Just a gal, standing in front of 2026

Yesterday, the last day of 2025 — which was actually 987 days long — I went to the Social Security office to take care of something for one of my kids. I don’t know the last time you ran an errand like this, but it was incredible, because it was empty. There was one couple there, and the two guys working security, and that was it. The two guys working security were working it hard. I had to put all my stuff in the bin, the one guy went through my purse by hand, and the other ran that wand all over my body, but whatever. Sign of the times I suppose.

I was in and out of there so quickly, I thought, maybe today’s the day for the DMV, too.

You probably think I’m kidding. My Drivers’ License is set to expire on my birthday in February, and they’ve been sending me scary reminder notices and emails for weeks. It might be months? I have become exceptionally awful at discerning how long ago things have happened in the recent timeline, maybe because the recent timeline has been exceptionally awful and it’s best not to pay too close attention to all the things we’re having to process and integrate at warp speed.

I know it’s been several weeks that I’ve had the thought, dang, I have got to get to the DMV — and then haven’t gone, because no one really wants to go to the DMV except kids getting their Learners’ Permits or taking their driving tests. There’s always a reason not to go, like, it’s Wednesday. Or, I’m hungry. Yesterday I thought, screw it, it’s gotta get done, I have to go in person because I guess it’s time for me to prove I can still see or something, so I’ll just pull on up.

I already had the documents I needed because I’d been on the one government agency excursion already, so in I went — and let me give you this life hack. If you need to do these kinds of adulting things, the last day of the year is the day to do them. Apparently everyone else is home making their resolutions or their vision boards or they’re in pajamas eating Oreos and wondering if we’re in a simulation. Those are my best guesses.

It was empty there, too, so empty it didn’t matter that I hadn’t booked an appointment online or filled out my application to renew my license ahead of time; I used the computer there and sat down in one of the many empty chairs. I was a little concerned at first because they were on customer P118 and I was G154, but then they called G151, and before I could even get comfortable they were calling me to Desk 8.

I don’t make the rules, I’m just telling you what happened.

The woman behind the counter was all business. She said I might as well get a Real ID, it didn’t cost more than a Drivers’ License and if I had my proof-of-address documents with me nothing else made sense. I had no reason to doubt her. It meant I had to re-register to vote and re-declare my party affiliation because if I didn’t I might not be able to vote in the next presidential election and I think we all know I’ll be wanting to do that — and yes, we will be having one eventually, and no, I can’t wait. Then she said I should go get my picture taken, but before I did that I told her I needed a copy of my registration because I couldn’t find it.

She looked at me like, who loses their registration? — and I shrugged and smiled. But between us, I am Type A and my registration is in my glove compartment at all times, so I don’t know what to tell you, except it wasn’t there and I have teenagers who use my car. I’m not blaming them, I’m just saying. She said okay, it’s $27 to replace it, but then it turned out it was time to renew my registration, anyway. I was actually a couple of weeks late. Which did not help my cause with this woman, who was now looking at me like I was some kind of screw-up, but I’m not.

I wanted to say, “I’m just a gal, standing in front of another gal at the DMV, asking her to love me.” I didn’t have the feeling she’d laugh so I said it inside my head. I wanted to say, I’m exhausted from all the fascism, racism, bigotry and misogyny, aren’t you? I’m doing the best I can. Some things are slipping through the cracks.

Okay, so I paid, and that’s when she said, who is your car registered to? And I said me. And she said no. I thought about saying yes just to see what would happen, but I didn’t. I asked if it was registered to Honda Financial because they owned the lease initially, but I paid it off when my dad died. I got about $9K and decided not having a car payment was a good way to go as my firstborn was headed to college a couple years ago. I thought maybe somehow the registration had not been transferred.

More accurately, I thought maybe I had not done whatever it is I was supposed to have done to alert the DMV that I owned the car at the time, even though I felt pretty sure I had.

My mom died at the end of 2021, my half sister died six months later, I moved my dad to an assisted living facility near me in Los Angeles in 2022 and took care of him the last year of his life. He died in 2023. We also had a global pandemic somewhere in all that mess. I could not be sure I switched the registration of my car. More things I didn’t say to her.

She shook her head and asked me what my license plate number was, which I rattled off. She typed something into her keyboard and looked at me over her glasses, and asked me to go take a picture of my license plate because the VIN number I gave her was not registered to me, nor did it match the license plate number I had given her. I told her I was positive that was the license plate, but she stared at me without speaking, so I went and got a picture.

