Carter Canyon WMA.

The last two weeks have been incredibly difficult to get through. As with any trauma work, there will be good and bad times, progress and setbacks. This past week was one of the more difficult ones, but three friends stepped up to help keep me on track and to be that inner voice of rationality when my own inner voice could not. To them, I am eternally grateful.

As for where I go next, it has to be spending more time offline doing what I love (reading, writing, being in nature) and less online, even though I know that means losing touch with people.

I like to read the news. It’s the first thing I do each morning and I catch up when I get home. I love learning about the world around me and things going on in distant lands. That has become increasingly difficult when so much of the news is consumed with women being treated like garbage simply because they are women. Our Congress has willingly said they do not care if a woman was sexually assaulted or raped. They are interested in their agenda and women don’t count. They are willing to destroy the next thirty to fifty years of Supreme Court decisions so they can keep women in their place.

These kinds of stories make it difficult for survivors of sexual assault and rape, like me, to stay informed. Each day we are bombarded with people telling us our bodies are not our own in one way or another. Each day, ignorant people try to tell us how we should remember and how we are not to be believed. Each day, we have to fight back to explain things. Each day, we tire of it a little more.

If you want to understand, read. If you can’t be bothered to read, listen.

This is not just about Supreme Court justices and the future of our country. It’s about the bile that is spewed on social media on a regular basis. It’s about a president and a congress who approve of such behavior and stoke the fires of division.

I have been on one form or another of what is now known as social media since 1993. It can be an incredibly dark place. In the past two years, it seems the entirety of social media wants to only be a pit of despair, a place to tear others down, where the champions are those who harm others’ mental well-being.

So, I am choosing to not readily participate in that anymore. I haven’t posted on Twitter in over two weeks. I haven’t logged in there either. Facebook has proven a bit more difficult. I like to keep up with what’s going on with my friends and I don’t want to lose touch with them, but for my own sanity and recovery, I need to spend less time there.

I currently have six articles and stories that I have started and intend to write and post. I could, realistically, post a story a day to my website. Instead, I have allowed things in the news to consume me. I know where that road leads. I have fought the good fight against corrupt politicians for more than thirty years. I need to get the balance back in my life if I’m going to be healthy again. I can’t worry about whether someone else thinks that’s selfish.

Will I still rage against the establishment? Yes. It will just be more measured and it will be here. I will still rise up against injustice. I will speak my mind. I will regale you with my stupid, silly stories. I will share my photographs. I will tell you things you probably don’t want to hear. They will just be on my website and not on social media. In some ways, that breaks my heart to know people will drift away from me, but I can no longer worry about them. If that’s selfish, then so be it.

Love is greater than hate. It will prevail again. In all fairness, I’ve taken enough of the hate over the last four decades that I deserve a break, however long that may be. Someone else will have to pick up the torch and run for me for a little while.