When a Well-Deserved: "I Told You So" Hurts Too Much to Say

Everyone has been there: you say something accurate and practical, be it concern or advice, and the recipient of said concern or advice doesn't listen, is dismissive, and/or outright ignores it.

Then, at some point down the road, you are proven correct. The urge to say "I told you so" is so strong you're compelled to say it, if for no other reason than the satisfaction of them knowing you were absolutely correct and throwing that back in their disbelieving face.

There are times however, when you, yours and, frankly everybody, is in the shit so deep, the "I told you so" just makes everything worse.

Back in early February 2025, I had lunch with my dad. He asked how I was doing and I was honest: worried, stressed out, and downright scared of what Dear Leader was going to do to our country (based on the steps he'd already taken).

He responded by telling me I was blowing things out of proportion, worrying about things that wouldn't happen because USA is a democracy with checks and balances, and Dear Leader wasn't as villainous as I was making him out to be. His exact words were: "You're working yourself up for no reason. This, too, shall pass."

I responded angrily, "Like the fall of the Weimar Republic, WWII, and the Holocaust passed?"

Pause: "You're being over dramatic."

He dismissed and disregarded every single thing I said, trivialized my feelings, and told me I was worried over nothing.

Flash forward to last week. I was going on travel to Illinois to visit some friends and my dad's older brother's family. I let him know I'd see Uncle and Dad said to me: "Just be careful. It's not safe out there (meaning the country) anymore."

"Oh, so you mean the fascist fucking dictatorship we're under?"

He grudgingly replied, "It's getting there. Things are really not good."

"LOL. Dad, we're not 'getting there;' we're already in it."

He says, "Well, you're not wrong."

This, of course, translates to "you were right all along," only he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Ah ha! There's that glorious vindication I was looking for!

I thought for a solid minute whether or not to say, "I told you so, back in February, at lunch that one day." It was on my lips, but I found myself unable to speak the words.

I've always had a complicated relationship with my father. He's never been able to connect with me in any emotional, meaningful way. My thoughts, ideas, desires, dreams... none of them were "good enough."

I couldn't major in theatre because I wouldn't be able to get a "good job." My ADHD was "all in my head," as in a made-up diagnosis. Same with the Bipolar Disorder; "well, you seem fine to me..." until it got so bad that even he could not ignore it.

Here is my dad, over FaceTime, unable to say, "You were right all along," because that would be giving me credit for seeing what he failed to; for staring the truth of the situation in the face and not putting my head in the sand, saying, "it can't happen here; it can't happen to me."

Looking at his face as he said, "Well, you're not wrong," made my blood sing with exultation because he finally, finally understood why I was so fearful all these past months, and the "I told you so!" was right there, waiting for me to spit it out, but...

He looked absolutely devastated. I was devastated. I've been devastated since the start, but he looked just desolate in the knowledge that he was so unequivocally wrong about it all, I couldn't bring myself to actually say it.

There was nothing I would gain from it other than making him feel even worse, and while I would have been justified in doing so, I did not want to punish him for it. He learned the hard way that "the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" has become a cesspool of capitalistic greed and hatred, led by a despotic maniac determined to become a king.

Dad had already (sort of) said I was right; so what would saying, "I told you so," accomplish? Just more pain and misery. After all, I AM right in everything I've said over the last eight months, but reveling in my rightness wouldn't make me feel better; it would just make me feel like Dear Leader, kicking shit into his opponents' faces when they've just come to the horrible realization that they are now reaping what they've sown.

So I just said, "I'm sorry that it's come to this, and that it's only going to get worse from here."

All he could do was nod and say, "I love you."

And I sincerely replied, "I love you too."

The Anxiety of It All

This year has been... a lot. I know I haven't written anything since February 2025, but the sad truth of it is that I haven't been able to. Not for lack of time or motivation, no. It's the overwhelming anxiety, terror, and depression I've been stewing in since late January.

1. I am a woman living in a society that marginalizes and seeks to control women. This is done in a variety of ways:

• "Tradwives" - There is a growing movement to return women back into ​slaves "Traditional Wives," women who stay in the home to do the cooking, cleaning, and rearing of the children. A woman's sole purpose is to be a baby-maker and an obedient wife to serve her ​Lord and Master husband's every whim and urge.

