Delayed Rapture (?)

is this the end times?

This week when I went on Facebook, a memory popped up of a younger version of myself that felt the weight of all traumas and tiring attempts to be seen, heard, and witnessed in pain. Apparently 15 years ago was supposed to be The Rapture.

It’s always a bit cringe but also endlessly courageous to see how transparent and vulnerable I’ve been online.

It’s something that got me in trouble a few times while simultaneously showing people how fucking forreal I am about the shit I think and feel.

From the music I loved, to my passion for crafts and creativity, to the depth of my aches. From Facebook to Tumblr to Instagram, I would type the things I struggled to share with people who would really listen. Maybe it wasn’t really that the adults around me weren’t listening, but moreso that if they acted on what they heard they would have to do their own kind of repenting.

In the line of work I do, so many of the wounds I witness are first made in youth and then poked and prodded until they become a sore, an abscess, a death sentence.

When we deconstruct these moments, systems shine through. The way those who wrong us are shaped by settler colonial imperialism. From fatphobia rooted in antiblackness, violence rooted in white supremacy, manipulative ways of relating rooted in patriarchy, so on and so on.

Behind every scar is the perpetrator who succumbed to the indoctrination of these systems meant to structure and maintain a inhumane hierarchy.

I mention this all to say - when I look at that screenshot I see a young girl who wanted to be saved and loved and cared for. I am still her, she is still me.

But now I am an adult who knows that those who wounded me drowned in their own pools of misogynoir, homophobia, ableism, sanism, purity culture, colorism and more.

While I have this knowing, I also have the ways this has shifted my internal narrative, literally wiring pathways in my brain to always been in survival mode. Even on the best of days Im still unsure how long I will last.

I can happily say I have lasted far beyond 18.

A miracle I’d say.

What exactly is/was The Rapture?

Google Says:

I can’t help but go back to many of the systems listed above.

Im thinking of how Christian Zionists have pushed many of those systems into “societal norms”. Norms that have bred only violence. What is the rapture if not the impending doom of punishment? What is the rapture if not Christi fascist scare tactics?

And who gets punished? And why?

I look at the world now, a tanking economy, the normalization of airborne illnesses, an embarrassing education system, dissolving infrastructure in the face of climate change, the widespread ache of loneliness - the list can go on.

The so Called United States feels like it’s in a Rapture of sorts. Or maybe we’re headed towards one. And yet I feel sadness that those who evoke the pain get to escape and hide in the righteousness of their evilness.

These are the times where things do not make sense to me and yet I still can imagine a heaven.

To me heaven is knowing that the land will remain beyond, that a new ecosystem will evolve and continue somewhere on this planet even if not in the exact spot Im sitting in as I type this.

Heaven to me is the courage of my comrades, the tenderness of my lover, the resilience of my friends, the warmth in my chest after a laughing spell, the smell of the beach on a sunny day ….

All to say, 15 years later and Im still here and so are we aka the rapture didn’t take us all.

In many ways Capitalism has created hell on earth - yet I am confident to say I am not someone deserving punishment.

I used to think living my life was a punishment but now I see it as a testament of my strength and something I am deserving of. Something I am deserving even more of, more life! I know I am not living my fullest under this boot called Capitalism. It is always on my neck and sometimes I find the strength to shove that bitch off me and put my foot down.

In the spirit of my ancestors, past present and future, may those creating hell on earth face the consequences of their greed and face the righteous punishment from the proletariat.

The land will win. The people will win.

I know because there is no other way. There is no other option.

Until next time,

In Love, Solidarity and Liberation.