We are told to be thankful for the big things: health, family, the roof over our heads. But this year, in the twilight of 2025, I find myself offering a quiet, fervent prayer to Beyonce and Lady Gaga of gratitude for something far more specific, something that doesn’t fit neatly on a Hallmark card. I am profoundly, bone-deep thankful that the people currently trying to dismantle American democracy are absolutely, breathtakingly stupid.
We are living in a timeline that feels like it was written by a committee of sadistic showrunners who think subtlety is for cowards, yet here I am, still breathing, still writing, and still preparing to marry the man I love in a state that actively wishes we would evaporate. My gratitude is not soft. It is a jagged, violent thing. It is the sensation of grabbing a ledge by your fingernails while the cliff face crumbles beneath you and realizing that, against all odds, your grip is holding.
My Thanksgiving menu this year looks a little different than the Norman Rockwell standard. The centerpiece is not a turkey, but a meticulously organized pill organizer containing the five oral chemotherapy medications I take every single day. This is my “cocktail,” a word that implies a martini glass but in my case implies a biological scorched-earth campaign against stage two throat cancer. Last year, the tumor decided to have a growth spurt, acting like a rebellious teenager trying to see how much chaos it could cause before curfew. But we found the right mix. The poison is working. The tumor is shrinking. The process is excruciating, a daily navigation of pain and nausea that makes the simple act of existing feel like an endurance sport, but I am grateful for the poison. I am grateful for the science that allows me to kill the thing that is trying to kill me, even if it feels like I am swallowing fire to do it.
There is a specific kind of clarity that comes when your body tries to evict you. You stop caring about the small indignities of modern life and start clinging ferociously to the anchors that keep you tethered to the earth. My primary anchor is Matthew. He is my fiancé, the love of my life, and the only person who can look at the wreckage of my health and the wreckage of our political landscape and still find a way to make me laugh. Loving Matthew is a revolutionary act. In a state like Texas, where the governor seems determined to turn The Handmaid’s Tale into a documentary, our relationship is a glitch in their matrix. His presence is a daily reminder that softness can exist in a hard world, and that stability is possible even when the ground is shaking. He stays when others flee. He holds the space when I am too tired to occupy it.
Then there is the tiny, four-legged dictator who runs our household. Daisy is not just a dog; she is a bougie Chihuahua princess who operates with the entitlement of a dowager countess and the ferocity of a velociraptor. She saved my life, quite literally, by giving me a reason to get out of bed on days when gravity felt personal. There is something profoundly grounding about a creature that demands luxury and affection with such absolute certainty. She does not care about the Supreme Court. She does not care about the price of gas. She cares about the softness of her blanket and the timeliness of her treats. Her narcissism is healing. It forces me to focus on the immediate, on the tactile, on the specific needs of a five-pound animal who believes she is the center of the universe. And frankly, she makes a compelling case.
My gratitude extends to the chosen family who have filled the gaps left by a world that often prefers its families nuclear and straight. Tasi and Shelby are not just friends; they are the structural support beams of my life. They are the people who remind me that I am a person, not just a patient or a political statistic. We have built a fortress of inside jokes and shared trauma, a space where we can be messy and afraid and angry without judgment. In a time when “community” is often just a marketing buzzword, they are the real thing. They are the proof that blood is a biological accident, but loyalty is a choice.
And speaking of choices, I am weirdly, darkly grateful for the gig economy. This is not an endorsement of late-stage capitalism, which remains a dumpster fire, but a pragmatic admission that DoorDash has allowed me to survive. When you are fighting cancer, the traditional nine-to-five is a fantasy. You cannot schedule chemotherapy side effects. You cannot put “vomiting” on a Google Calendar. The ability to work when I can, as I can, has given me a semblance of agency in a life that often feels dictated by doctors and bills. Driving food to strangers while my body fights a civil war is a strange, surreal experience, but it keeps the lights on. It keeps the bougie princess in kibble. It is a lifeline made of takeout orders and delivery fees, and for that, I have to be thankful.
But my gratitude is not just domestic; it is political. We are living under an administration that can charitably be described as “evil,” a regime that views cruelty as a policy goal and empathy as a weakness. Yet, I am thankful for the resistance. I am thankful for Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, women who have been vilified, mocked, and targeted by the most powerful misogyny machine in history, yet continue to stand in the breach. They are trying to save us from a future where rights are optional and democracy is a suggestion. Their resilience is a mirror to my own. If they can keep fighting after everything that has been thrown at them, I can take my five pills and keep moving.
The 2025 election was not the total victory we dreamed of, but it was not the apocalypse we feared. It showed real progress. It showed that the fever is breaking, however slowly. There is a horizon for the 2026 midterms that looks promising, a glimmer of light suggesting that the American electorate is finally realizing that authoritarianism is bad for property values and personal liberty. We are not out of the woods, but we have found a path that might lead us there.