  • This means that the education of women is unnecessary. Women's place is in the home, not the workforce.

  • This also means that should said husband become violent towards his wife, she needs to "reassure him" of his worth and to "stay in the marriage" for the children.

    • Children of any age can read the room and know by feeling, if not by comprehension, when things within the marriage are not copacetic. And they sure as shit know when mom is being abused.

• Forced Birth - A staunch anti-abortion stance which reduces a woman's choice by implementing bans without exceptions for rape or incest, and a promotion of pro-natalist policies that all align with a vision that restricts women's reproductive autonomy in favor of childbirth.

  • This means that a pregnant person no longer has autonomy of her own body. She no longer gets a say in what happens to her body; said body is hijacked by laws (usually made by white men), that prevent them from seeking appropriate, necessary medical care.

    • The only "exception" to these forced-birth laws are if the life of the mother is in immediate danger of death.

      • When mother's life is at literal and immediate risk of death, healthcare professionals in these forced birth states either prioritize the life of the child over that of the mother, or wait to the point that the mother is beyond saving to act because they fear lawsuit reprisal from their state's government.

Do not tell me that the movement and the lawmakers responsible for these devastating laws are just "protecting women."

2. My partner is Brown, which has become the ultimate crime in the States. He has always had to deal with racism, but in the last eight months, things have gotten much worse. Just from what I've witnessed with him:

• Fear of ICE

  • Despite being a natural citizen, ICE doesn't seem able to, let alone care to, differentiate one type of Brown person from another (AAPI/Hispanic as an example). Not that that should even be a thing, but here we are. Brown is Brown, so these folks have automatic targets on their backs, no matter where they're from.

  • Travel is made far more difficult because of going through US Customs and Border Patrol, especially when USBP doesn't know what US territories are.

    • Yes, there is a story to that, but it is not my story to tell...

• Harassment and assault by white people using various forms of aggression with increasing vitriol and far more frequency.

3. We are under Military Occupation in democratic-leaning cities across the country:

• I live in a city that is under the Occupation of the US Government. Military occupations of cities/states within one's own democratic country are illegal without factual, evidence driven cause.

  • The Man who would be King Dear Leader has taken it upon himself to fabricate reasons to hold Democratic cities/states hostage by forcing an unasked for, unwanted, and illegal military occupation to stop the "crime epidemics."

    • Yes, you read that correctly.

  • His evidence for justification for "emergency" occupation of these democratic strongholds is... crime reports that show consistently, across the board, that crime has been, and continues to, decline since the Biden administration.

    • So he's been deploying the military to occupy US cities and/or states for no justification other than that these places voted against him in the last election. Apparently "going after [his] opponents" includes the citizenry that "does not like" him.

So, can we get real and just acknowledge that the "leader of the free world" is actually a fascist fucking dictator?

ANXIETY

Yes, it's gotten worse. Soooooo much worse. My mental health took a nose dive around March and has continued to plummet over the last several months. My anxiety level got so high, I was having daily panic attacks. (Yay Xanax!) What, do you ask, helped me get over these daily attacks and the constant feeling of "What next? OMG, what is going to happen next to make me even more afraid for my family and loved ones?"

That answer is easy: DRUGS. Well, more specifically, very potent, physician-prescribed medications to pull my mood out of the Mariana Trench and gently place me in a below-sea-level locale, which is definitely in imminent danger of flooding, but will not immediately kill me by drowning, pressure, and/or the Benz.

Finding a therapist is a different story altogether. The good ones are only able to take on new patients few and far between. The really good ones have waitlists going two-three years out, and that's with the assumption that they don't retire prior to, or just after, your first appointment. The very new-to-practice ones mean well, I truly believe that, but they are "babies" and don't have any practical, real life experience in the art of "shrinking," having only just completed their education and done practicals in a controlled environment. This means that they care a lot and try really hard, but are not yet fully equipped to deal with your shit.

I discovered this when going through a service through my Primary Care Physician (PCP). They paired me up with someone with some experience with ADHD, but no experience whatsoever with Bipolar Disorder. Also, when she found out I am an amateur filmmaker and director, she spent 48 minutes out of a 60 minute session telling me all about how she used to do theatre in high school and is able to imitate the famous people and characters with aplomb.

