And If The Core Of Me Is Rotten, What Will My Devotion Taste Like?
The dregs of "normal" I still had cannot continue
So originally, this was in my drafts for about two weeks with this title:
You know, a cute play on Cindy Lou Who’s “Where Are You Christmas?” song because, at that time I was just beginning to parse through a solid month’s worth of feeling very concerned about how unenthused I was about the rest of this year.
I need you to understand something. I. LOVE. Halloween.
For three years it was literally one of only two reasons I clung to, to keep living. Before this year I would have lit up like a fireplace in a broken mansion over this holiday. For the past six years I’ve celebrated Halloween as not just a day, but as a season. From September 1st until November 3rd, and then it’s just straight into Christmas, which can also be a kind of Halloween, but with candy canes and a begrudging cheer. I delight in going to haunted houses, wearing majority black, putting on all kinds of Halloween themed makeup that I can, finding bars with spooky themed drinks— I just fucking love this time of year. Before last year I wouldn’t have even blinked, wouldn’t have stuttered, would never have ever considered a day I could falter.
That title felt selfish. And not appropriate for the intention I hope to properly convey here. I have to grapple with the truth. I’m . . . not sure I can celebrate it this year. I love it still, but I just— I can’t feel a lick of enthusiasm for it in the way I used to.
I’ve seen so many dead babies since then.
So many dead mothers, daughters, sisters, brothers, fathers, friends, lovers, so many souls just . . . gone. Last night, I scrolled on Twitter and liked so many great pieces of art, and retweeted news stories and GFM’s and a funny tweet and— a little girl was missing the entire top of her skull. Her brain too. Left spilled over wherever the missile that killed her landed, I guess. That scrolling thumb froze, well, the entirety of me froze for several seconds. I retweeted it, because there’s no respite from the horror for Palestinians and if this helps change even one apathetic person’s mind as they come across this then— I don’t know— I got off Twitter after that. Took a day away from it because, fuck.
Do you remember last Halloween? It was my strangest one yet. I had pre-purchased tickets to four different Halloween events back in the summer, anticipating a fantastic time . . . but that October, I was a quarter nauseated, quarter deluded, half done with it all. I would go through a house, scream, feel a little jolt of joy, then go wait in line for another attraction, scrolling through Twitter and fervently, brokenheartedly retweet and take screenshots of atrocities beyond my understanding taking place across the world in Palestine. The bites of themed treats I’d buy in an attempt to help regulate my mood tasted like thick mush balls of cement. I prayed over and over it would end soon, that the pull of AIPAC would eventually crumble under the will of the people. Of the world.
God I hate how useless we are.
And now another Halloween season will come around and, what? More of the same horror and evil? What the fuck is wrong with us? What the fuck is wrong with all the people supporting and endorsing this?
How can I joyfully receive a season where we celebrate pretend blood and guts and commercially charged terrors when there are real actual evils beyond our imaginations happening to real people every day? Fuck, man, I can’t. I can’t sit here yapping about Halloween Horror Nights and their chainsaw wielding street characters when Palestine has the highest rate of child amputees in the world. I can’t laugh about killer klowns when that’s basically all of Washington right now. And it’s so . . . it sucks. It’s horrible having to listen to people around me talking about “You should be back to normal by now” and I’m sitting here fucking haven’t stopped masking since 2020, everyday pushing forward Palestinian and Sudanese and Congolese voices and wishing I had a dollar to give to these Go Fund Me’s but I don’t since my 150+ applications since January have yielded fuck all. Nothing about this is normal! I don’t remember normal being so fucking awful!
Halloween was literally my last bit of normal, and now I can’t even have that because I can’t unsee everything I’ve seen. And that’s not special, it’s not worthy of praise, it . . . it’s the bare minimum. The bar is so low the Devil’s using it for a foot massage. Normal is long gone. It’s so gone and I knew that, but geez, it feels like loss . . . ? But of all the things one could lose in this world, a normal holiday celebration is a pitiful waste of melancholy. There’s far more important things going on here.
To celebrate this year as I would any other year would feel like purposefully turning my back on reality. It would be an insult. Settling for the shallow, flashy distractions this country throws at us to make us forget or keep us ignorant to the despicable actions they pull. Crowing about new Halloween decorations up at Joanne’s or Home Goods, spending money on shit that won’t fulfill us in a meaningful way, talking about Halloween costumes and how to get the right color for fake blood like we didn’t just scroll past another picture of bodies piled up on a hospital room floor because there is no space to put them anywhere else. Arguing about the best movie serial killers when the real ones are wearing poorly tailored suits and taking our rights and our resources to fight from us increasingly.
No, I can’t do it. I reject it. I have so much anger brewing in me.
Resources to share, donate, and learn:
Click here — News, donations for Congo
Click here — Operation Olive Branch - masterlist of aid and resources for Palestine
Click here — Further aid for Palestine
Click here — masterlist of aid for Sudan, Congo, and Palestine
Click here — Sudanese fundraisers