Don’t Breathe

The weather is windy and bitter. My hands are frozen when I walk the dogs. I am miserable with the cold and with the world.

I am struggling with what to write about today.

I don’t want to rage about the Epstein files, but it’s all I can think about. 

My biggest fear is that the public and the media will move on from this, as Karoline Leavitt so cavalierly insisted we do. 

To stay sane, I am trying to keep myself on the strictest of media diets and practice cognitive sovereignty, I really am.

But even the smallest dose of Epstein files news becomes an overdose. It’s like taking acid. The smallest tab and I’m trippin’ balls, walking around, foaming at the mouth.

My sadness is so deep. These images are so repugnant, so gross, so horrific. I could cry.  And do.

Those monsters.

I pray to god there is no moving on from this.

I need to see heads roll. 

Literally. 

Bring back the guillotine. 

I sit on my yoga mat at home.  I do long rounds of kapalabhati. With holds. About five of them. Just to calm myself down, feel a little more human. 

Teaching is hard. I work to provide an island of calm in this sea of rage for my students, but, to tell the truth, I don’t know where their heads are with all this stuff.  If they are troubled, they seem able to shelve their outrage with their shoes before entering the room.

Which is good, I guess, but part of me wants to think that we are all feeling the same things about this stuff, that we’re all on the outrage bus, but I don’t want to be the one to bring it up. 

I will never lie to them about how I feel, but I don’t want to light any fires. 

The other night, someone did ask me how I was doing, and I said, “How do you think I’m doing?” which was the wrong thing to say, and I regretted it, because it was just a mindless attempt at small talk, but still.  

Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.

One thing I will not tell a person to do is “just breathe” when it comes to issues of social justice.

There is a place for “just breathe,” and it is mainly in your personal life. Some examples where “just breathe” is good advice are:

• When a friend says something thoughtless.
• When your boss is being an asshole. 
• When your kid comes home with a bad report card.
• When you’re late for work and stuck in traffic.
• When your flight gets cancelled. 

But when little girls have been raped and sexually assaulted, and the government has been deliberately protecting the predators for decades?

No. That is NOT the time for “just breathe.”

That is the time for SCREAM BLOODY MURDER.

And keep screaming until there is justice.

Namaste.