Getting over getting trumped
Soooooo we lost the election. And what hard, strange times we’ve been living through ever since. For me, the first few days were just bumbling, inarticulate sadness (what have we done?!) and rage (goddam Trump and his lying hair!), mixed with tinges of embarrassment (there I was all proud with my “I voted” sticker on the lapel of my celebratory lady blazer and a big, naive rainbow smile plastered across my face…I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN).
By now, the dark truth has started to sink in. But I still keep doing that thing where you forget about the shittines for a few hours, then out of nowhere it blasts you. I’ll be walking down the sidewalk, or brushing my favorite tooths, when suddenly I’m frozen with the truth that this world isn’t the good-and-getting-better place I thought it was. It’s a place where people have embraced their dark sides, let their lesser selves steer. We’re not on the right side of history, like not at all.
I know I’m being a little Morrissey-y about this. It’s just that it was such a surprise. And the distance we fell was so extreme. Going from that tippy-top peak lovefest glow of Pussy Project-ing and Pantsuit Nation-ing alllll the way down to the very dumpiest dumps of Trump. We went from a +100 (maternity leave! women’s equality! gay marriage!) all the way down to a -100 (Mexican hating! Pussy grabbing! Lie loving!). If the only thing that’d happened was Hillary losing, we’d have fallen from +100 to zero. That would have been oof enough. But we just kept on falling and falling…scraping and bumping all the way down to Trump.
Finding ways to see the light has been tuff, but I have slowly begun to ooze my way out the yuck with the help of…
1. Mindful metaphoring
One of the many, many uncomfortable things about these election results is that they left me at a loss for words. Not being able to word through my feelings isn’t really a state I typically find myself in.
Usually when I’m thrown like this, I selfsoothe by finding the exact right metaphor for how I’m feeling. Like when I was at a job where we hired a manager who spent all his time wooing the higher-ups that he never had time to actually lead our team. I was deeply disgruntled. Until! I finally figured out the name for the problem. All the endless chattering and darting around and hiding nuts for later. This manager was a Squirrel! Yes exactly. Squirrel!!!
Finding the right metaphor makes me feel more in control, it calms my anxieties. So one of my major acts of self care these past weeks has been constant back-of-mind namestorming, trying out different metaphors, looking for the exact right fit for the badness of this election.
Maybe it’s like a major, 7-point-noooooo earthquake? And every new cabinet nomination, every Kellyanne Conway spitup, every teen-y tweet from Trump is like an aftershock, re-triggering my fight-or-flightiness? After the big 1994 quake in LA when the power was out all across the city, my roommate and I moved out to her Saab to listen to the news on the radio, and while we were sitting there, hearing all the damage reports pour in, the car started bouncing. OH MY GOD IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN. I clutched the dash like it was a string of pearls. This November’s been a little like that.
Or it’s like The Stand, where the world’s been boiled and reduced down to the most essential battle lines of good and evil. (And yay look, we’re on the soft, squishy, comfortably clothed hippie side with no arms beyond the ones we hug with.)
Or like finding yourself suddenly in the middle of a science-fiction future, Robocop or Idiocracy, some sad tomorrow where our basest, most under-nuanced, balls-kick-loving side has won the culture war.
Or it’s like that terrible first-love breakup.
Wait no. What it’s like is when you think you’re at the end of the stairway, but there’s actually still one last step. There’s that split second of freefall, then you land and your teeth slam together and maybe you pee a little. The election’s like that, but it’s an entire flight of stairs, not just 1. And it’s the whole world that’s falling and gnashing and peeing.
2. Measured media portioning
My weakened emotional immune system can’t stand up to all the repeated news blows that lie in wait on Twitter and Facebook. Even the “let’s do something” groups (of which there are many I’m now a member of) are overwhelming in the sheer quantity of disappointing events that now require me to go call congresspeople to read an ever-rotating number of different scripts to.
So I’ve been limiting the time I spend wading around in the open water of the socials. Instead I consciously seek out my favorite sane voices, which do a calmingly good job of taking the vague dreads I’ve been stewing on, and forming them into actual articulate thoughts.
Podcasts like The Weeds and Keepin’ it 1600 have been great. And for fictional political balm, The West Wing Weekly relives episodes of The West Wing (one of my all-time favorite shows, the watching of which borders on therapy for me), along with interviews with some of the actors, directors, writers and occasionally even (loving, non-nazi) people in real-life government.
I also go out of my way to dip into what some of my favorite thinkers are thinking. Lindy West, Michael Arnovitz, Dave Pell of Next Draft, Ezra Klein of Vox, along with my own smart politically minded friends—Charlotte, Kelly, Colin, Laura, Leah, Beth, Melinda (who just linked me to this amazing post-election poem, which I can’t stop re-re-reading and I don’t even like poetry!?) and a handful more. These controlled doses of thoughtful, passionate snippets have been the rope I’ve been using to slowly climb my way back.
3. A smattering of givings
I already make monthly donations to Planned Parenthood and the Southern Poverty Law Center, but since the election I’ve been overcome by just how many worthy, new-to-me causes that now need our help more than ever. I’ve managed to drop some coins in the cans of a few lovely organizations—Rescue.org, Being Black at School, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC)—all of them in response to personal fundraiser requests from friends who have specific ties with each group. It’s not a lot, no not nearly enough. But it feels vaguely like doing something? Oh boy.
4. A well-weighted blanket
Not just for ADHD, autism, anxiety, over-stimulated grade schoolers, restless leg syndrome and insomnia anymore! Turns out a weighted blanket also pacifies post-election bouts of Chicken Little-style falling-sky meltdowns. Want one? Here’s how I found mine.
5. And some helping hand-hugs
Even though I cynically suspect that the opposition just laughs at every peaceful protest we organize out here in California (“I’m just glad they’re keeping themselves busy! {smug giggle}”), it makes me feel better.
A couple weeks ago, my husband, kid and I gathered with thousands of other stunned citizens and joined hands around the full 3 miles of Lake Merritt here in Oakland, squeezing each other’s paws in small, loving mini-hugs. I wasn’t there to try and convince the inconvincible opposition of our rightness. I was there to do a little healing of my gullible, sucker-punched hippie heart. And I’ll be there, peacefully stomping across the Golden Gate Bridge on inauguration day, too.
