One step at a time…

by girlonahalfshill

All of my posts up to this point have been related to our summer travel, relocation or the like. This one is political and I realize that that can source a whole different set of readers. Please note that I have no illusions that the following represents anything other than my humble perspective, but it’s all that I have to cling to at the moment and on the off chance that it helps someone else feel less alone, helps someone else feel heard or comforted in the slightest, I am sharing it.

I feel like there are a lot of people out there right now, most of whom I don’t know, who are feeling hopeful now while the rest of us are feeling like our lives are upended and our guts have been spilled out on the floor… and we’re staring at them and don’t know what else to do… And it’s not that I am mad at them for feeling hopeful, but I’m concerned that they made a miscalculation. I’m scared that they made decisions that we’re based on searching for someone to blame because life isn’t what they thought it would be, because the world doesn’t look the way it “used to,” and because, despite the fact that a lot of them have tried, life is really f#%€}*!-ing hard. And it’s true. Life is not fair. You can “do the right thing” all your life and not get recognition and things won’t be fair or easy. A lot of the time…

And when we don’t get attention and when we don’t feel heard, it makes us irrational, it makes us want to blame someone. The American Dream wasn’t a promise. No one broke their promise to you. And I know what it’s like to feel broken. I know what it’s like to feel so hurt and broken that it feels like the world owes you something. When you’ve gotten up off the mat so many times and nursed so many bruises that you can’t possibly picture how you’re supposed to survive things without a reward, without revenge. And the real answer is that surviving that doesn’t mean that you’re owed a damn thing. It means that you survived and you have a life and you still have to keep going and trying. And life is still hard.

And wonderful. And terrible. And people and connection and beauty and strength and love and kindness and nature and our kids and our friends and… there’s so much. And it’s messy and great and horrible and incredible. But it’s not easy or fair.

Hope is this tricky thing. It’s strong and it’s fragile and we all need it and a lot of our country went out and “got itself some” last night, but that cathartic “achievement” comes at this extraordinarily high price. Decency and civility were put on the altar, intelligence and honesty were sacrificed. (That’s right. I’m saying he’s lied. It’s hardly the worst of his crimes.) Responsibility to the world and to our own, to our common future and to the vulnerable among us was auctioned off and sold for scrap.

We can get it back. It’s like the Neverending Story, folks. The hope and goodness is inside us. We will get through this, yes, but the nature of things is that damage can be done quickly, but repair, healing and remediation are a long road. We’ll need each other. We need many of those people who felt desperate or lost or scared enough that they made the choices that they made yesterday too. But I’m not sure that I can today. Today, it’s enough to cry, to hug each other and to make it through this. One – step – at – a – time…