You Are Not Alone
Shine a light in the darkness so we can find each other
Monica here, reflecting on the surreal feeling of living in the weirdest timeline ever.
You are not alone.
If you woke up today and wondered how you were going to get through the day, you are not alone.
If you woke up in the middle of the night, and your heart was pounding and you found yourself thinking about your children and hoping the world would turn out to be at least an OK place for them in the future, you are not alone.
If you walked the dog, or answered emails, or went to work, or took a shower, or went to the grocery store or any number of mundane tasks and wondered how you could possibly still be doing these things when the world is crumbling around you, you are not alone.
Sometimes it’s all just….so much. Too much. All the much.
Today I used my 5 Calls app and called my two senators, my representative, and my attorney general. Yes, I’m practicing what I preach. I must admit that I have not called every day, but I’ve called a lot. A lot a lot. When I am put through to voicemail, I read my little script, say thank you, and hang up. But when I get a real live person? Well, sometimes I cry. Today was one of those days.
I’m so alarmed at what I see happening to our country. I mean, I knew it was going to be bad when Trump won, but I didn’t know it was going to be THIS bad. Like, break laws and violate the constitution every single day bad. Is that hyperbole? Maybe, but you get what I’m saying. It’s just so. Bad.
I count myself as exceedingly fortunate that my day to day life could stay relatively unchanged were it not for the fact that I’m exceedingly alarmed. I am a woman of privilege whose children are adults and self-sufficient and I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to lay my head tonight, where my next meal is going to come from, or if I’ll be able to pay for my housing next month. I also recognize that many of us, even people like me, are only a few steps away from any of those things on any given day. Many people are already there.
Yesterday, I drove the four hours from Sioux Falls, SD back to my home in the Minneapolis area. I had gone to take my mom to a doctor’s appointment. And if you know SD, you know it’s a VERY red state. Very Trumpy. I was in the waiting room while my mom was having an echocardiogram and there was a man with a Trump hat on. Any signs of Trumpism tends to put me in a negative mood, and I will admit to immediately feeling a negative opinion of this man. But his wife was the patient and she was obviously struggling. A nurse guided her from the exam room to the chair next to her husband in the waiting room.
He was so attentive, this man with the Trump hat. He spoke to his wife lovingly and thanked the nurse for her care. He helped his wife put her coat on and told her to stay put while he went to warm up the car.
If you find yourself struggling with the fact that there are Trump supporters who are fundamentally decent human beings, you are not alone.
Friends or family members or someone you see across a waiting room. I find myself looking around me at the grocery store and wondering who voted for this. The high school friend that thinks everything is gonna be hunky-dory because she heard that Elon is talking about giving money to the citizens from the so-called waste and fraud he found. Never mind the lives that have been upended by summarily firing 200,000 federal workers. Never mind what that does to those people and their families. Never mind what that will do to unemployment and subsequently to the economy. Never mind the countless USAID workers that were ripped from their locations, uprooting families and leaving friends all while leaving communities in crises, and having to return to the US with no job and no explanation. That friend thinks it’s all worth it because she might get a “rebate check.” The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
If you struggle to connect with people in your lives with whom you once shared laughter, nights out, holiday tables, and great affinity because you know they voted for this and are still cheering for it, you are not alone.
Today I heard a quote that made me cry. Partly because the person reading the quote cried when she read it and it makes me cry when other people cry. But also because of the immense power and emotion of the quote. I share it with you here in the hope that it gives you hope, too.
"During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then, and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting. Keep dancing."
—Dan Savage
Keep dancing, my friends. And singing, and playing, and reading, and painting, and making love and art and music. Because these are the things that make us human. These are the things that will shine light in the darkness. And we need that light so we can find each other.
We are not alone.
I sure feel alone right about now. No one in my family believes what's happening, even family in Mexico are saying that I'm overreacting.
Crying from Canada. Thank you.