Your Life for the Price of Eggs

As I begin this essay it is Tuesday, Election Day at 3:22pm PST. No clue what will happen, just sitting here, feeling the same mix of anxiety, hope, and fear I have no doubt countless other Americans are feeling all over the country, even if they feel completely differently than I do about things. It’s such a sad state of affairs that we can’t agree on anything, even the stuff that seems so obvious it beggars belief it needs to be said. Things like, I don’t want to put a man in office who thinks it’s okay to blow a mic in front of the entire world. It would be a weird thing to do alone in a room, frankly. And it was super gross. But, whatever.

Yesterday, someone I’ve known for years, someone who used to take my yoga class regularly, posted that she is voting for Trump because we had no wars under Trump, and do you want your children being drafted? Then she said he’s a family man, and before my head could explode, she followed that up with “he’s had three wives and he has five children.” I guess we have a very different definition of family man. I guess we have a very different definition of many things. I didn’t even respond, didn’t say most family men don’t talk about dating their daughters or hang out with Jeffrey Epstein or cheat on all their wives. I just unfriended her because I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy to remind her we had a global pandemic under that guy, and millions of people died on his watch. That was the war we were fighting then, and he put us all in harm’s way. But I can’t argue with people anymore, it’s pointless and I’m sad and tired.

A stranger I don’t know, just some dude in the comments somewhere under someone else’s post said he was voting for Jill Stein because of Gaza, Green Party all the way! And people responded that she can’t win, and it’s throwing your vote away and increasing the chances that Trump gets in. And that literally everything will get worse in Gaza and everywhere else. But not me, I didn’t respond. I might have a couple weeks ago, but not now. And later in the day when Trump himself said he loves Jill Stein, he’s never met her, but he thinks she’s great, I didn’t go back and mention it, pointing out that he loves her for a reason. And then someone else made a video about how Jill Stein is a millionaire many times over and she and her husband have mutual fund holdings that represent investment in fossil fuels valued at almost 1 million dollars, and that she personally profits from the Keystone XL Pipeline she pretends to oppose - and still, I didn’t go back and tell the guy because he won’t care. And because my dog died last week - gasping for air - and it broke my heart and my spirit and robbed me of the energy to fight anymore, at least right now.

Photo by Gilbert Ortega on Unsplash

Also, I’ve been fighting for months and years. And some of this is triggering beyond belief. I loved my mother to the ends of this earth, and I love her beyond the ends of this earth now that she no longer resides here, but I grew up in an alcoholic household with a mother who would never admit she was the alcoholic in question. In fact, she might be falling down drunk at night, I might have to help her across the room, or into a cab, or into our building. She might come after me in rage with a twisted face that was hard to recognize, she might say horrible, painful things to me - and in the morning, I was supposed to behave as if none of that had happened. I was supposed to smile and make my lunch and go to school and get straight A’s and look right and act right and be a good girl. And if I ever questioned anything, asked if she needed help, wondered aloud if I’d done something to make her come at me that way, so that I was pressed up against the wall crying and apologizing for I didn’t even know what, she'd get angry with me. Tell me I hadn’t experienced what I’d experienced. She hadn’t had too much to drink, she didn’t say those things, I was dramatic and sensitive. 

So, yeah. You can imagine when a man gets on the world stage and says things and does things and we all see them and hear them, but then half the people say we didn’t see what we saw or hear what we heard, it’s reminiscent of all those years. All the crap I had to work through to trust myself and my ability to perceive reality clearly. But I’m not confused anymore.

He fits the profile of every guy who ever took what he wanted without asking, whether I liked it or not. Remorseless, arrogant, gaslighting, cruel. The problem with me is that I think facts matter. I naively think if people see the facts, it will affect them. So for months, as I’ve been writing and trying to find the exact right words, as I’ve edited out sentences and added others, as I’ve thought about structure and rhythm and when to drop an f-bomb and when to delete one, as I’ve linked everything so no one has to take my word for it - I have found it incomprehensible when people deny the facts. Refusing to accept, for example, that abortion bans have put countless women and girls across our country in jeopardy - have, in fact - killed women who should still be here. I have had women who have had D&C’s themselves, tell me in all caps that a D&C is not an abortion, when, in fact, it is - whether you need one because you elected to have one, or because you wanted a baby but are now hemorrhaging from a miscarriage. Sorry, I’m not adding a link, I might have mentioned I’m fucking tired.