• To be fair, her imitations were good, but trying to pitch me on the idea of casting her in one of my projects, instead of tending to my disastrous mental health, did not go well with me, so I broke up with her. (Okay, fine, I ghosted her. I just couldn't deal with one more thing.)

So yeah, that's where I am right now.

So This is How Liberty Dies...

Credit to George Lucas

As I've said before, I usually try not to post about politics in this blog, but given the state of affairs in the United States right now, and being an American living through the collapse of our democracy, I feel compelled to say something.

First, and let me make this very clear, our current, unelected, president is Elon Musk. Mr. Trump gave him control of the entire government with his "DOGE" (Department of Government Efficiency) squad. This squad is comprised of individuals at or under the age of 25, whose jobs are to "root out efficiency problems."

This means giving the squad, who do not even have basic clearances (let alone the high-level clearances required for) access to highly confidential information, such as Medicaid and Medicare recipients and the payment systems used to cover these pay cycles, stopping food programs like SNAP for low-income families and Meals on Wheels which delivers meals to house-bound senior citizens, firing nonpartisan federal employees and their contractors, and, most egregiously, giving access to the highly private social security numbers of Americans.

These DOGE bros (there is not a single woman or person of color on this little goon squad), at the direction of "President Musk," are literally gutting our financial systems, systems that have been in place since just after the founding of our nation. (Founder and creator of our government financial and banking systems, original Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton is rolling in his grave.)

This is all a hostile takeover by the literal richest man in the entire world, who could personally fund jobs for everyone who are being, or have already been, fired, and not even feel a financial dent in his bank accounts. President Musk, in the name of "government efficiency," is rooting out anyone who is "not loyal" to Mr. Trump or President Musk.

Why am I calling Elon Musk president? It's because he has been given free reign of our financial institutions and the green light on working with agencies such as ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) to deliver on Mr. Trump's promise of deporting (non-White) immigrants to concentration camps such as Guantanamo Bay, known for its long history of human rights abuses, including extreme forms of torture for "terrorists," which include the "very criminal, drug smuggling, raping, and murdering US citizens" immigrant terrorists. Again, immigrants of color.

This hybrid Musk/Trump administration has no intention of deporting White people. This is partly why Mr. Trump wants so badly to annex Canada and Greenland. It would significantly increase the number of White people within the United States. First is deporting immigrants of color, then it will be deporting US Americans of color, then reintroducing miscegenation laws (making it illegal to marry someone outside of your own race/color), which directly affects me as my partner, a natural US citizen, is Brown, not White. As I mentioned in The Passport Saga, I made sure we both renewed our passports last year, just in case the unthinkable happened, which it did.

The other reason the Musk/Trump administration wants to annex Canada and Greenland is that they are rich in natural resources, such as crude oil and natural gas. One of the first things this administration did was to reverse all of Biden's clean energy mandates, going with a "drill, baby, drill" and a "burn, baby, burn" mentality. We, as a nation, are one of the two biggest polluters on the planet, and this administration is working hard to make sure we stay that way.

Because the Congressional House of Representatives is majority Republican, and there are "Trumpers" in the Senate, Democrats are facing near-unsurmountable difficulties to pass legislation that will actually help the American people, while the Republican majority fully backs the Trump administration. Even those who are opposed to Musk's takeover of the US government do not speak out against it. Elon Musk is acting president of the US while Trump signs the executive orders put in front of him (without reading them) and golfs.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Republican voters who are angry about Musk gaining control of the entire government, especially as he is not a natural American citizen, which is a requirement in our Constitution for anyone elected to the role of president. So while "President" Trump goes golfing, he gives Musk, an unelected, unqualified, sycophantic non-American, free reign to do whatever the hell he wants to.

Going back to Congress for a moment, Mr. Trump is selecting wholly unqualified individuals to head incredibly important agencies, such as the Department of Education (I'll touch on that in a moment), and the Department of Health and Human Services.

