The U.S is not okay.
I've started to notice things.
The U.S hasn't gotten so bad that it affects us, not yet, but I've definitely started to notice things.
Even before the President was impeached, even before the Presidents started coming in and out of office at a faster rate than anyone could imagine, there were more unjust police killings, and more shootings, in the U.S than anywhere else. Violence was rampant, and the anarchy has only made it somehow worse. Global warming has gotten so bad that hurricanes have started appearing in California. So we can't go back now that the earthquake has passed. And global warming is still fixable. So is that rampant violence, I'm sure. As Yo-Yo Ma says in his Silk Road project documentary, still a classic by now, we are in a constant battle between feeling saved by the human spirit and feeling destroyed by it.
I'm feeling awfully destroyed right now.
When will it end?
This isn't the teenage depression phase you hear about, I'm a pre-teen, and there's nothing wrong with me, it's that the world is going to hell and I care too much!
Zoey repeatedly asks me, sometimes, "What would you do to save the world?"
Anything. Almost anything.
...But on the other hand, it's Christmas (I'm an agnostic, I celebrate for the presents and social aspect), I have a big fuzzy adorable Labradoodle named Sunshine, oh he's so cute, and our parents are both home, and home is a cute country house in Northern Colorado with a bay window and a U.S flag and it's on a hill and we get to watch the sunrise and sunset and our home is our home.
I sit on Max's lap and Zoey sits on Daria's. Daria...now that I think about it, we are on a first name basis. My mother and I...if we met on the street, we just wouldn't click, you know? I mean, she's really cool, and I guess I'm just too shy to match her level of coolness. Zoey feels she can. We haven't picked favorites, really, but people we're most comfortable with. Max is mine. He wraps his big arms around me and whispers in my ear, "I'm glad you guys didn't wake up too early this time."
"Me too." I laugh quietly. Zoey's opening her first present.
"It's from both of us," Daria explains, "Max and I."
Zoey rips open the wrapping paper. The package is fairly small and thin.
Inside the package is a book. A small book, one that must've not taken that long to write. The title is How To "Be Okay" by Max and Daria Kerrayne. It's handwritten. They wrote it for her. Zoey. She opens it to the first page after the cover and it says Everything is going to be okay. She looks confused, she looks at Daria, then Max.
She hasn't been in therapy for two years.
"You're going back to therapy," Max says, and Zoey frowns, "But this is your private book filled with prompts for paragraphs and lists for you to acknowledge and let out the bad stuff and be happy about the good stuff."
Zoey stands up. "Hug?"
We all hug her. She is small.
Now it's my turn.
My first present is a book as well. Not written by our parents. This one is about architecture, and has stencils for floor plans and everything, and the pages are graph paper, but it also teaches you about other architects and types of architecture.
Cool.
We keep opening our presents.
...I wonder what's going to happen next.