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When You Care

Last week, after registering people to vote, I came home and cried. Weird things happen to your body when you decide to care about things outside of your immediate vicinity. You cry. You get angry. You pick fights with strangers online. And, if you're like me, and you're a masochist, you read comments on social media posts. Because what the hell, you aren't worried enough about the state of the fucking world, and you aren't dumbfounded enough that there are so many racists fuckheads.

The thing that happens when you care, is that you can't not look at news. Whether it's online, on TV, fucking Instagram, you start to see things you missed before. Long gone are the days of watching Keeping up with the Kardashians to laugh at their rich bitch idiocy, because Kanye went and fucked that shit up, too. 

My husband, he manages to turn it off. He tells me, "Yasmin, don't look. You don't need to know the news." But it's like a bite mark on my inner cheek, I can't stop tonguing. I keep trying to understand where people are coming from, how taxes are more important than LGBTQ, POC, Immigrant rights, but somehow it is. When did people become so callous? I'm not some naive kumbaya person, hell, I can be a dick with the best of them, but these people make me feel like a seven-year-old kid who realized Santa Clause is really her mom's boyfriend.  

The other thing that happens, is it becomes us vs. them. Those people. Trumpsters. Cruzers. Republicans. Conservatives. Alt--wait--I won't use that word, fucking-Nazi-racist-fucks. When the fuck did Nazi's become normal? Now, I know there are spectrums of each of these, (Outside Nazi's. They can all fuck off.) and not everyone is so far in some parallel universe of what it means to be a good person, but it seems like most of them are. People are being downright, fucking horrible.

They shout things like, "Go back to your country." They try to block a person from going into their apartment. They think it's okay to call people idiots and libtards and, and, and, and- Mostly, they are truly fucking ignorant about the topics they hold on to so fiercely without any valid support. Without any knowledge. When did people get so proud of being ignorant? 

So, why did I come home and cry? Because it's fucking exhausting. Because I second guess if I'm right. Because I start to read more and more trying to understand the other side, and it still doesn't make sense. Because if I see one more  "thoughts and prayers" for a shooting or "natural" disaster, I'm going to tell you that you can shove those thoughts and prayers up your ass, and they are about as effective as wiping your shitty ass with your hand. Because fuck you for being a selfish asshole who thinks Latino kids belong in a camp miles outside of my city separated from their parents, because you were "here" first. Because, because, because, because--

My chest aches so much it burns, and I feel like I'm drowning, but I keep smiling and trying, because if I don't what else will I do?

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