And let us talk about the elephant in the room, or rather, the gavel in the room. Gay marriage has not been dismantled yet. I emphasize “yet” because I am not naive. The recent court case was bad. The arguments were terrifying. The Supreme Court majority looks at Obergefell the way a hungry wolf looks at a slow deer. They want to take it away. They have signaled, with the subtlety of a brick through a window, that our unions are on the chopping block. But for today, right now, in this breath, I can still marry Matthew. The paper still holds weight. We are existing in the space between the threat and the execution, and I am choosing to fill that space with a stubborn, defiant joy. Every day we are married is a day we won.
But perhaps the greatest source of my gratitude is the one I never expected: the sheer, unadulterated incompetence of the people trying to destroy us. We are living through a terrifying experiment in authoritarianism. The intent is clear. The malice is palpable. But—and this is the saving grace that keeps me from spiraling into total despair—they are also the Keystone Cops of tyranny.
Take the “Revenge Tour.” They appointed Lindsey Halligan to be a U.S. Attorney to indict James Comey, and then the case imploded because they forgot to check the date on her interim appointment. They violated the Vacancies Reform Act because they apparently don’t have a shared Google Calendar in the DOJ. I am thankful for that administrative error. I am thankful that the “masterminds” of the MAGA movement are so obsessed with the optics of power that they forget the mechanics of it.
Then there was the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This was supposed to be the end of the federal government. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were going to slash a trillion dollars. Instead, we got a typo. We got an $8 billion “savings” that turned out to be an accounting error. We got a rewrite of the Social Security code that nearly crashed the economy. And then, eight months later, they got bored and went home. I am thankful for their boredom. I am thankful that they treat governance like a startup, because startups fail 90% of the time.
Even their attempts to weaponize the military have been defined by bumbling overreach. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to court-martial Senator Mark Kelly for “sedition.” But they are trying to recall a retired astronaut to active duty using a dusty statute. They aren’t sending a squad; they are sending a memo. They are trying to use the bureaucracy to destroy the bureaucracy, and they are getting tangled in the red tape they claim to despise.
I am thankful that they are litigious rather than literal. I am thankful that they still think they can use the forms of law to break the spirit of the law, because the forms fight back.
The President rages on Truth Social about the “enemy within.” He threatens to bomb Mexico. But he also gets distracted by a shiny object every fifteen minutes. One minute he is demanding mass deportations; the next he is personally intervening to get Rush Hour 4 made because he misses Chris Tucker. I am thankful for the chaos. I am thankful that his brain is a pinball machine of grievances and nostalgia. His authoritarianism is constantly being undercut by his narcissism.
It is stupid that we have to worry about the nuclear codes being held by a man who called a reporter “piggy.” It is stupid that our national discourse is being shaped by bot farms in Nigeria. But that stupidity is also our shield. Imagine if they were smart. They would be unstoppable. Instead, they are the Wet Bandits of fascism. They leave the water running. They forget to wear gloves.
So this Thanksgiving, as I take my pills and hug my fiancé and feed my bougie dog, I will raise a glass to the sheer incompetence of the Trump administration. I am not grateful for their malice. I am not grateful for the damage they are doing. But I am grateful that they are bad at it. I am grateful that their reach exceeds their grasp.
This brings me to the future. For a long time, I couldn’t see one. Cancer has a way of shrinking your timeline down to the next scan. But the tumor is shrinking, and my vision is expanding. Matthew and I have a plan. We are plotting our escape. We are getting the fuck out of Texas.
This state has a beauty to it, but its government has decided that people like us are a contagion. I am tired of living in a place where my existence is a legislative debate. We are moving to a blue state. We are seeking political asylum within our own country. We are going to a place where “freedom” means the freedom to be yourself, not just the freedom to carry a weapon into a grocery store.
The prospect of this move keeps me going. It is the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the promise that we will not just survive this, but that we will live. We will build a life where we don’t have to check the news every morning to see if our rights have been revoked overnight. We will find a home where Daisy can reign supreme without the threat of a localized Gilead rising around her.
My gratitude is my revenge. My joy is my insurrection. My survival is my protest.
So pass the mashed potatoes. Pass the oral chemotherapy. Pass the dog treats. We have a wedding to plan, a move to organize, and a future to seize. And I’ll be damned if I let a tumor or a politician take that away from me.
The Part They Hope You Miss
The most subversive thing you can do in a system that profits from your despair is to be grateful for what you have while demanding what you deserve. They want us to feel like victims so we stop acting like citizens. They want us to feel like patients so we stop acting like fighters. But when I look at Matthew, when I look at Tasi and Shelby, I don’t see victims. I see a resistance cell disguised as a family. We are holding onto each other, and that grip is stronger than any law they can pass. The “Handmaid’s Tale” reality they are trying to build relies on our compliance. It relies on us giving up. But we are not giving up. We are just packing our bags. Texas can keep its heat and its hate. We are taking our love and our bougie dog and going somewhere where the air is breathable. And that, more than anything, is something to be thankful for.