I might be forced to blog every day to keep proof of my continued existence at this point.
Because for god only knows how long, every day from here on out is going to be filled with a level of fear.
I've proudly been out and proud for over ten years. For over a third of my life, I've known who I was and proudly shared who online. I put zero into internet safety because I thought I would never need safety. Things could never get bad enough where I would need to protect myself, right?
Except now I do. It's too little, too late. I know. I'm too incompetent to erase all evidence of who I am, and even if I did know how, I'm not sure even for safety I would want to. After all, even if I did remove all the information, life itself is dangerous right now. I'd rather have a log of my life remain if it's lost than to have no log of it and still lose it anyway.
Every day now I am going to have to hold my head down and hide, hope, and pray. Every day now I will have to try my best to be small, to be invisible, to be someone not attracting the wrong kind of attention.
And every day, I am going to have to worry not just about my own life, but my loved ones too. I have to basically hope and pray they make it through every single day, too, without any ability to help them, and without any way to really know if something happened to them.
I'm going to be marrying my wife while we know we still can get married. It will be a courthouse wedding, but we have to. It's now or potentially never.
And...I know I have a lot of advantages compared to many. I have a far lesser risk of suddenly disappearing compared to many. But while my life circumstances give me those advantages, these days, you never know. I have (now forced to be unspecified) disabilities, I have a personal religious practice I don't want to share right now (take guesses as to why), and am part of communities I no longer will be naming in a public space.
And I've been out and proud about all of this for over ten years.
I can't hide all of that overnight, no matter my efforts. I'm making paltry attempts, but I can't pull off a full protection of myself and all of my loved ones.
So, I will never be safe. I can't protect anyone, despite my efforts. I have a higher chance of surviving than a great many, but...I also will never not be at risk from this point onward.
I wish I had better news than this.
But today is...a day where there's not really much in the way of good news going around.
I don't know how to remain hopeful. I have to find a way. I have to survive somehow. But today? I don't have anything.
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