Ballad of a Dying Dream

As I watch the world go by, I cry. What has the world become? What is the future for our children? How could I have been so gullible and naïve, 19 and 12 years ago, when I became pregnant, yearning for family and offspring?

How could my instinct to procreate possibly know of the future? 2015, 2016, 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025. Sure, we can get on with our lives. We can fight the system. But that system is already dead, taken over by the greedy rich. We’ve seen this before in history.

I was a pawn, a believer in dreams, a believer in the country I live in. Yet, I’ve never uttered the words, “Proud to be an American.”

Why not have faith in our country? How could Americans become so brainwashed, so dead to the truth, to the facts, to the hopes and dreams, to our environment, and to our citizens and humanity across the world?

Americans are angry at the two-party system, so they look for other leaders, such as Jill Stein—a hypocrite and Russian asset—or Robert Kennedy Jr.—a privileged conspiracy theorist, hypocrite, womanizer, and heroin addict.

How can we move on with our lives when our history is steeped in lies? Only the lucky among us have learned to unlearn the history we were taught—a history told from a colonizing, white perspective.

A country raised on racism and women as second-class citizens. A country denying more than two genders. A country with politicians criminalizing reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights while targeting drag queens reading to children—ignoring, all the while, the children dying from gun violence and touting the Second Amendment as justification.

How can we move on with our lives when we say, “Everything has to change—the people are suffering,” and yet now everything will change, but only for the worse, oh, the absolute worst!

Still, we have each other—our communities and people like us—so maybe, just maybe, we’ll muddle through the future years, even as the changes we face will likely bring only more suffering, despair, and inequity.