Timeline in reverse chronological order: bullet points

(late) February 2018 – Moved to China.

October 2017 – Started working as an online English Teacher

July – August 2017 – My little cousin’s bestie came to visit us in the US. It was during this time that I realised that I don’t like my sister at all.

March 2017 – Graduated with my Masters Degree and presented my graduate research at an international conference held in the southern United States.

December 2016 – My cousin was murdered by her son and he likely murdered my other cousin’s daughter (see August 2015).

November 2016 – Though not surprised, I wrote Fuck “8000” times copying Warren Ellis’ Spider Jerusalem in his graphic novel series, Transmetropolitan. Learned I had been diagnosed (in addition to ADHD and CPTSD) with misophonia, general anxiety disorder, severe depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder after being triggered, losing memory of said triggering, and ending up in the hospital. Trigger episode was a fugue into the woods where I later woke up with many bruises, scrapes, cuts, and in a lot of pain. I fell somewhere resulting in cartilage inflammation in my chest wall and a fractured spine delaying my graduation until the end of winter term. This lead to further strain with family and the emotional chasm that it created between me and certain family members widened greatly.

June 2016 – July 2016 – Visited cousin whose daughter had died a suspicious death while her cousin (my cousin’s nephew) was present. I thought of her as my little cousin who I had wished would have been my little sister. Met my little cousin’s childhood bestie. This was after attending an academic conference in Ireland where I met an old OD friend who has yet to return from the OD apocalypse in 2014.

August – November 2015 – Took care of my grandmother who had dementia and then renal failure before she died

August 2015 – My second cousin’s daughter who I had been in correspondence with since she was a kid died a suspicious death after a seven story fall from her apartment balcony. I was about to write an online message to her after having been MIA (distracted by grad school) but wanted to finish prepping my lessons for a class first. To this day, I regret putting off writing to her and for having gone MIA.

June 2015 – DASC left the country and broke it off right after he graduated (I still haven’t moved on).

I don’t know what people might think that I have had closer relations with my grandmother, my aunt and uncle in another state, a cousin in Asia, and distant cousins in Europe than I have had with my immediate family living. It doesn’t really matter. My grandparents essentially raised me during my early childhood and I had remained close with them. My grandfather is still alive but he has grown increasingly fascist minded even though he is convinced that I — someone who abandoned the conservative side to moderate and then eventually to the left (sort of) am a commie or something. I say “sort of” because the left fits the most even though it doesn’t fit well. Particularly the white parts of it (and I know that I am white). It isn’t hating white people or hating that I am white but hating whiteness. I was once completely oblivious to it and there is still a lot I don’t know.

My relationship with most of my family is extremely strained if not altogether estranged (depending on the person). Many friendships have ended to (all friendships with white people who refused to be accountable and became increasingly irritated by my anti-racism stance and growing outspokenness about it). I am not sorry. And though it was challenging, some new and beautiful friendships came out of it and, for the last couple of years, I haven’t hated who I see when I look in the mirror. No cookies or pats on the back needed. I just finally started recognising the bullshit more and more and became increasingly curious. I can’t unsee what I saw or unlearn what I learned. I also feel like even though I will never be able to fully atone for how I have been complicit and may in some ways still be without realising it, it’s just view as the right thing to do.

Fascism, nazism, white supremacy, etc. has lurked in the shadows for generations. It’s not new. It’s emboldened and growing stronger and stronger. So many are still complacent if not oblivious. Learning the latest racist and fascist crap my country’s government has been up to, I am admitting to myself that I am ashamed of my country. It is not possible for me to view anyone still supporting Trump and anyone who defends them as good people. Neutral at best, but neutrality is complicit as much as silence and indifference.

But I am stuck an ocean away from everything with only intermittent digital access to loved ones and information. I have a VPN, but the connection is often very slow and unreliable. I can’t get my money out of China either. I knew the excrement was already splattering through the fan blades but I wasn’t aware that the point of exponential acceleration would be this soon. I’m not optimistic or convinced that enough people will resist soon enough and I want so much to be wrong. What scares me is that, so far, I haven’t been just paranoid or too influenced by my longtime fascination with history and dystopian literature. I genuinely feel despair even though I don’t want to give in to it.

I can afford to donate to groups who are fighting fascism, but no way to actually get money to them, right now. I am working on fixing that.