tarot bird on Nostr: I was in the hospital most of the day yesterday as my mother's condition was updated ...

I was in the hospital most of the day yesterday as my mother's condition was updated from "bad cough" to "a bit of fluid in her lungs" to "maybe cancer, we need to do more scans" to "it's lung cancer".

Once she got a bed, I walked down to the local burger joint since I hadn't eaten in many hours. While waiting for my order, some coward yelled slurs at me out of a car window.

This is why I no longer live in the place I once considered my hometown. It was always like this, since well before I even thought of transitioning. I've been harassed, threatened, and assaulted there as far back as I can remember. It's a left-leaning city in a left-leaning county in one of the bluest states in the US, and so many people who live there are smugly complacent about that. But the fascists are there. They've always been there, for at least as long as I've been alive, and probably for at least a century before that.

Walking back to the hospital eating my burger, I passed a black woman in a wheelchair who asked for some change to buy a soda. I gave her a twenty that I could only barely afford because it's fucking hard out there. She said thanks and misgendered me very politely. I didn't correct her because gods know she's dealing with at least as much shit as I am and she was at least trying to be a decent human being, which is more than I can say for many of the fuckers in that hateful place.

Back at the hospital waiting for the CT scan that would tell us that mother is dying imminently, I wondered if I had made a mistake prioritizing my own safety and well-being by moving away from my mother, the person who always had my back there. That place has taken so much from me over the years. Now it has taken some of the last years of my mother's life from me and I am so. fucking. angry.