From the Archives -- Everyone Is Failing at #Resist Except Me, and You Can Too!
Smooth Brain Gazette Vol. 7, But From the Archives Because I Am Unstable
Friends. This week. Not great!
Right? Like… we don’t have to get into it because the vast majority of people who follow this newsletter are American women and lololol you already know. But… suffice to say… what a fucking week.
Given that, it seems crass to come in here like “here are my dumb jokes about bad television and unhinged internet personalities interlaced with gay fanfic diatribes sorry the government is literally trying to kill you! *clown horn*” Like! The room! Put on your glasses and read it!
Also I have spent the entire week staring into the middle distance dissociating so I have shown up to class (this Substack) without my homework (a newsletter for this week).
So I thought I would dip into the archives and repost something I wrote from the last time we were in this sort of “in case of emergency, break glass”-feeling moment.
I am of course talking about the early days of 2017 when a certain YOU KNOW WHOMPST had just taken office and everything felt like it was on fucking fire which lololololololol turns out IT WAS! Ha! Ha ha! I have to say that the silver lining to this week has been the satisfaction of being able to scream I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO YOU STUPID FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT FUCK YOU I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON A CHICKEN BONE AND DIE LIKE MAMA CASS BUT WITHOUT THE LEGACY OF PEERLESS MUSICAL ACHIEVEMENT at, like, A LOT of people. So that’s something!
Anyway, much like this week, back then felt like you could cut the despair with a knife, and so I wrote a thing then lampooning my own poor management of current events that many at the time said they found helpful by way of hilarious.
February 2017 certainly isn’t an exact graft onto now, and my intent is by no means to make light of this week. But perhaps this will be a tiny escape valve. And so, without further ado:
Everyone Is Failing at #Resist Except Me, and You Can Too!
A Survival Guide for Trump’s America
Hoo boy, this shit’s crazy, word?! You know in When Harry Met Sally where Harry’s all “Boy the holidays amirite!” but Sally has plunged into an inescapable nihilism and so she’s just all “A lot of suicides”?
We are all Sally Albright.
Nevertheless, I personally have been not just surviving, but thriving. Since January 20, I have only cried at most once per hour AND I have slept through the night peacefully and soundly as many as twice! I. Am. CRUSHING IT-uh. Can you, like me, additionally crush it also? Probably! Here are some tips that have led me to success.
#1: Spend Every Waking Moment Reading News on Social Media
This is key. You can’t #resist effectively unless you know what you’re #resisting, and you can’t know what you’re #resisting unless you’re in it up to your hairline 24/7/365.
You👏must👏stay👏panicked👏 or👏everyone👏ends👏up👏in👏camps👏
I can’t stress this enough.
#2: Take Breaks from News on Social Media
This is key. A great way to do this is to delete social media apps from your phone and then use the extra two seconds it takes to load the sites in a browser as moments to manifest healing.
Better yet, give yourself 24 hours off social media and spend them watching MSNBC. Did you know they’re remaking themselves in Fox’s image and so they’ve hired Greta Van Goddamn Susteren and replaced a woman of color with prominent racist Megyn Fuckshitting Kelly? This will have you screaming at your television so much you’ll forget Twitter even exists!
Remember: Self-care is vitally important. Take time for you.
#3: Use Social Media to Pick Fights With Family, Friends, and Family and Friends of Friends
Listen, this is key. Your racist aunt is definitely not going to respond to your Facebook status where you’re all “I’D LIKE TO THANK THE FAMILY MEMBERS I’M BENEVOLENT ENOUGH TO NOT TAG HERE FOR DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE,” but she sure as shit will think about what she’s done and vote for Elizabeth Warren in 2020 if you low-key shade her, and you can take that to the bank fucko.
Also. Your BFF’s cousin who insists Steve Bannon’s evil can’t be proven without verified video footage of him eating the head off a live baby while screaming the N-word NEEDS you to berate him about the fundamentals of economics and the warning signs of autocracy!
How else will he learn?
#4: Self-Flagellate as Often as Possible
This is key. There will be moments when you can’t stop thinking about how to escape the gay concentration camps and you’re so exhausted and terrified and heartbroken you decide to jerk off for a moment’s distraction but you start uncontrollably barfsobbing so instead you’re naked with your dick in your hand staring up at the ceiling hyperventilating and cough-choking on your sob-snot and before you know it you’ve wasted 30 entire minutes you could’ve spent #Resist-ing.
You mustn’t allow this to happen or seriously everyone will frfr die.
Here’s a quick meditation for when these moments arrive.
Curl up into a ball in the corner of your bathtub with the water raining down so hot it hurts your skin and say to yourself:
“No one is going to save the world if I don’t and if I pull back for even a moment the shit will hit the fan out of cosmic retribution for my weakness and I will deserve every bad thing that befalls me and everyone will resent me and never speak to me again except to say “Must be nice to have enough privilege to afford a 5-minute break from the horror show you SHITFUCK” and also it has always been true that no one will ever love me but it is even truer now because of how selfish I am so”
Then turn off the water, apply burn cream to all affected areas, and go back to reading Twitter. You’ll be back in the fight in no time!
