wake up, and the sun feels warm finally. i wanted to tell them about carving a life out of soapstone, your hands turning bloody. i wanted to tell them that sometimes yes - it actually does feel easy. i wanted to tell them about weddings and cookie dough and long road trips. about albums of new music and old friends laughing and the sound of snow falling.

you will learn the pattern of the train. you will learn to close your eyes when you hear the engine rumbling. you will learn to let yourself have the grey days in their lily-soft numbness. sometimes it will feel like life is wet paint, and god has smeared your canvas across a sewer grate. sometimes it will be so boring it isn’t even pronounceable - the tenacious, soundless blankness. survival isn’t just ugly nights and wild mornings. it is also the steady, unimportant moments. it is just driving with your seatbelt on. it is calling a friend on the way home. it is burying your face into the fur of your dog.

when i had finished reading this poem aloud, the auditorium was silent for a solid minute. someone stood up to take a picture of where it had been projected onto a screen, and then three more people followed the action, and then - like a bad internet story, people remembered they were supposed to be clapping. kids came up to me after it - thank you for writing that. i think i hear a train coming.

i would write this differently now, i think, but it has been 7 years. i still live by the tracks. i also haven’t picked up a blade in over 10 years. the scars are still there, but these days i only pick up scissors to cut my hair. i know why you can’t tell your mom about it. i know how the numbness slips over everything, a restless horrible cotton. i know how when you dropped the dish, you weren’t crying about the broken glass. i know about feeling like all the roads have closed their exits, that you aren’t supposed to still-be-here - and yet.

i am still here, and still yours, and i haven’t forgotten. what i’m saying is if any hope is calling to you - i know it’s hard, but you have to listen. i’m saying keep driving, but slow down the car. sit down in the shower, i’m not judging you. we can stay in the dark with the good hot water and do nothing but stare. notice the stab wound. make it through another tuesday.

i know what it is like to miss yourself. do what you need to. come home to me. i am writing to you, my past self, from the future. i’ll be waiting for you.