Exception

Let's make no bones about this: I am a middle class woman who is neither so young as to be ignored nor so old as to be dismissed, ambiguously ethnic enough that it makes no nevermind to those who "don't see race" and also enough that it confuses racists long enough for me to see a friend across the room and escape at parties. I'm past the point where Planned Parenthood is the only healthcare provider that is not a strain on meager resources.  I am educated, but I don't work a white collar job. So far, the President's poisonous net of executive orders have literally zero effect on my day to day existence.

Except. Except.

Except, I used to be so poor that Planned Parenthood was the only place I could get a pelvic exam. Hell, I used to be so poor that my mother bathed me in ice water rather than taking me to a doctor. We were so poor we got food stamps and still ate white rice and hot dogs the last week of the month.

Except, once I was a terrified 18 year old filled with guilt and regret and sorrow who had $200, a borrowed couch, and a phone number for an empty apartment in Van Nuys.

Except, a Neo Nazi looked me in the eye on a city bus and told me Mexican girls needed to be raped to be taught a lesson. I'm not Mexican. I told him I was Cuban. I'm also not Cuban.

Except, when my daughter was three she took swim lessons but was scared of the water so I took her out and decided to wait until she was old enough to be brave. When Alan Kurdi was three, his family fled Syria, fled civil war, left everything they knew behind to climb aboard a rubber raft. The raft was overloaded. It capsized. Alan drowned. He didn't have a chance to be brave.

Except, I don't call myself an artist but I write and I sing and I try my damnedest to make the world come alive for an audience, even if it's only for a night. All of my friends are artists, too, pretty much all of them, painters and photographers and actors and musicians and tattooists and poets and dancers. Every act of creation is a tiny spark in the darkness that is smothering us. We are struggling. We are trying. We are trying. I am trying.

I am failing.

I have a script next to me, marked with 44 scenes that need blocking and revision. I've done two of them. I have a ukulele and an unlearned song. I have this, whatever this is, this story or essay or cry in the night.

I feel as though this is not enough.