We Are Under Attack

I get out of bed at my normal time, early afternoon. I take my pills and fix my coffee. I turn on the TV and watch disasters and devastation everywhere. I hear how many have died today, and how many acres of land is being destroyed. Hurricanes, wind and rain, fires, earthquakes, fracking quakes. The South Coast of Texas, places like Port Aransas and Rockport, are calling this their new normal. Houston, Beaumont, the Louisiana Lowlands, Florida, Puerto Rico. Then you go to California. The wine country is pretty much destroyed. All those fabulous homes. Well, I have empathy for them, but perhaps less than I do for the poorer areas of the country. However, despite the value of those homes, still, memories for the one-time inhabitants are gone.

Hey, I’m watching the Weather Channel.

I shudder to think what I will find when I switch to the news, which I may or may not do because I will get to watch reality TV there.

I checked out the movie channels. War, zombies, evil monsters. Oh wait, I’m watching the news.

I don’t know where life is going from here. Oh, I’m safe here in Austin, TX. We have bright sunny days, cool nights. I haven’t even unpacked my winter stuff because I’m still living in shorts and halter tops.

The biggest change in my life seems to come from relatives who actually still like me, some of whom I have never met in person. I wrote a comment on FB a few days ago about how my life seems to be turning backward. My niece in Tennessee is planning a road trip for late December-early January, to go to Ingleside to pick up my granddaughter, then come get me, and headed for OKC to meet my third daughter whom none of us really know except through FB. Who knows, maybe this will be the first and last time all of us will be together.

A friend has turned off or cancelled her FB page. We worry about Darlene. She has said to me that the mountains she and I have conquered we have now slid down. All the things we worked for through our long lives – tolerance, women’s rights, children’s rights, the gay communities, the black communities – are gone. Lives that have gone useless. Fear, confusion, depression everywhere.

I fear that the US of A has lost their way.

I think of how it was for eight years. How things were better under President Barack Obama. Oh, he wasn’t perfect, there were a few things I wish he had not done, but things were getting better for everyone. Then we get the trumpeter. We are all suffering a malicious case of whiplash. And every day, something causes our necks to fling in another direction; smacking our heads sends it back the other way. I fear we shall never get better.

Well, I’ve lived a long life; perhaps too long. And I have seen some good days, in spite of coming up through a lot of wrongs, a lot of mental abuse. But I have hung on, and hope to hang on long enough to make that trip in two months.

Do I sound like a miserable whiny person. I hate that if it is true. I have always tried to retain an optimistic, rosy, sunny outlook on life. I don’t want it to eventually end in this horror we are living through today.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. People talk about World War III. For one thing, a war between the US and North Korea, or Iran, do not fit the thought of a World War. There are many more countries that are probably not going to join in, unless they are attacked. Terrorism lives everywhere, but I don’t think love for nuclear war lives everywhere.

All I can say right now is God/dess help us all.

Carol Stepp
Austin, TX