I had a man tell me he felt sorry for my son, because clearly I had denied him the ability to feel good about being male. This was his response after reading a piece I wrote about my own personal experiences with men. Men who grabbed me in stairwells at thirteen or exposed themselves on the street when I was even younger, or on public buses, men who rubbed their hard-ons on the back of my leg on crowded subway cars while I was still in braces, or men who didn’t take no for an answer even though I was just a kid. Sixteen is a kid, we can all still agree on that, right? It isn’t fun to write about it, not any of it, but I did it hoping other girls and women who know all too well how that feels might not feel alone, and to - possibly - let the men who care, understand what it’s like.

But this guy, he felt the need to insult me and to question the kind of mother I am. I don’t give a shit, I know who I am, and my kid at seventeen is 12 times the man that guy will ever be, but that isn’t the point. The point is, some people don’t care. They don’t care about facts or feelings, which are, indeed, two different things. They don’t care about how it feels to have someone overpower you and take what they want even as you cry and beg them to stop - what it’s like to have no agency over what happens to your own body. They care about a narrative they can live with, and they care about their own power and comfort. The rest of us can go fuck ourselves.

Now as I write, it’s Wednesday at 11am, and we all know what happened. There was a giant red wave. And everyone is going to Monday-morning-quarterback the thing and explain what happened. Point fingers. This time it’s white men with and without college degrees - 59% of them. And white women - 52% of them. It’s Hispanic and Latino men - 54% of them. And also young voters who let us down. It’s Russian interference. It’s that the left went too far with pronouns. It’s Biden, he shouldn’t have stepped down, or he should have stepped down sooner. He shouldn’t have run for re-election, then we could have had a primary. We shouldn’t have run a woman against Trump again. It’s that she screwed up on The View and said she couldn’t think of anything she disagreed with Biden about. It’s Gaza, we warned you, we told you we were gonna burn the whole thing down if you didn’t listen. Meanwhile, god help the people of Palestine, and people everywhere, truly. 

The thing is, we all saw what we saw, just some people decided it didn’t matter. I have never in my lifetime seen a more openly, proudly, loudly misogynistic, sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-trans campaign. They said the quiet part not just out loud, but they said it louder for the people in the back, and they said it every day. Trump said it, Vance said it, Mark Robinson said it and lost, but he never lost their endorsement, Bernie Moreno said it. They led with it, and they won. That’s what I’m sitting here thinking about. 

I’m thinking about people who voted for him who rolled their eyes when people voting against him said he was a threat to democracy. I mean, he refused to accept the results of a free and fair election and tried to incite an insurrection, so yeah, that is the definition of a threat to democracy. It just is what it is, you can’t threaten democracy more than that unless you succeed. I guess we could talk about Merrick Garland here, and why the fuck the wheels of justice need to take this long. That line is starting to get really old, and harder and harder to believe. There comes a time when dotting your I’s and crossing your T’s is really just dragging your feet until the clock runs out. And of course, Trump is about to pardon all the people who went to the Capitol and wanted to hang Mike Pence, who went on the hunt looking for Nancy Pelosi, who defecated on the Senate floor, but there I go with all those facts again that the majority of folks don’t care about.

And there are women bleeding out in parking lots, and he continues to happily and proudly take credit for appointing Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe like he asked them to do, and when I say that, people will tell me I’m wrong, like Lynn. I don’t know Lynn, she’s another person I met in a friend’s comments, but she said the exceptions stand. If there’s a fatal fetal abnormality, women can still get abortions up to 6 weeks almost anywhere. When I said fatal fetal abnormalities can’t usually be detected at 6 weeks - many women don’t even know they’re pregnant by then - she had nothing to say. Except women can always leave their state if they can’t get the care they need. When I said not everyone could afford to do that, she didn’t respond. Because she doesn’t care. 