I came back and she then asked me to repeat the VIN number. Then she asked for a picture of the VIN number. I didn’t even argue, I just went. It was pouring, but I didn’t bother with the umbrella, which means my Drivers’ License picture is probably going to be gorgeous, but it’s not like I have to live with it for the next ten years or like it’s now my Real ID that I will use for everything. OH, WAIT.

You’ll be happy to know that eventually we figured out that the dealership where I bought the car must have put the wrong VIN number in my paperwork, and when I got home and called to insure the car, I probably went off the paperwork and didn’t think to double check the VIN from the car itself. I’ve been renewing online since then. So that was fun. I had to call Geico from the DMV and get them to fix it and show her my proof of insurance to get my new registration, which I did.

I know some people like champagne, I like getting things done. Don’t threaten me with a good time.

The truth is it’s all too much and the only resolution I’m making is to try to be gentle with myself as we head into another year of this madness. One thing I learned from the very extremely insanely long 2025 is that having a community of likeminded people is helpful to a degree that is hard to describe. I think I might have lost my mind otherwise, and that is the reason I know we’ll be okay going forward, which does not mean I think it will be easy. I do not. But I know that I am not alone in wanting the world to be better than this for all of our children and for all of us. Even for the people who vote against a better world. Even for their kids.

My no’s roll off the tongue a lot more easily these days. I don’t have the time for people who don’t care about me, my daughter, or my friends. If you don’t think women’s and girls’ rights are important, I don’t have time for you, bye now, bless. If you don’t care about every demographic that isn’t straight white men, honestly, bye. If you’re like ICE raids are great, I voted for that and I’m Christian, too, good luck with your Christianity lol. If you say you’re pro-life but you love your guns and won’t budge an inch on that while kids get shot at school week after week, you’re pro-gun, not pro-life. You’re also pro-controlling women. Just own it already and do us all a favor.

If you’re still standing by a man who was good friends with the most famous pedophile in U.S. history and also his pedophile rapist girlfriend who he is still supporting, I don’t have words for you anymore. He got her a sweetheart deal a few months ago. Why do you need more than that? How do you explain that to yourself? Why don’t you believe/respect/trust/care about the girls and women who have suffered for so long and want a modicum of respect, the tiniest speck of justice?

I’m a lot more careful with my energy. I won’t argue with people who pretend they care about issues but turn a blind eye as so many people are harmed. It’s transparent and not confusing.

I save my energy for people who need help, or people who need reassurance. I save my energy for days when I can barely keep my head above water. I save my energy for the people I cherish. I save my energy to fight the good fight.

I am not on HRTs or GLPs but I do have a PTSD diagnosis because some of the things that happened at the end of my mother’s life were traumatic and I’m still grappling. Some days are still hard. I extend compassion to myself and to anyone who is hurting because life shouldn’t be this painful or heartbreaking. Hopefully it won’t be like this for much longer.

If I were in charge there’d be a button you could push when you needed to opt out for a little while. A trapdoor would open and you’d suddenly be on a slide headed toward sleep-away camp for a week or a month, whatever you needed. Your particular timeline of responsibilities and bills would freeze and you could set your own agenda. Maybe you’d want to sleep for the first three days, or take a rowboat out on the lake, or finger-paint, or write all day, or take acting classes, or sing your heart out, or hike through the mountains, or sit around the campfire telling ghost stories and eating s’mores.

Whenever you felt rested and refueled you could press the button again and head back to your life and no one would know you’d been gone, but you’d come back replenished. Since I can’t make that happen, my only resolution is to try to take care of myself in a way that fills my tank so I can show up for the people and things that matter to me.

Lastly, I’ll say I have never seen an administration make an entire generation of perimenopausal and post-menopausal women furious before, and I think that was a very dumb thing to do. Very dumb. I think the one thing these soulless turdskeeters did not count on is what happens when energy like that is harnessed. Yes we were depressed last November, and yes we were shocked in the early months of last year when the violations of the Constitution and against all decency came so hard and fast it was impossible to see straight.

We’re seeing clearly now, though. We are not shocked anymore, we’re just enraged, and we do not stay down. That is the energy of women, you may have noticed. No matter what you do to us, we fucking rise. That is the energy of every good comeback story since the beginning of time. Every fighter who gets up off the mat. Every person who refuses to let someone else legislate who they get to be in this world. No one has the power to do that. There are more of us who want better than this than there are of them.

So welcome to 2026. May the odds be ever in our favor. Let’s get to work.

Photo by Richard Lee on Unsplash

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