When I was little, I was stuck in a bubble. I didn’t know what was going on in the world, because I was a child, obviously. I didn’t have a clue about anything happening outside of my little world. Why wouldn’t everything be OK? Why wouldn’t there be peace and happiness?
Even as I grew older and learned about past wars and conflicts and ugly things in my history classes, that bubble was still there. Because they were in my textbooks and being taught to me as part of the past, my brain couldn’t comprehend that there might still be some shred of these things in current society. Because I wasn’t facing anything like that in my life, clearly that meant it didn’t exist anymore.
Throughout your childhood, you’re taught that this is the land of the free and home of the brave. It’s ingrained into your mind from day one that this is the greatest country on the planet and nothing else can ever live up to it or change it. You’re taught to glorify white American history. And that’s all nice and fun to believe when you’re a kid living in that bubble.
But one day that bubble popped, and I realized just about everything I had ever learned was a lie. America, the land given to us by our forefathers, was created on the blood of Native Americans, who kept getting their lands stolen away and culture stomped upon until they were almost erased altogether. The racism I thought was conquered by Martin Luther King, Jr. is still an all-too-prevalent problem in today’s society. The sexist attitude towards women that leaves them marginalized, underpaid, unable to have the right of their own choices and autonomy over their own bodies, and with threats of violence against them has never been conquered. There is rampant homophobia and transphobia that leaves millions of people unable to feel comfortable or safe being themselves. Millions of people are likely being denied access to health care and possibly being left to die. Money-grabbing corporations are looking out only to better themselves and not the American people.
This country is spiraling to shambles. You’d have to be in the exact right and incredibly privileged situation to try to deny it. Even if the current problems do not affect you, they still exist, and they affect millions of people. The fact that people have to work multiple jobs to get by or that medical bills can completely cripple someone’s financial situation to the point where they decide to go without health care or that people have to go through the discrimination and violence and marginalization they do is disgusting and heartbreaking.
I’ll admit that I’m no expert here. I’ve turned a blind eye to news stories and some important information because it scares the hell out of me. These things are happening and I don’t want to look at it. I know I should, because it’s incredibly important. But all the same, sometimes I just want to give up. Because if a country can vote into power a man who advocates banning an entire group of people from entering the country based on their religion and separates them from their loved ones and homes from days on end, and a man who decides a transgender person is unfit for the military despite their will to serve, then sometimes I don’t know if this country is worth fighting to save.
There is no justice here. Nothing is fair. People are cruel and hateful. But we can make our own justice. Admittedly, things look incredibly grim, and I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. But I know it’s there. God, I want to be there. But we have to fight to be able to keep going and get there. I know I haven’t done enough, and I know I need to be better. It’s the little things that we do in our everyday lives that help fight back against the land of the privileged and home of the heartless.
