It is really weird to be living in a time that I’ve had recurring dreams about my entire life. And considering that my worst fears from childhood have all basically come true (except dying in a bright white flash – which feels especially chilling after the sitting President threatened two major U.S. cities this week, one of which I used to call home – so maybe if I type it out loud, it will jinx this and not come true.

This moment is incredibly scary to me, even if I always knew it was coming and basically dedicated my entire life to try and stop it. I got a lot of really neat things done, usually when I was young – but I made a couple decent dents in the world around 2020 and a few times before and after that.

Imagine having a sense of dread that everything we’re going through right now in the United States was or seemed inevitable since you were a little kid in the early 1980s watching everything change after Reagan won the election. I learned a lot from my elders in the City of Milwaukee, my friends too. And I knew what we were getting into with Brookfield, but it still didn’t stop the complex trauma that comes from growing up in such an absolutely toxic environment. I didn’t do it alone, though, and really miss my friend Kate who went into that place too to try and stop the right wing white nationalist takeover from the kid side of things. A gay atheist priest was recruiting kids in the area who were willing to try and help. He was a good friend to me in that place, which I hope my aunt who knew him relayed over after we spoke in 2003.

And speaking of that aunt, everything she told me at our brunches has basically become true. She said she tried to talk me out of doing this life like I did before I jumped in – probably 50 years ago to around this time and day but who knows – and that things will get a lot worse before they got better. She predicted a bunch of stuff that happened in times around 2020 – 2026. My late friend Margaret also told me to pay attention to the extra lucky, extra special days, which this one seems like it might be. Had a good string of luck today – including a flip that made it the best worst luck, which is my calling card sometimes.

It dawned on me the this morning that one day I will wake up and that awful person occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will not have. And then I looked at my phone and saw that four messages had come over from my best friend who told me about Ronald Reagan and SXSW getting cancelled and has been a barer of great news for more than 26 years of our friendship. Anyway, I was hoping maybe THIS was the day. Nope. Tammi Faye’s husband died. I actually thought he had passed some time between 2012-2015 when I was in my house in Portland, but I guess that was someone else.

Compound trauma and PTSD warp your memories and conflates and confuses events because remembering things fully will lead to re-remembering stuff you forgot for whatever mental safe-keeping reason and the fear of what you forgot is always so much scarier than what you’ve already lived through. It took me so many decades and so much healing to at least figure this part out – which is even more infuriating because I used to know that outright. It flipped at Grinnell College because of what happened at that place.

In any case, I may start writing here because it’s cathartic. And maybe because if I list out my greatest fears they are less likely to come true. It’s happened before. And I made a special wish tonight just in case it really IS a lucky day.

xoxo,

Lizz