It’s 4 AM and I can’t sleep.
This isn’t new, really. For the past month, it’s been nothing but odd sleep patterns. Either I’m not sleeping at all or I’m sleeping until noon.
And when it’s the latter, my mother literally comes into my bedroom and tells me to get out of the house because I’m “depressing her.”
When I lie in my bed, unable to drift into REM, I think about a lot of things.
Things I should be writing, guys I’d like to text but know I shouldn’t, but mostly: the end of the world.
The election is in one week. An election that feels so divisive, I’m not even sure how we ended up here in the first place. 24/7 I hear “us” vs. “them” and I can’t help but feel like we’re all on the brink of strangling each other on live television Hunger Games style.
Anyway. I have some things I need to tell you.
I learned I had a Transgender sibling during my first year of teaching in Colorado–a “blue” state. It was about a year before Trump got elected.
I got home from school and went for a run around the neighborhood to clear my head from the day. There in the distance, a few blocks away from Mom and Dad’s was my then-brother approaching me.
It was weird to see my sibling looking for me. We weren’t the closest back then and they said we needed to talk.
I thought they were going to tell me they had cancer, to be honest with you.
I was relieved (and confused) to learn that they were Transgender. For the next few years, she would experiment with hormones, inherit my old make-up, and wait patiently for gender reassignment surgery.
I’d always wanted a sister. I just never thought it would happen this way.
Then there’s our little brother.
I learned that he was voting for Trump on a 27-hour road trip with him from New York back to Colorado after losing my job. I was coming off a summer of BLM protests and watching the virus wreak havoc in Brooklyn.
We must have been somewhere in Missouri when it happened.
I don’t even know what I said, but it must have been something Liberal. He disagreed with me for I think the first time in my life.
In a completely different way than with our sister, my concept of this person quaked like a bowl of Jell-O during that scene in Jurassic Park.
I knew I didn’t love my brother any less, just like I didn’t love my sister any less when she came out as a woman.
Strangely enough, I actually wanted to protect him. From the world, mostly. But also from our sister, who has become more militant in recent years with politics.
I was the last to find out about this Conservative rift in the family. The second I unpacked my last box I could feel the tension swirling around the house.
I have a Trans sister and a Pro-Trump brother just a week before the most heated election in our lifetime.
How are we going to survive this as a family?
I have always felt like the “referee” of the three of us. As kids, the two of them didn’t get along, which I hated. I didn’t want to pick sides. I just wanted us all to be friends. I participated in my fair share of sibling smack-downs, but more than anything I wanted us to be together.
Before I go any further I’d like to point out that “staying out of politics” is a privilege. I’m sorry but it’s 2020 and you can’t be Switzerland anymore. If you don’t feel like you need to have strong opinions about what’s going on right now, it’s because your life doesn’t depend on it.
I also personally hold an immense amount of privilege being a white, educated, cis-woman with a supportive family in the United States. I can vote, drive, speak my mind, and own a gun to protect myself if I want to (which I don’t).
I try my very best not to take this for granted.
With that being said, each of us possesses a unique brain with a bunch of lived experiences that ultimately shape our opinions and daily thoughts. We can change the way we think, but only by vigorously re-routing our built-in biases.
For most of us, this is a nearly impossible task. So, we take in our world and formulate some sense out of it and stick to it.
And that’s just fucking science, yo’.
I told my sister I had an interview for a job out in San Diego and she immediately told me when it was projected to be underwater if Climate Change were to continue its course. The same day my little brother went to a driving range to learn how to shoot a gun.
Sometimes I still can’t believe any of us are related.
But fundamentally, the way our country has been set up makes us choose opposing sides. Black or white. This or that. I think we are all victims of this simplistic system, in a sense.
We stake out our yards with our prospective signs and yell at anyone else who has a different sign, without even considering who that person is or where they came from. We turn our backs on our own family because we can’t understand how we think so differently.
Empathy is a lost art these days. It’s now “fashionable” to go viral by screaming the N-word at a complete stranger.
You know who’s winning this election right now? Hate.
Forces that I can’t control are tearing families like mine apart right in front of my fucking eyes. And yes, I am angry.
Look, I don’t know how to fix this.
I’m an unemployed comedian approaching 30 living with my parents during a global pandemic, OK?
But I know that my heart is splitting in two, not just for my family, but for humankind.
We are not OK, you guys.
So I want you to vote, not for a party or a person, but for yourself.
I want you to open up your heart and ask yourself some hard shit. I want you to call your siblings and tell them that you love them. I want you to rest. I want you to turn off the TV and step away from your phone and just listen to your own air enter and exit your chest.
Do not let hate win this election and do not let it win you.
~mic drop~