I'm Exhausted.

April 17, 2025

I don't know how else to say it. I'm 40 years old, witnessed the Financial crisis of 2008, watched the rise of Authoritarianism in 2016, the Great Plague of 2020, and the implementation of fascism in 2025. I'm tired.

It is shocking how much has changed over the years since I was a teenager to the age I am now. Shocked of not only how cruel people have become but how so much progress in society has been lost.

I grew up with family telling me that we were to love our neighbors, good traditional beliefs, and the importance of religion just to see them put on those fucking red hats and somehow delude themselves into thinking God and the MAGA movement were one in the same.

Though I was on the fence when it came to Religion (ultra conservative family, really hard to shake some learned behaviors), they made me renounce my religion and do a completely 180 dismissing traditional beliefs to embrace what I have come to learn is a much more honest, freeing, and loving existence.

I did not realize how much narrow mindedness existed in the way I was raised. The hate I used to spout as a stupid teenager. I was saved thanks to my loving, bi wife who was the antithesis of how I was raised.

I'm not trying to be political. I'm just trying to understand how so much hate could win again after so much work of trying to be considerate and create a world where everyone could co exist.

That was the goal as a millenial. We were going to be the ones to break the norms, to create a better world due to the previous generation abandoning us. We made the crack, Gen-Z started to push through but this hate, this inequality burned them out and they feel as hopeless as I do.

The thing I am sure of is that I'm not done fighting. I may be older and do not have the same energy as I used to but I'm an old soldier. I supported the mission in Afghanistan, I cried when I saw those people I tried to help put back under Taliban control. I'm not giving up. I will fight this fascist dictatorship any way I can.

I'm just tired.