Steady As We Go

On retreating from life

Image created with Poe AI

When this story popped into my addled brain, I was going to call it “Steady As I Go,” until I realized how selfish that sounds. I changed it because I know that many of you will relate to what I’m sharing here.

For months, I’ve felt as if I’m shrinking—letting go of who I am, as if whatever made me “me” is slowly and deliberately exiting my physical self just as my spirit will when I kick the bucket. That’s what they say, anyway.

Much of this diminished state, rather, most of it, is due to the pestilence that has taken over this country, a place I never imagined wanting to leave, but now do. Yet, I know that living out my remaining years in another country, where a semblance of “happiness” may still be possible, will never happen because my husband and I do not have the resources to grab our cats, our “stuff,” and get the hell out of Dodge. Merely thinking of the hoop-jumping that emigrating to just Canada, for example, would entail is exhausting. And I must ask, would they have us? Two retirees, albeit I am involuntarily retired.

The emotional and financial battering of the last six months has taken a toll on so many of us. Most days, lately, I’m in the “Put a fork in me, I’m done,” mindset. And then, on others, if I wake up with enough juice to power through my usual day of script-pitching, working out, running errands, decluttering, etc., I’m not quite ready to give up and give in to our monstrous fate, should Donald Trump last another three and a half years.

Three-plus years. Hell, another month is hard to fathom. And it appears that the cavalry lost its way.

Because I don’t know what to do when I’m feeling like this, I adapt my normal course of action, which is to remain stupid-busy. At the beginning of the summer, I was consumed with destroying what was left of my former manager’s fraudulent career. At least the one he allowed the public to see. And, it was immensely satisfying right up until the point where I realized that, once again, I was without representation.

I half-heartedly dove back into pitching my scripts, even though it’s harder than ever to get reads. So. Fucking. Hard. So difficult, in fact, that I’m wondering what the point is of holding onto a dream that your rational self tells you is unattainable, and that makes you feel like the world’s biggest chump for believing you ever had a shot in the first place.

“What’s the point?” Someone tell me, please. What is the point of trying, planning, dreaming, and doing when our lives are derailed by the insane machinations of a narcissistic monster?

Increasingly, I wonder how my parents would fare in this new world order. Oh, they would despise Donald Trump as I do. Of that I am certain. And my Jewish father would be outraged by the white supremacists who have proven that anti-semitism is alive and well, the flames of their hatred fanned by a deranged sociopath, Steven Miller, a self-hating Jew who suffers from Little Man Syndrome.

Dad owned a gun, and I shudder to think what he might have done with it.

Recently, I took on yet another challenge because, hey, I haven’t racked up enough failures, you know? And I don’t share this in a self-pitying way, because I can view myself objectively and admit that I’ve spent far too much time on pursuits that, in the end, will culminate in my breaking my own heart.

So, I opened an Etsy shop a few months ago. Shocking to me because, unlike much of what I see in Etsy store fronts, I’m not a pastel and frills type of a gal, no disrespect to the talented individuals who can whip up a personalized tea cozy without blinking an eye. That isn’t my vibe, but I believe I was successful in carving out my own. And, a big shout-out to my buddy ChatGPT for teaching me Canva from the ground up and never losing patience when I lost my shit after one fuck-up too many.

My reasoning when diving head first into a new venture is the standard, “If they can do it, so can I.” And why not? I’m smart, creative, resourceful and absurdly driven, yet I’m beginning to think that perhaps, unlike with Stuart Smalley, people just don’t like me. Doggonit. I can deal with that, but, when I watch a movie that afterward, leaves me scratching my head, befuddled as to how it got produced while my scripts have been languishing for years, my frustration becomes all consuming.

As I feel my grip on reality slipping, even while I juggle the many balls that keep the ebbing fire in my gut from completely flaming out, I wonder if you feel the same. I wonder if, like me, you rarely if ever socialize. If you let an entire summer drift by without feeling the sun on your face. If you feel full after three bites of food because your stomach is on a constant roil due to the horrors taking place from sea to shining sea.

What’s the point?

What’s the point when a cheap grifter in an ill-fitting suit has waged war on US citizens, when many of those citizens have chosen to turn away, to pretend like what’s happening isn’t? Until their health insurance triples and the college funds set aside for their kids must be used to buy, you know, food, and they’re two months behind on their rent—THEN they get it. Too late.

Too little, too late.

What’s the point when a self-hating Jew, a garden-variety Nazi who looks like a thumb walking, is the power behind the throne? A freak raised among mostly white, affluent liberals who revels in cruelty. Who cloaks himself in it, like a maggot in shit.