This second one affects anyone with mental health issues. The (shockingly) confirmed by Congress, individual, Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has it out for mental health medications, specifically banning them. This Mother Jones post goes into detail on RFK, Jr.'s sweeping plan for "studying" and "banning" certain medications. For those of you who would rather skip the post, here are the highlights:

Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The document called for the federal government to investigate the “root causes” of a broad range of conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. Conspicuously absent was any explicit mention of childhood vaccines, which Kennedy has long railed against as the head of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense.

But the document did zero in on another one of his fixations: a class of widely prescribed drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. The government, he said, would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, [and] mood stabilizers.”

So... as the article states, ADHD, autism, depression, and, generally, mood disorders are on the "assess the prevalence of and threat posed by" medication chopping block that are incredibly necessary for those of us with any of the above conditions.

I cannot stress this enough. For anyone with any form of mental health issues that require medication, you will be affected by this. Having severe ADHD and Bipolar II Disorder, I will be catastrophically affected by this. I need these medications in order to function as a person. Without my mood stabilizer, depression, and ADHD medications, I won't even be able to get out of bed most days, let alone hold down a job, or even just function on a daily basis.

And the "mental health rehabilitation" farms he's proposing are absolutely ridiculous. Farming your own, pre-chosen, "healthy foods" is not going to help those with Neurodivergent issues, and will in fact make it worse for them.

These "rehabilitation farms" are just another word for eradicating the "unwanted" from society. This entire situation with the US government turns more and more into 1939-1941 Nazi Germany. Disabled people? Euthanize them. Mental health issues or cognitive birth defects? Euthanize them. They are "a drain on society," meaning the Nazi government no longer wanted to pay for "defectives," or allow them to procreate.

Speaking of Nazi Germany, the Department of Education is being gutted. Mr. Trump wants to change the Pledge of Allegiance from "I pledge my allegiance to the flag, and the United States of America..." to "I pledge my allegiance to President Trump, and the United States of America..." He wants only White history taught, erasing slavery, internment camps, wars fought that the US didn't win, and the basic history of America in general.

Why? Because this administration doesn't want "White children made to feel guilty" in their history classes. He also doesn't want the Holocaust covered either, or the rise of Nazi Germany. These atrocities were not committed on US soil, but the Nazi playbook is absolutely in play, step by step, in this "Project 2025" administration. Why do we not want Nazi/Holocaust history taught? Simple. This administration doesn't want you to know what they're really up to, especially the early purging of people of color (Romanians are an apt example). What happened to these people once Hitler had control of the government? Why concentration camps of course.

There was an awakening in the early to mid 1930s, where LGBTQIA folks were coming out and being allowed to be themselves, without so much fear of reprisal. What happened to these people? Concentration and death camps.

Sound familiar? We already have at least one straight-up literal concentration camp (Guantanamo Bay), and the holding cells for immigrants waiting for asylum hearings are on par with concentration camps. The human rights violations in these facilities, which are on American soil, are every bit as atrocious as what the Nazi's did.

And touching on that subject, there are some pretty bleak examples of past US administrations and what they allowed to happen on US soil. During Pres. Andrew Jackson's administration, we have the Trail of Tears, which was the displacement of native peoples to designated areas within the United States. On this forced march across the country, Native Americans died by the thousands.

Sounds like forcing a population of "undesirable people" into ghettos? Absolutely correct.

During WWII, the US also had Japanese Internment Camps because "we [were] at war with Japan." Over 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced into these American concentration camps, again rife with civil and human rights violations, again just like the German ghettos used to "house" Jewish people before sending them to concentration or death camps.

Did the US actually have death camps? Technically, no, but the conditions in which Japanese Americans were forced to live might as well have been. Just as in the German ghettos, disease was rampant due to overcrowded facilities, with little to no medical care given, and no thought to the fact that these Japanese Americans were Americans, let alone human beings.

When leadership "others" people, Jewish people in Germany, dark-skinned immigrants here, they set the example that these people are subhuman, which is to say, lower than human, or not human at all. Do civil and human rights apply to them? No. Why would they? "They're not really human beings, so there's no point in treating them as such."

What do dictators do? They quash the press (calling it "alternative news/facts") as we've seen done with the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which are now towing the fascist line. They strip people of their rights and freedoms, they silence citizens who speak out against their regime, and they hostilely take over the systems of finance and government. Our new fascist regime is terrifying for all Americans.

These are dark, scary days for all Americans.