Lauren Elisa

My kids have departed for their father’s house, and I have every intention of rotting in bed with my puppy and giving myself permission to not think about the fascists for the rest of the day.

Snow day for me and my kids. This is a nice benefit to working at a school.

I often motivate myself to get OUT of bed by getting excited about breakfast. Or cookies.

Woke up in a good mood this morning for no particular reason, but I’m riding this wave as far as it’ll take me.

Having PTSD is exhausting. Depression is exhausting, anxiety is exhausting, nightmares are exhausting, constantly being on guard is exhausting. I can be grateful for how far I’ve come with therapy, EMDR, and meds, and also sometimes be peeved that I still have to deal with this every day.

These daily affirmations are making my days better.

You can do it!

From what I can tell so far, uncertainty is the result, and possibly the purpose of it all. Is this what destabilization feels like?

The news be like: The President did something terrible. That’s just a distraction from something more terrible he’s doing. What he’s doing is terrible but doesn’t matter. The terrible thing actually matters so much. Now that we’ve looked into it, the terrible thing isn’t happening.

Nope, me too

On January 1st, there were three possible ways I could get out of my current poverty, and since then I have added two additional possibilities. Four have already fallen through. I am so tired.

The only moderates I know are guys on dating apps pretending they’re not conservative

You’re not getting the full experience unless you get the beef sandwich!

I took a personal day today because yesterday was a doozy of a day, and I could do my taxes, dishes and/or laundry, but I’m going to snuggle in my pillow nest and read romance novels instead because joy is important and “less sad” is the first step.

“I, like our ancestors of old, have taken to my bed.”

Me, telling my best friend that I am not ok and need immediate help, but in a fun way.

I regularly get hyper fixated on an activity, where I do it constantly, find new windows of time to do it, get low key annoyed when asked to do other things, and tend to neglect other tasks for it.

Right now that activity is *napping*

Babysitting the last working printer in the school building because report cards are due tomorrow and this is the fourth day I’ve tried to print them.

The sticky thing about a moral imperative is that it feels like obvious common sense, and also is totally unique to each person. No one who pushes someone out of the way of a bus thinks about it first, and there are always others watching.

My dog wondering if I’m about to get my shit together (I’m not)

Caught between the moral imperative to take action, and the bone deep weariness of just surviving.

It is morbidly fascinating to watch how people respond to unjust and immoral laws being enforced. Who clings to the law as a moral guide. Who whimpers in discomfort. Who quietly obstructs. Who roars.

This is amazing, actually.

Things I’ve heard at work today. “I’ll lose my job if I don’t comply.” “The district won’t bail you out if you go to jail for obstruction.” “Over my dead body are they taking a kid out of my room.” “They already took families on our street.”

Brain, please stop offering me every WWII story or fact I’ve ever consumed on a loop. This is not as helpful as you seem to think.

This headspace reminds me of high COVID. Is this as scary as it seems? Am I making too much of it? Could I get my brain to stop catastrophizing either way?

I wish we, as a staff, as a state, as a country, as a society, agreed that we will not allow children to be seized from schools. I wish I could trust that agreement enough that I wasn’t nervous about going to work tomorrow.

Today I received alarmingly specific instructions from the district on how to handle ICE showing up at the school I work at. I’ve been instructed to contact administrators, record everything, request documentation, but not physically prevent law enforcement from entering the building.

I don’t have a lot of free time, and I’ve been struggling to do anything with it besides nap/lay in bed reading romance novels. With a surprise day off school and work, I set a goal to clean my bathrooms and shower. I did both, so I win today.

I work at a school, and told my coworkers last week that I will gladly stand in front of the door and politely inform ICE that a school is a federally protected zone. Today I learned that raids have already started in my haven state in my haven city. I said what I said.

I hope one day this feed will contain art and poetry and profound thoughts. At this moment, it will document a tired single mom with two jobs living through this current insanity.