These have been the worst, most difficult six months of my entire life.
Seeing your entire career questioned.
Seeing your own twenty-two years of public service openly despised by a Screeching Nobody, who promised DOGE style purges. The lists were ready and I was on one of them.
Seeing your firm options and principles pressured. Faust is a lifelong obsession, yet I never imagined I'd feature in a Balkan remake of sorts. Not giving in is harder that you'd think. I didn't.
Seeing people you once called your friends ready to turn coats and sell themselves - and to whom (two cheap crooks), and for what (empty promises that were never happening, anyways).
Planning to do the unthinkable: sell our house, pack our belongings, leave for France. We even found a charming fisherman's cabin near Quimper....
... which, I am so fucking relieved to write, will not happen, after all.
It's been six months we don't sleep properly. It's been six months we eat whatever junk food we can manage to order. It's been six months we live with the humiliating fear of inevitable doom that was never to be, anyways. Except we had no idea and no way to tell for sure.
Tonight, the vote of fear uncharacteristically trumped the vote of anger:
I started my day with Bella Ciao, I am ending it in the same vein, with this:
There are two wonderful Portuguese shippers who know very well what this song means to me, on a very personal level. And they know it because we sang it together, in front of the Paris Landcon venue, on April 25th, as we were picking our damned passes. We sang it like the powerful spell it is, for all the good reasons, spoken and unspoken #cravos. I will never forget that moment - you both know who you are 💖😘.
We now took our lives back, even if much of it might be shattered, still. That is not important today: we have tomorrow to think about it.
....'And they did not win'.
My deepest, heartfelt thanks to all of you who wrote, phoned, asked, prayed, sang, comforted, joked and simply cared. I never expected such an outpouring of empathy and I am humbled, again.
I love you, too. We love you, too. We simply hope you know that.
With this solved and behind us, I can go back to SC, which is far easier and more pleasant than having to deal with a potential Fascist coup in my own backyard.
Later edit: for those who still stress and in case it wasn't clear - WE SURE WON!