My fifteen-year-old daughter was in tears this morning before school. How am I supposed to live in a country that hates women this much? She can see and hear, too, and the very last thing I’m going to do is tell her she didn’t see and hear what she saw and heard. I don’t have a good answer for that question, it’s the same question I’m grappling with right now. We live in California, so things will probably be okay for us for a while, but I have this crazy habit of caring about other people, too.

The things on my mind are a millionfold. Trump has dementia. He’s 78, and won’t release his medical records. Or his taxes, for that matter, but whatever. Point is, he doesn’t look well to me. He looks like a guy who’s not going to know where he is soon, which means it’s very likely we’re getting JD Vance. So if you think there won’t be a national abortion ban because Trump said so, and you still believe the words that come out of his mouth (which, it probably goes without saying, I do not), good luck to you and your daughters, and all the women in states where there is already a dearth of maternal healthcare. Maternal and infant mortality rates have skyrocketed in states with restrictive abortion bans, and that’s about to get a lot worse if we have a national ban. Even girls and women in blue states won’t be safe then.

I’m thinking about all the hardcore, far-right fringe lunatics he’s surrounded himself with this time, the ones like Mike Johnson who want to ban pornography. Did you know Mike Johnson has a text exchange with his seventeen-year-old son every week so they can keep each other accountable in their no-porn-consumption endeavors? I have a seventeen-year-old son, and I have to tell you, that is one of the creepiest and most horrifying things I’ve heard in a while. This is the current Speaker of the House. I want to scream into the void, but that would be pointless, too. Funny thing, I don’t care about porn, I don’t watch it so banning it doesn’t affect me, but I support your right to watch it if that’s what you want to do. As long as you aren’t dumb enough to think women actually orgasm that way.

I worry there won’t be any members of his cabinet there to talk him down this time, to dial things back, to suggest to him, for example, that withholding emergency relief funds from “blue states” is not only unpresidential, unethical and disgusting, he actually works for the people of the country. All of them. That’s the job description. But not to him, and not to his cronies, and if you doubt that you haven’t been paying attention. 

He wants to get rid of the Department of Education, to defund schools teaching CRT (otherwise known as actual American history), to enact mass deportations to get rid of undocumented immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and to protect girls and women from trans women in public bathrooms and on sports teams, which is code for “we’re about to pass a lot of anti-LGBTQ legislation” in case that wasn’t clear to you. And here is the one place I will link, because I’m scared for my friends with nonbinary kids. Please cite a single case of a trans person in a public restroom who attacked a woman or girl anywhere. I will wait, but you won’t find one. Not one. You know what you will find? Transgender people being attacked in public restrooms by not transgendered people. 

I’m worried about RFK, Jr leading on healthcare, because I don’t trust the judgment of a 60-year-old man who thinks it’s a funny prank to leave a dead bear cub in Central Park, or who cuts the head off a dead whale and bungee-cords it to the roof of his car while driving his kids across state lines. I’m worried about a new Republican majority in the Senate, the fact that Trump could appoint two more Supreme Court justices during his term - impacting life in this country for decades to come. I’m sad that he’ll be empowered to block multiple ongoing criminal cases against him from behind the Resolute Desk, that he has plans drawn up to use the federal government to punish his critics (unprecedented), and that he has “concepts of a plan” to screw with the Affordable Care Act (unclear if he knows that is another name for Obamacare). I am enrolled through CoveredCA, part of the Affordable Care Act. If that goes away, I have no clue how I’ll afford healthcare. 