#5: Remember That All of Your Wildest Nightmares Are Coming True
This is key. IDK about you but my entire life has been about trauma, failure and disappointment and I’ve only recently escaped the cycles of abuse and self-harm that have threatened not just my mental health but also my very survival.
But! If there’s one thing I’ve learned since January 20 it’s that any and all progress made before January 20 no longer matters after January 20. Kellyanne Conway reminds you of being bullied in high school and Trump dredges up memories of being sexually harrassed and Pence plunges you back into the abuse and rejection you suffered at the hands of your homophobic parents? Go with it! Remember: Feelings, not facts, are truth and your instincts to abandon hope and crumbled inward are precisely correct. You can’t just talk about it, you have to BE about it!
#6: Lean on Food, Substances and Other Bad Habits
This is key. As a friend recently bellowed at me: NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO GO PALEO, and she couldn’t be less wrong. Eat your feelings. The fat you gain will remind you what a lumpen piece of shit with a face like a ball of bread dough and a physique like an infant except 6' tall (okay fine 5'11" okay fine 5'10–1/2") you are and also that no one will ever love you except cheese sticks so order another basket you fat shitfart, and this will spur you on to keep fighting!
#7: Remember That You Are Totally Useless Unless You Are DeRay McKesson or a Lawyer for the ACLU
This is key.
I’m going to give you the unvarnished truth:
You may be doing more than most but you’re not doing as much as many and that means you’re doing nothing.
While you may be doing all you can — calling Senators, protesting, meeting with members of your community to coordinate direct action to initiate change — other people are doing way more than you like such as for instance winning cases in federal court that directly impede the President so sit down.
And most important:
#8: Never Forget Your Dreams and That None of Them Are Coming True Now Because We Now Live In an Irredeemable Hellscape
This is key.
We’ve lost everything if we lose our capacity to dream and then remind ourselves that there are literal Nazis in the White House and we will all be dead within the year.
So when you get scared, remember your dreams and the fact that a sentient hiking bladder filled with absinthe and Satan’s precum is the actual President and he will with 100% certainty kill us all.
Listen, nobody’s going to save us, but us. And so, friends, I implore you: Join me. Hold onto these truths with one hand, take my hand with your other hand, hold my hand with that hand but not in a gay way, and #Resist.
Thank you.
And there you have it. I hope that gave you a chuckle and let some of the pressure out!
Before you go, a note: I am going to be donating 100% of this month’s Patreon donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds, which splits donations among 86 different abortion-access organizations across state lines.
Unfortunately, Patreon doesn’t allow one-time donations. However, if you don’t feel like subscribing monthly to my Patreon—and that’s fine! I love you, you’re great!—you can simply subscribe, wait for the first charge to hit, and then unsubscribe. Easy peasy!
And now, I want you to do one more thing: The exact opposite of everything I jokingly told you to do up above.
Log off. Close the internet, close the social media apps, and leave ‘em closed until Monday.
Take the weekend, if you’re able, to give your body and mind a break from the constant ping-ping-ping of bad news. The fight will still be there on Monday. Let it be until then.
I know this all sounds ridiculous, and maybe even dismissive, because none of us are realistically likely to stop thinking about what’s happening.
But take it from my Australian therapist who’s been lecturing me about this endlessly for eight years. That constant stimulation, on any topic, triggers all of your stress and “foyrght or floyrght” (because Australian) responses without you even realizing it. And over time, it wears your defenses down.
I’ve got hella PTSD and trauma, so ol’ Aussie Freud has taught me a lot about managing … well, terror, which is the point of all this nonsense after all. Don’t let them win. Nolite Te bastardes Carborundorum, as they say.
Here are the things Dr. Crocodile Dundee, LMHC has taught me that have helped.
-Remind yourself that everything—absolutely everything (well, except one thing)—is temporary
-When you feel anxious, acknowledge the anxiety, don’t avoid it, and then acknowledge that right here, today, now, irrespective of what happens tomorrow or even an hour from now, you are safe, you are loved, and you have everything you need.
-Take deep breaths while feeling your feet on the floor or your head on the pillow or your suppurating asshole dangling above the toilet bowl, as the case may be.
-Do 54321 exercises. Cheesy, but PTSD is literally caused by feeling trapped in a horrifying situation. Grounding yourself in the present and in your senses retards this process.
-Take a walk—barefoot if weather allows, so you feel the grass on your feet.
We’re in for a long fight. Be gentle on yourself if you can.
Okay that’s it. You’re great. And very pretty. Also I really like your hair like that? Like I don’t think most people could carry that off but you do. It’s inspiring, tbqh.
Okay bye bye!
Ugggh thx this makes it a little better, yes!
a sentient hiking bladder filled with absinthe and satan’s precum !! very glad you re-aired this masterpiece. now follow your own/aussie freud’s advice okay bub xo