And if you know me at all, you know I don’t mean Reality TV.

Based on recent occurrences in conversations with people whose rights I defend, I’ll probably get lambasted for co-opting the “I Stand With PP” or “I Stand With Orlando” tag line.

But, just #LetChrisSpeak for a second.

I went to bed last night sad.  Inconsolably so, and it bothered me.  But I knew that it was just because it was the end of another day in what I have to keep reminding myself is not the new normal.  Yesterday was a particularly hard day because it was the day that The Wicked Witch of DeVos was confirmed as Secretary of Education.

Yet another head scratchingly unqualified nominee to the new White House administration’s clown car-esque cabinet of cronies.  It was the first time that the VP in his role presiding over the Senate had to cast the deciding vote on a president’s cabinet member.  But, hope against hope, I had held out that one of the Ratpublican Senators would join the other two from their party aligning against DeVos to make the VP vote unnecessary.

Alas.

When I woke up this morning, I was still sad.  I might have sobbed a bit in the shower.

Nothing too dramatic.

It didn’t help that when I had woken up, I caught the news blurb that Elizabeth Warren had been sidelined by Mitch McConnell for the rest of the debate over the cabinet pick for Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, if you can fucking believe that abomination of a name.  No wonder he turned out to be a racist, sexist, homophobic piece of human garbage as an adult.

In case you missed it, Warren was censured for allegedly speaking ill of another member of the Senate when she read a letter from Coretta Scott King calling out Sessions’ unfitness to fill a federal judicial appointment he had been nominated for.  It was offensive to read what is now an historical document in America’s political and racial history.

I’m riding into the airport on Max and I catch this incredible Danish commercial that got my feels running hot again and as I’m sitting there, watching this commercial, I realize that it’s stirring me up because it’s what America is supposed to be and then I realized how far from that ideal we have all gotten.

It’s all fucked up.

I re-watched it and posted it to my Facebook page because I want to make it true again.

The commercial brought back old nostalgic feelings in me, like the way that I felt during the Puppy Episode of the Ellen sitcom where she comes out and Oprah (playing her therapist) gives her a cake that says, “Good for you, Ellen, you’re gay”.  Such a simple declaration to celebrate someone living their true self.

That’s what I think America should be.

We’re no longer the land of the free and home of the brave.

We’re a country of scaredy cats that feel strong and whole when they can legislate away someone else’s freedoms because they don’t agree with them.

I was just getting more and more agitated as I thought on it.  I got distracted by how upset and inconsolable I was.  I tried to remember the last time I had been so upset that I was just walking around in a state of…numbness.

Then it hit me.

The Pulse massacre in Orlando.

You think that’s your full circle Xtopher experience?  Just wait.

Somehow, I make it through the day.  The nice thing about work for me is that it can truly be an escape.  If I can make it through the first five minutes without discussing what’s bugging me, I can probably back burner that shit for the entire day.  And I do.

I’m riding the Max home 11 hours later and I see that Sessions has been confirmed.  I think the headline was “Put On Your Sunday Hood, Jeffie, It’s Time To Celebrate!”, but I could be paraphrasing.

I run to the RiteAid on my way home to pick up a prescription refill and leave with $30 worth of comfort food.  Damn you, RiteAid and your 2-fer deals…

Did I forget to mention that all this time, I’m watching a CNN show where Jake Tapper is making nice with KellyAnne Clownfish?  It turned out to be something to finally celebrate, or damned close to it:  Tapper was using the word “False”.  I think he used it 50 times in a half hour.  I say this is damned close to something to celebrate because he needs – or someone does – to use the word “LIE” when calling these people out on their bullshit.

It’s an inescapable conclusion with so many of these issues.

An issue that, had the media not been so…generous with the candidate’s honesty on the campaign trail, I think we’d have an actual president today and not this Cheeto-In-Chief we got stuck with.

Nevertheless, a corner has been turned.

Hopefully, a floodgate opened.

Tapper had Conway on the ropes for most of the segment and he was so civil during the exchange, even when calling her out on trying to spin the question into something she wanted to talk about.  I think that was the segment where they were talking about the assertion that CNN and other news channels hadn’t been covering the acts of terror that prompted the – allegedly prompted – travel ban a few weeks back.  He was reading from a list of attacks that CNN was accused of not covering while a graphic was going up with screen grabs of CNN reporters – Tapper included – covering said events.  One of those events was…The Pulse Nightclub shooting, which I think was covered by Tapper…if I remember correctly.

See?  That’s full-circle Xtopher.

He asked how she could defend that list and she started complimenting him on his network’s coverage.

Didn’t buy it.

She started talking about how sad it was that 49 innocent lives were lost in that massacre, and of course, I’m screaming inside that it was 50 innocent lives, because Omar Mateen was a victim just like the rest of them.  He was just victimized over a longer period of time to become the man that could shoot 49 people dead in some twisted ideological agenda.

The only thing that would have made this better – and I don’t want to be selfish here – is two things:

He let KellyAnne spin some vague tale about a reporter who had called her at her daughter’s recital and asked her to comment on a story he was writing based on a post on her social media page.  She didn’t elaborate on the content and she didn’t name the reporter or the news outlet.  I’m thinking when you try to defend your integrity, you best be using some verifiable facts.  Admittedly, not this administration’s strong suit.

God, now I’ve got to remember the second thing.

Shit.  It’s gone.

But, man…proof from Jake Tapper that there is reason to always be hopeful.  It may take a while to get here, but slowly and surely, truth and reason will prevail.

Every.

Damn.

Time.

I’m sad that we have to live through two weeks of this mis-administration, let alone two years until the midterm elections and we can restore reason to Congress.  But at least I can live this time knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel is there and getting bigger.

Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a mushroom cloud.