​I’m conscious of a craving - primal, visceral, raw, and real. It’s visual and tactile and goes well beyond any type of desire I’ve ever had before.

I’m hungry for it.
Didn’t even realize it until recently, when I noticed I couldn’t get enough of it.

Not chocolate.
Not sex (although that’s wonderfully primal too).
Not for luxury items or things…

It’s for…

COLORS
Not just any colors.
VIBRANCY

Along with the craving comes the incredible, enormous feeling of being 100% ALIVE.

I’m not even sure I am describing it correctly.

“I’m sorry. But can I make a reservation?”

I’m sitting on a train to Boston. The seats are wide and comfortable. For the most part, things are quiet, other than the occasional murmur of a conversation. 

A few stations ago, a group of young women got on the train. They were trying to sit near each other. I cleared the seat next to me for one of them, and went back to reading my book.

“I’m sorry to bother you but…”

It was her friend’s voice across the aisle that broke into my concentration. None of them were loud, but it was the “I’m sorry” that kept me re-reading the same paragraph.

In the space of a less than two minute conversation, the girl had said it SIX times. 

It’s Friday, November 8, 2024. I’m sitting at a coffee shop. In a town I love. After stopping by to check on my wonderful hair stylist. A gay man who is scared about what the election results mean for him and his husband. 

Earlier today I texted some of my transgender friends. They had to pull their child out of school for a day because she was so scared. They are checking their passports to make sure they are in order. Not because they want to leave the country. But because they are afraid they won’t be able to get a passport in the future. Or at least one that correctly identifies them. 

My favorite librarian is worried about his disabled sister’s benefits as the day care center has already made her feel like her care is in jeopardy. He is working two jobs as it is, to make sure his family is cared for properly. 

It’s barely been 48 hours since the election results were announced and I know of no one in my close friend group who is NOT experiencing shock, horror, fear, anger, disappointment, sadness, or a myriad of other negative emotions.

I spent yesterday in tears. Sobbing, ugly, hiccuping tears. And when I finally pulled myself together enough to head to a coffee shop, I cried silently walking the streets to the cafe, as the raindrops fell. Later I cried again. And again. And again.

I woke this morning to a haunted look on my face. And the question in my heart: “With everything going so right in my life, what could possibly have me falling apart so greatly?”

The answer is not so simple. But it starts with something that sounds almost fantastical in its phrasing - INTERNET TROLLS.

When I was a little girl, I loved the stories that included mythological creatures. There was one in which a hero had to cross a bridge. But the bridge was guarded by trolls who lived under it. You wouldn’t even know they existed, until you tried to cross the bridge. And then they appeared to extract their price - in some rather gruesome versions of the story, it was a pound of flesh. 

Interestingly, the bridges in all these stories were actually public structures. The trolls had no more right to take a fee, than did anyone else. But they felt entitled or superior. Or perhaps they merely hated others who walked boldly in plain sight while they felt they had to hide. (Although I’ve never come across a version of the story in which anyone treated them badly until the trolls struck first.)

Sometimes I wonder if anyone out there thinks about the world the same way I do. 

Once upon a time, a sweetheart of mine nicknamed me "Alice". He said witnessing me in the world was like watching a character in a story step through the proverbial looking glass or fall down a rabbit hole.

That my perspective was so full of wonder and curiosity, that it made him worried I didn't see the world clearly with all it's ugliness too.

But I do see it clearly, I simply choose to emphasize it's beauty most of the time in the hopes of inspiring more.

Yet sometimes...I wonder...