10/01/2026
A mess of thoughts, as I rage and grieve. A mess of an arrangement, something ugly for the harsh ugly thorny thoughts I’m grappling with. And I think maybe there’s some beauty in it too, some love at the heart of the rage, or rage at the heart of love?
Unsure. But whatever it is, it’s for everyone who has experienced sexual violence, and the often-hand-in-hand violence of power and impunity.
Thinking that I don’t even need to read the details to know what they are, because it’s always the same details, essentially.
I’m thinking of Senescence, the withering and rotting when a thing is due to die.
Thinking about how some mushrooms can inherently breakdown, make inert and unharmful, toxins in our soil and water. And that other mushrooms have been trained to target specific compounds or materials befouling our earth.
The sunflowers felt apt, maybe because they’re beginning to break under their own weight, and that’s what I’m wishing for the violent power of patriarchy, that it’ll break itself. Maybe I’m reaching for metaphor and meaning, trying too hard, because otherwise I cannot hold this incomprehensible reality.
Thinking about how The Men aren’t held accountable because that would inconvenience them. Thinking about how I know men in my community, who are respected and admired and praised, who are saying that efforts to hold them accountable are inconveniencing them.
It’s not very transformative-justice-y of me to say, but may abusers reap what they sow tenfold. Maybe someday, when our world is actually willing to hold them to account, there is a path of transformative justice. Maybe someday, when we stop demanding survivors swallow their rage and trauma so that we don’t “ruin the lives” of their abusers. But today, all I feel is — may abusers reap what they sow tenfold. And may every survivor feel wrapped in the loving rage, the rageful love, of every one of us who so desperately wants a different world.
