2020 – The year we are all just trying to survive
2019 was an exciting and eventful year for my family. Two of my children got married. My second grandchild, and first grandson, was born. One son started trade school. I had finished up the busiest selling season of my career and was looking forward to many exciting milestones in 2020. The year started off great. I was about to hit the big 5.0. and my youngest was about to turn 18. In many ways, I have always felt, in my mind, like I’ve always been 15…married for 27 years, the minivan driving mother of 5 now grown children with a body that is slowly betraying me…but somehow, still 15…until this year.
If you would have told me two years ago that 2020 would be the death of that 15-year-old inner me, and the ignition of embers that would give birth to a new and different identity…a flaming mad conservative…a Patriot…I would not have believed it.
I had finally reached a happy place in my life where I could see a change in the struggle of raising children and balancing a career, found a renewed interest in my favorite hobby – photography. Then, in mid-March, as we all know, the country began to slowly, state-by-state, cocoon into a state of perpetually extending quarantine.
At first they said it was for our safety and that we had to do it for the greater good. They said it would only be for a few weeks, and we had to flatten the curve. We heard horror stories of hospital overload and deaths by the thousands in New York – bodies stacking up and no funerals were allowed. Loved ones were isolated at hospitals with no family to advocate for their safety. Nursing homes went into extreme lock-down as their residents perished en-mass. We were told we had to wear a mask to participate in the barest of necessities such as grocery shopping, but to stay home for the good of the community. Offices were closed and businesses were bankrupted and despair began to set in. Church services were suspended. This was a 100-year pandemic and we were to expect deaths across the country in the millions.
I watched as our company – live meetings, trade shows and conventions – received show cancellations one at a time – sometimes several a day. All that hard work we had been preparing for just vanished. The days of acclimatizing to juggling family needs while working from home and connecting with my co-workers in weekly online bingo and Yammer postings dragged on, and then began to wain as the company would ultimately endure five waves of furloughs. We dwindled from 250 employees to a sobering 32 survivors. At first, we were all happy to get to keep our jobs with 25% pay cuts, but as time went by and governors across the country kept extending lock-down orders, the sad realization set it that the company would not be able to survive in its current form without further draconian cutbacks. Larger competitors began to go out of business. And then we received the dreaded news that we were going into deep hibernation with additional pay cuts – from 25% down to 40% decreases – and from 40 hours to 32.
The restrictions have dragged on adnasium, but we still cling bare-knuckled, fighting for the survival of our industry, our jobs, families, churches, communities…our American way of life.
Daily we listen to the news updates, with conflicting reports on what causes COVID-19 and how to best protect ourselves from the dreaded virus – I call it the unwanted import from China. Nobody can agree – wear a mask, but not the ones need by the medical community – don’t wear a mask. They do or do not work. We must stay 6 feet apart – or maybe 10 feet. People are terrified of getting exposed because they might be subject to a mandatory 14 day home quarantine (for many that means no pay for two weeks) along with any family member who they have been exposed to. And nobody wants to kill Grandma or Grandpa. People were encouraged to call and report neighbors if they were seen outside not wearing a mask or not following distancing protocol. We devolved into a society not unlike the German ‘Brown Shirts’ of the 1940s. Anyone and everyone could be a threat for a variety of reasons.
Then one day a few months ago – a few months into the lockdown – when I had been vacillating between the assurance that the government was overstating the numbers, but we really did need to be careful to follow all of the protocol so as not to spread this virus, remember Dallas…Safer At Home. After spending months avoiding my elderly parents because I love them so much I didn’t want to take a chance at spreading this virus to them.
THEN I HAD MY RED PILL MOMENT.
I hadn’t been sleeping normally at nights for months, so I was up watching YouTube videos. My daughter came to me with her phone and told me she really wanted me to watch this video with her. It was late and I was emotionally drained, but I could see that it was important to her, so I agreed.
This was the ember of truth that opened my eyes and ignited my patriotic passion. Overnight, I became a researching, YouTube Watching, Facebook posting, Parler echoing, meme generating, fighting mad conservative – a Patriot, ready to protect and defend the Constitution again all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC. Never in my most creative imagination did I ever think that in my lifetime I would ever feel the need to stand up and fight for my country against my own government. Never did I dream, in the greatest/freest country in the world, we would be faced with an attempt at a Socialist/Marxist Globalist takeover, orchestrated by people within our own government.
I had already been a lifelong conservative aware of most of the same things I know today. But this one 1hr:17min documentary took all the things I already knew, explained the historical facts that had been hiding in plane sight, and connected them in a way that unlocked a vault of truth I never knew was there. It was as if, in a single moment, I could suddenly see the world around me, past and present all at once in 3D. It took over three hours to watch the video because I had to keep pausing to explain to my kids (yes I had a room full of family at this point) the historical significance of parts of the story so they could understand why this information is so important to know. This was the moment that I woke up and came to the conclusion that the world, the country that I thought I was living in was just an illusion. It was the country they wanted me to see, but in reality, I had been sleep walking the entire time.
I just wanted a peaceful life – LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS – I wanted to get married, raise a family, teach at my church, enjoy my career, retire and travel. This was never part of the plan.
But now my eyes are open and I realize that the government has been lying to We the People for more than my entire life, and its too late in the game for me to turn a way and ignore it. Our Country and and our very way of life is at stake.
I cannot look away.
I cannot be silent.
I must now take up the cloak of truth and fight with everything I have for the future of this country, for my family, my children and grandchildren, for my church, my community. At this point, everything is on the table. I take nothing for granted and I research everything. God has given me a specific set of gifts and skills and I will use them for his Glory, and for my Country.
I am a digital soldier, a fighting mad conservative, a PATRIOT.
JOIN ME and together we will fight for those who are still asleep.