Hey, love.

Listen. Sometimes depression is just a thing you have. Sometimes it ain’t going anywhere.

You can do all the work and troubleshooting, putting in effort and doing what you should with nutrition, exercise, sleep habits, gratitude, mindfulness, therapy, medication, and so on, and still… you know, have depression. Still have a depressive day, week, year, life.

It can be exhausting perpetually viewing yourself as standing on this hamster wheel where it seems like if you’d only run fast enough, you’d reach, what, normalcy? Basic functionality? See, the “basic” stuff other people seem to do easily — things like…

Hey, kiddo.

Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. Things came up, life happened, between school and work and relationship stuff, time just got away and… ah, screw it. I’m not going to make excuses.

I ignored you for a long time, and I’m sorry.

I’m here now. I know that sounds ridiculous, and I know you have issues trusting people — especially me. But I hope this can be a start.

Let me reintroduce myself. I’m not the future you. I’m the foundation for the future us. It’s my job and my joy to help you become the best…

so
it turns out
god isn’t real
and anarchy is beautiful.

say,
can you do a handstand?
you’ll look funny
and your blood will rush,

but
if you look at the planet
upside down
— like you’re carrying it —

it starts to make sense.

anxiety feels like
having trust issues
between yourself
and the entire universe

talking to you again
I think

we could fall in love
with the grunge of painful days

we could find something
in this vibrant discomfort

like fingers crawling
up the neck of a bass guitar

giving birth
to low frequencies

— ticklish,
grating —

up our spines
and into our skulls

the whole event
reminding us

it’s our soft parts
that really shake

Here’s a rare tidbit of trivia about me: I’m divorced.

Let’s briefly parse some of the connotations with that statement.

I think a lot of people still see divorce — or the end of any long relationship — as some kind of failure. A sad thing, like a movie with an unhappy ending.

On its face this makes sense. Most people enter long-term, committed relationships (of which marriage used to be seen as the quintessential form) with the intent for them to be lifelong.

In retrospect, “til death do us part” can be such a toxic, horribly imprisoning thought, wrapped…

To the extent that we are able, our first and foremost responsibility within the movement for social progress is mutual aid, helping those most vulnerable and most oppressed by capitalism’s oppressive hierarchies. That’s step one: to strengthen the bonds of solidarity with the colonized, with the poor, with the exploited laborer. To look upon the houseless and say, “Your struggle is mine.”

This is what chiefly separates us from those who look away from the struggle of others, those who tell them now is not the time to end their suffering. …

The average American might think Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders have little in common, but what unified them and formed the passionate base of their energetic campaigns was the calculated deployment of populist rhetoric. Populism — a form of politics that represents the interests of ordinary people — is here to stay. The appetite for an outsider to fight for the “little guy” will only increase as flip-flopping administrations fail to improve life for average people. The problem is that the major parties aren’t really trying to, but they still grasp the power of this weapon.

Populism, the ruling class’s favorite weapon

Congress has…