Should I stay or should I go?
My ongoing existential crisis as a normal person living in Texas.
I’ve been accumulating a lot of new followers and subscribers the past couple of days. Not sure how many are real, but if you’re real, hello! This is a post that won’t have news in it. Just feel like writing out some thoughts.
I’m in this group chat. My husband added me to his gaming friends’ chat one day and I’ve stuck around. In the time I’ve been in this fairly small chat, three people have moved out of Texas. Two to California, and one moved his family to Spain.
My feelings about leaving Texas are complex. This is the only home I’ve known. My family lives here. My closest friends are mostly here. I have built a good life here. I’ve developed a fairly hyperlocal freelance business that only grows because I continue to work here. My deep knowledge of this place and its politics is what makes me money. I’m not sure I can ever return to a regular job.
But dammit if I don’t dream every day these days of leaving. We’re at that part of the year where you can see the long, hot, hard summer days coming, along with another surely destructive hurricane season. And since I’ve been closely monitoring this legislative session, my exhaustion with the bone-headed nature of this state is reaching unsustainable levels. I’m so angry at what I’m watching unfold daily.
What will be left once we have made everyone afraid to live their lives freely? When all the parents of trans kids have fled, all the decent doctors and scientists have left for states that believe in medicine and science, all the high school kids looking to leave the state for college because this place is so controlling and miserable? Those of us with the softest hearts are struggling here, and our numbers are dwindling as people make the hard, expensive, disruptive decision to flee their home state for their own safety and peace of mind.
It’s really hard to defend living here to those who have left. They certainly don’t miss it much. There has to be a huge weight lifted, like finally getting divorced after secretly dreaming about it for years.
How does it feel to live in a place where the weather isn’t constantly trying to kill you, the politicians are reasonable people, and your neighbors probably share your values? I need to know. Is it everything it’s cracked up to be?
My husband wants to move to Minneapolis, a city we’ve never even visited. The idea of starting over so far away from friends terrifies me. And there is only some comfort in moving to a blue state when we’re living under an authoritarian regime that is intent on stamping out blue states altogether. Moving out of the country isn’t an option. Right now, anyway. I suppose if things really go south we’ll have to save ourselves.
So here we still are. Living in Texas, a hellhole run by maniacs.
Three. Good. Things.
Colman Domingo. I just love that man. So handsome and talented. Great style.
My yearly mammogram was normal.
My favorite foster dog Papa is getting adopted! This poor, sad guy was turned in to the city pound as yet another unwanted little dog and now two families are vying for his love in Denver. Jealous, honestly.
