Persevering out of Spite
I can do all things through spite, which strengthens me
Hi there,
A lot has happened lately, whether it’s my own health taking a dive or recent events in the United States and none of it has been great. If you’ve read Sacrimony and actually get it, you’ll understand exactly where I lean on the “political” (aka: human rights) side of things. If you don’t get Sacrimony and you’re super surprised by the news that I am, in fact, NOT “conservative”, then I really don’t know what to say at this point.
I’m not here to preach or have any discussion or debate about our shitty oligarchy and how the two party system sucks or any of that. I won’t even be surprised if I get a record number of unsubscribers just from this one newsletter, but I don’t care and I’m going to speak my mind.
I’m a private person and I hate talking about my personal life to a room full of people that I’ve never even met face to face but I will say that I’m worried for the future. I’m worried for my parents who are old and disabled and rely on government assistance to get by and I’m worried about all my LGBTQIA friends who are at risk of losing the rights to be themselves.
I’m worried about myself, who finally (after years of being ignored) got an endometriosis diagnosis, being at risk for losing access to birth control (really just a blanket term for uterus medicine), which is the only thing that can manage the pain because some religious zealot thinks that I shouldn’t be allowed to have it. I’m worried that when the defective parts of me get too defective and need to be removed, I will be denied becase “maybe some day some hypothetical man wants to use those parts of me to make a baby so maybe I should keep them anyway even though they cause me crippling pain.”
I’m worried that the racists are going to crawl out of the woodworks once more and I’ll have people shouting “Go back to where you came from!” and other hateful things at me and my family even though I was born here and have made a life here for the past almost 40 years.
I’m worried for people I don’t even know losing their rights, their healthcare, their home, their citizenship, their social security, their right to not have children if they know they’re not at a point in their lives when they can give the child a good life, whatever it is, you name it, I’m afraid that it can be lost. Why? Because I have basic empathy and even if something bad doesn’t affect me directly, someone out there somewhere is getting screwed over and that doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve always had a strong sense of justice and I can’t stand to see innocent people suffering because some asshole decides “they deserve it".
Saying “Nah it’ll never happen, you’re just being paranoid” is the first step towards complacency if it does happen. I’m going to err on the side of caution. If I’m proven wrong, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
But I’m not going to let all of my worries stop me or even slow me down. The human brain is capable of handling many thoughts at once so I can be worried and still keep going in order to survive. I’m going to do what I’ve always done, which is keep going out of spite. All things can be achieved through spite.
And now, in very poor form, but also peak late-stage-capitalism-just-trying-to-survive-out-here behavior, I’m going to say that I’ve reopened my long closed Etsy shop and I’m selling stickers once more.
I’ve always wanted to reopen it and make more sticker designs but I always felt “the time was never right to reopen and announce” but you know what? Yolo fuck it, I’m reopening it now anyway. I’ll be adding new designs to the shop every few weeks whenever I get more time to make new designs but meanwhile, here’s what I have so far.
Thanks so much for reading.
Have a great weekend and stay strong.
-M