Wow. Where the hell do I even begin.
This is related to all the shootings this past week. This is about my grown children, but mostly about my older daughter. And me perhaps. I don’t really know anymore.
Some of you have read my work previously, some of you have liked it. some of you have hated it. Some of you have praised me and some of you have scolded me, which I deserved. I have always tried to evoke an emotional response, whether being satirical about bullies like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, or honest to a fault about my own family. I’ve occasionally talked about wanting to commit violence, whimsical or murderous, although I’ve never done it and probably never will.
I haven’t done my thing here in a while, mostly because I don’t enjoy being angry all the time and it’s so easy to be pushed to anger these days. That said, I was working on a lengthy essay about fear and I’m pretty proud of it, but I admit that after this past week I don’t know if I can publish it.
I’ve never felt much use for fear. It’s useful on roller coasters and horror movies but aside from that I’m pretty solid. But my older, grown daughter, is afraid all the time now. We’ve had three mass shootings in the past few days — one in our own back yard — and I honestly don’t know how to help her.
If you can remember that far back, if you’ve even noticed us at all, my older daughter is trans. It’s been quite the experience dealing with that and I’ve discussed it in other diaries, talking about how well I took it to dealing with the entire concept of having our sex assigned to us at birth. But there are things about the day to day life of a trans person we straight people never deal with.
Some of the vitrol I’ve seen launched at my daughter makes ill. There are people in this country that feel that she doesn’t even have the right to exist. I mean, how do you counter things like that? Try to tell them just how much of the Bible they’ve got wrong? Oh no, that doesn’t work. She has friends, but most of them are online. Even in a city as open as ours about the LGBTQA community these problems exist — and for that she is fearful.
This week has been very hard for another reason; our younger daughter, who is now a junior in college, was in a school mass shooting when she was in high school. It didn’t even make the national news, because there were only 4 injured (one seriously) and the shooters were caught. I wrote about my own visceral reaction to that day in another diary. Although she wasn’t hurt, there are ZERO degrees of separation between my family and a mass shooting.
My older child was away at college in Seattle when it happened. It rattled her as it did the rest of us, just at a time she was dealing with the effects of even coming out to her family. She was away and couldn’t protect her younger sister — and they are close.
There was a shooting in Gilroy, CA — only about an hour’s drive south of us (in good traffic). We go to that festival a lot. There was a shooting in El Paso. There was a shooting in Dayton… You’ve all read the news. All the shootings done by the same people who believe that my older daughter doesn’t have the right to exist. This makes her fearful
Although the aftermath of these events will go on for years, the actual incidents themselves all happened in less than a minute. This makes her fearful. Hell, it rattles me!
We live in a time and in a country where Donald J. Trump, in his current position, says to the press that hate has no place in our country just a few days after belching out hate to several congresspeople, cities, states, countries and industries — and a few days before he does it again. The man is vile, disgusting, but at this moment in time, when my daughter is afraid of the world, his words and actions don’t. FUCKING. HELP.
My older daughter is afraid to get a job. She’s afraid to even step outside. She’s afraid of Social Media and has cancelled her Facebook and Twitter accounts. And as Bob as my Witless, I have no idea what to do.
The world my children have had to grow up in is so different than the one I had to. I wasn’t given an instruction manual for this level of madness. Yes, I know that you weren’t either but but need to find a way to help my daughter. I want her to live life and not be afraid of it.
This is my goddamn job and I have no idea what to do. I mean I know what we should do, but it isn’t going to happen. It’s too sensible in a land with no sense. The 2nd Amendment needs to go, or be changed. Face it, there are some people who simply shouldn’t own guns — and if they’re being honest every gun owner will say the same thing. Hell, I’m one of the people who shouldn’t have one.
So I’m trying something daring — to ask the collective gestalt of Daily Kos for their opinions. Not on guns. There are plenty of threads for that. I need to learn what to say to my daughter. How to guide her.
Sure, you could say “get her to therapy” and I would love that, if I could afford it. I have decent medical and dental insurance, but mental health seems to be something no one ever considers. Yeah, there are free or low-cost groups that someone can go to, but she has had rough experiences with those and is less than enthusiastic about the concept.
I fear being helpless to help, but I have no idea what to do — especially for a trans woman in her 20’s who still acts like a teenager sometimes and has grown to be afraid of the land we live in.
Can anyone give some advice? Can anyone help?