What’s the point when our own military, men and women who took an oath to defend the Constitution agaiinst all enemies foreign or domestic has seemingly left us pissing in the wind? Where’s the coup? Somebody tell me—where is the fucking coup?

Where are those fucking Epstein files?

i said that I rarely socialize. I don’t see the point in that, either, nor do I have the desire to mix and mingle. In getting slowly and methodically tanked while your ever-loosening tongue is just begging you to allow it to BRING UP POLITICS.

We have no friends where we live. None. We live in a suburb with a large Hispanic population, one that’s very “birds of a feather,” if you get my drift.

I understand, sort of. Yet, I long for a real neighborhood, the kind where residents look out for one another. Where, if the people across the street threw an obnoxiously loud backyard party in the summer, they’d invite you over for a drink. Yeah, I’m old. Let me stow that misplaced nostalgia because I suspect that time will never come again.

Most of our circle of friends, those still alive, live in the city proper, and, as we’ve all gotten older, meeting up doesn’t happen with the regularity it once did.

I want to leave here. To flee. After watching every independent podcast on YouTube (fuck the MSM) detailing the latest administrative atrocity, I bark to my husband, “We have to get out of here!”

But, where? Where to go when you don’t have the resources or the contacts? The only people I would miss are my sister and her family, who live a short distance away, but, surely, Canada is close enough, no? Surely she’d understand.

A pipe dream. Much like all the others I’ve harbored throughout my life.

Often, when I’m feeling particularly lumpish, I’ll revisit my old stomping ground Medium, or mindlessly surf the Net and read vacation stories where people share, in breathless detail, their latest sojurns to exotic locales.

I read these travelogues and think, WTF? How does anyone have a good time? NOW? When immigrants are being hustled into vans and disappeared? When most of our elected officials have scraped us off their collective shoe like so much horse shit?

How do they live?

Am I envious? Perhaps, albeit, I’ve never been a good traveler. I have a deep distrust and distaste for beds and bedding not my own.

Do you remember that legendary news expose of hotel and motel bedding that aired many years back? Where “investigators” with stronger stomachs than mine used blue-light technology to reveal sheets and blankets riddled with splooged-on semen and other bodily fluids? They proved that housekeeping didn’t always change the bedding in between guests.

That bit burned its way into my brain and never left. When my husband and I road-tripped it to the Nashville Film Festival a few years ago where one of my short films screened, I stuffed the trunk of our car with sheets, pillow cases and a quilt. Anything to ensure I wasn’t sleeping on a money shot.

But, I don’t have to worry about that because that, was a veritable lifetime ago, when normalcy, or at least the illusion of it, kept the blood pumping and the elusive carrot of “happiness” within reach.

Now, the abnormal is normal and I feel it sucking the life force from me. Don’t you? I mean, look around, folks. We are fucked. It’s early October and the stores are blaring Christmas music. I’m dreading the holidays. The fakery. The false joy. The pleas for handouts on every corner for those unfortunate souls who are “worse off” than us? Aside from death, that will be the great common denominator: being worse off. That’s where we’re heading and we can’t afford to pretend otherwise.

Instead of saccharine holiday tunes, stores should be playing a death march on a loop. Because we are marching, like good little soldiers, to our doom. Pretending that someone else will magically make it all better and life will return to its regular rhythm of over-consumption, greed and apathy. Wait—that’s how we got here, isn’t it?

I’ve never experienced this level of capitulation in this country in my life and it shakes me to my core. Those of you with some seasoning know what I’m talking about.

So, what do we do? How do we get out of this? The hypocrite in me scoffs at the cries to “Resist!” And to line the streets waving “NO KINGS” signs at passing drivers, some who honk appreciatively while others flip us the bird.

I say hypocritical, because even while I don’t believe that a peaceful resolution is possible, I lack the balls to organize a forceful opposition to Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Moses Mike Johnson and the rest of the scum who are determined to kill us. Yet, every day, I pray to the Universe that some entity somewhere, will have the courage I lack. I reckon some of you can relate.

Every day, I harbor violent thoughts where the bad guys get what they deserve and then some. You don’t have to tell me how unhealthy that is as I can feel that for myself, but, I can’t help it. And I hate that I want others to do this for me—for us. But, I’m not a kid anymore. And I don’t want to spend what’s left of my time here on Earth behind bars.

Maybe there’s some life left in me yet. I don’t know, but I appreciate your reading.

© Sherry McGuinn, 2025. All Rights Reserved.