I’m beside myself thinking about Elon Musk of all people, running a “task force” to overhaul the federal government. And the undeniable influence and extensive preparations of the Heritage Foundation, the America First Policy Institute, and the Center for Renewing America, all with the goal of lurching this country so far to the right I highly doubt we will recognize it by the end of his term. They want to pass legislation “encouraging the nuclear family” including limits to reproductive care, and please remember we are talking about men like our soon-to-be vice president, JD Vance, who thinks women should stay in abusive marriages for the sake of their kids, and that childless cat ladies are ruining the country.

He also says his wife has three kids and he helps with them, which might be okay if he hadn’t fathered them, but he did. They’re his. He isn't “helping” when he watches them. These are men who have no plan to make childcare more affordable - short of asking your menopausal mother or mother-in-law to help since she really has no other purpose now - and their big idea to protect children from continuing school shootings is to arm school guards and teachers and make schools look like prisons with metal detectors on the way in, and giant doors that lock. Bullet-proof glass on the windows I guess. This is all assuming we still have public schools and haven’t banned all the books. More than half the voting public said yes to this.

They want to slash climate protections to increase beachfront property (sarcasm font), and I’m sure they’ll be going after those cancer-causing bird cemeteries also known as windmills, because god knows when the wind doesn’t blow, your tv will stop working, and if you have a battery-powered boat, you’re likely to be electrocuted and/or eaten by sharks. Also hydrogen cars explode and wives can’t identify their husbands, something like that. Yes, I’m worried.

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash

But beyond all of that, I think a portal opened when the Access Hollywood tape came out and this man told Billy Bush he “grabs women by the pussy” and we didn’t all stand up and say hell no right then. I really think that was the moment. That was the place where we all should have agreed this man is unfit for the highest office in the land. We cannot possibly elect a president who has no respect for more than half the population, and is a sexual predator who talks about his own daughter in ways that should have precluded him from any government position long ago, or any position anywhere. But the portal opened, and he walked through, and more than half the voting public let him. They voted for him. They said it was locker room talk. And even now, when he’s an adjudicated rapist, they’ve done it again. 

Here are some of my questions, though. Is this the fear of white people in power, who can see the writing on the wall, who realize if things don’t change quickly, they will not be the majority as of 2044? Is that the explanation for this red wave? Or is it simply that many people could not pull the lever for a woman? And most importantly - if some crazy way, President Biden had been able to lower the cost of eggs to 99 cents a dozen when he stepped down, if he’d been able to bargain with baby formula companies and diaper companies and slashed those prices, too, just for the last 107 days - would we still be sitting here facing these election results? Are the majority of people that selfish and shortsighted?

Put another way - are the lives of women and girls in this country worth less than the cost of a dozen eggs? 

Photo by Erin Larson on Unsplash

My heart is broken. I am not feeling hopeful right now, and I’m sorry about that. Sometimes I think my job is to stay hopeful for you. I have always been an optimistic person, it’s my nature. I’m sure I will find the silver lining soon, the reasons to have some faith, the energy to fight for something better. The concession speech did me in. I know we are not supposed to throw our hands up, we’re supposed to roll our sleeves up. But right now, I am exhausted and grieving and grappling. I feel like this country I love is gasping for air, the way that my dog did last week. I am trying to get that image out of my mind because it’s brutal and unfathomable and I feel as powerless now as I did then, unable to save him, unable to do anything but sob and say I love you so much, and I wish you wouldn’t go. And I’m going to allow myself to sit here and mourn for a while. Maybe tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do.

Friends, I know I am publishing this a day early, but I also know a lot of you are hurting and I wanted to reach out. I know some of you may feel differently about some of these things. I hope however you feel and wherever you are, you can try to be gentle with yourself, and just feel whatever you need to feel right now. I’m very grateful for you, and I’m sorry I can’t write the rah-rah we’re going to be okay essay today. But I hope knowing you’re not alone helps. And I will be here Friday, 11/8/24 at 11:15am PST to talk about heartache, despair, grief, mourning…and hopefully by then, what to hold onto and how to proceed when your heart is broken and your spirit is banged up. The podcast will go out Saturday as usual. Love and hugs to all.