Writing from the Edge of the Map
Dispatches from a resistance running on fumes
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a race car at a pit stop—tires rotated, just enough fuel poured in to get through a few more laps before sputtering out again. That’s what this political cycle has felt like. Not a full refueling. Not a real reset. Just enough to keep us moving until the next emergency.
And it’s exhausting.
The most draining part isn’t just the policies, the headlines, the blatant erosion of what’s left of “normal.” It’s the question that keeps echoing in my mind: Why aren’t more people outraged? And before you tell me “plenty of people are,” maybe the better question is—why aren’t the right people outraged? The ones with the leverage, the voice, the vote, the power?
Because if they were, wouldn’t we see it by now? Wouldn’t we see some bounce back? Some corrective flow? Some sign that the system hasn’t completely flatlined?
But it’s not correcting itself. It’s being held together by bubblegum, and instead of asking why the engine is failing, we keep blaming the gum for not holding the entire machine.
We blame immigrants. We blame social programs. We blame the very people already carrying too much.
Meanwhile, leadership plays dumb. We’re told to call our representatives—so we do—but the votes still pass. So what’s the point of calling someone who already knows what’s on the docket, knows how they plan to vote, and tells us to call them anyway?
It feels like a game we were never meant to win. A theater of participation.
Some days I want to tune it all out. Not because I don’t care—but because I care too much.
I want to live. To laugh with my kids. To write about love and moonlight. But when so many have already stopped caring, those of us who still feel everything are left holding it all.
And still, absurdity keeps winning. Every headline feels like a parody. I count down—three and a half years left in this presidency. And while that clock ticks slowly, I’m praying the timeline is shorter for some of the others—the representatives, the decision-makers whose terms come up sooner. Because what kind of future are we building if this is what we’ve come to accept?
We were told democracy means the people have power. But if people only vote in their own self-interest, not for the good of the whole, then maybe we don’t have a democracy at all. Maybe we have something else. Something broken.
So then the meditation today isn’t just about whether the government represents democracy—it’s about whether we do. If this country is to be democratic in nature, that responsibility doesn’t lie with the government alone. It lies with the people, too. And if both the government and the people are moving in ways that preserve dysfunction—if we’re not just tolerating the chaos but accepting it—then what we have isn’t just a broken democracy. It’s a system in which the government and the people are in unspoken agreement to let it stay broken.
I used to think of it as a toxic relationship—where one side benefits at the expense of the other.
But now, I’m not so sure. This feels more like a mutual arrangement. A symbiotic dysfunction. One side feeds off the other’s complacency, and both sides keep the cycle alive.
I say this as someone who’s been on the front lines of so many conversations—about advocacy, empowerment, liberation, and the fight against oppression. I’ve been in rooms, classrooms, community spaces where the work feels possible, where you push and actually feel something shift. Usually, that gives you the energy to keep going. To believe.
But it seems like sometimes, we celebrate the victory prematurely. We look for a save of sorts. We convince ourselves the battle is still way down the line—somewhere in the distance—when the reality is that it’s already at our doorstep. Getting people to believe that once language is co-opted, what follows is physical freedom, is no small feat. Because to legislate someone’s thinking, then their speech, and then how they move through the world—what else is left?
I hope at some point we grow exhausted of the euphemisms. We can only cry “fascist, fascist, fascist” so many times before the word starts to sound like background noise. And if we’re not also calling out “white supremacy, white supremacy, white supremacy” because we’re afraid it offends or alienates, then we’re not paying attention to what got us here in the first place.
As a person of color, who is Black and also an immigrant, these are extraordinarily exhausting times.
I was telling a friend how I keep feeling exhausted, and she asked, “Are you sure it’s not depression?” I said, no, I just feel extremely tired and overwhelmed. Especially as someone who writes to connect, to create change—to not feel like any of it is gaining traction or having impact? That’s not depression. That’s an existential crisis. And the world’s response feels like: get in line.
Some days I wonder if the race around the track is just moving faster than any of us can comprehend. Or maybe I’ve simply been running too long without a real pause.
All I know is—on this unbearably hot day—I’d rather be at the beach, with my feet in the water, sharing time and space with someone who doesn’t mind getting lost in the moment.
Because sometimes, what sustains resistance isn’t the fire of outrage. It’s the quiet, the joy, the gentle reminder that we’re still human, still capable of softness, still reaching for one another.
Maybe that’s where we refuel.
Even in posting this, I’m not sure who it will reach, or if it will reach anyone in a way that truly sparks something—a conversation, a shift, a breath. It’s a strange place to be, especially for someone who doesn’t write for the algorithm, who isn’t chasing influence but trying, sincerely, to connect. To reach people in the quiet places where change begins.
And maybe that’s the question that lingers long after the screen goes dark: Where do we go from here? Not just politically, but spiritually. Emotionally. Collectively.
Because if we don’t start asking that together—out loud, in community—then we’ll keep moving, fast and numb, toward something that looks less and less like a future.
In conversation, always,
Enzo 🙏🏾❤️