Floundering

There are periods in life that open new windows into our souls and into the hearts and minds of people around us.  This political era is one of them.  We are each being asked to hold the people we are up against the people we strive to be.

Am I alone in admitting that I'm failing to rise to my own aspirations?

I'm aware that people have long viewed me as being "too much." I leave people exasperated with my intense reactions. I drive myself into bouts of anxiety and depression and angst. I have suffered quite a lot because of my inability to regulate my emotions. And yet, I told myself that in the right place and the right time, my emotional intensity could be valuable. I was passionate. I cared deeply about things. I would stand for justice, even when many others were happy to look away. The world needed people like me.

But I don't know if I believe that anymore.

It turns out, what the world needs is effective communicators. People who can meet others where they're at and help them to shift by degrees. People who can listen, make others feel heard, express respect even in the face of disagreement, and center relationships above all else. You have to get the other person to join you before you can get them to follow you.  I know this, but, knowing and being able to do it are not necessarily the same thing.

I know my reactions are wrong. I'm angry, so I lash out, and I drive people away, and then they are lost.  That doesn't make me a warrior for the cause.  It makes me a liability.  I'm not saying this to demean myself.  I'm saying it because it's true.  I may very well believe that people are acting like Nazis, but telling them so only makes them turn away from our side and towards those who will accept them (and then radicalize them).

I don't really know how to rein this part of myself in.  Usually I hate hurting people.  Part of me does even now.  But, I don't know how to set aside the hurt I see and feel in order to open my heart to the people who are inflicting the pain.  I feel like they have turned their backs on everyone who is marginalized. My people.  Is it weird that I feel this kinship with marginalized people?  People I don't know? From groups to which I don't belong?  I have just so often found myself existing in that space, along the fringes of society.  People end up there for different reasons, but we all know what it means to be othered.  And seeing people dehumanized, mistreated, made more vulnerable, just because they are different in some way... I feel a deep sense of betrayal. Like all this time, people pretended to care about others, about all of us, but apparently they never did, because, if they cared, they would never accept these things...  Would they???  It just doesn't make sense in my brain, how someone can be kind, but then join hands with the bullies who are intentionally hurting people.

I really don't know who a lot of people are anymore.  I can't make the pieces fit together.  And I certainly don't know how to join with them.  More than that, if meeting them where they're at requires expressing sympathy for the fact they're dehumanizing people, I can't even stomach the thought.  It's too triggering to me.  I respect people who can keep their emotions in check enough to do that, but, I just don't know that I can.  Not now.

It's so draining, to feel this great responsibility to rise to the moment and to simultaneously feel that the solution is out of reach.  Meanwhile, the world is begging us to do more.  Shaming us for not doing more.  I want to, but I don't know how.  I feel like we're all kids in school.  Half the class trashed the room while many of us begged them to stop, but now we're all expected to work our butts off to get it cleaned up.  Meanwhile, people are walking by and yelling at us to work harder.  Maybe it's childish of me to expect better, but I can't help resenting how unfair it is, that we are being blamed for failing to fix what others have broken.  It shouldn't be our job, but it is, because we are the only hope that freedom and human rights will prevail in our country.  Despite feeling this cloud of depression, I have to keep reminding myself how lucky I am.  I wake each morning in our cozy bed with the peace of knowing my family is safe and nearby.  I could be in CECOT, as others are.  

We all have other things in our lives that weigh us down.  For me, it's mental health.  I have to take such care to preserve what energy I can, and even in normal times, I often fail, and then I spiral into burnout and despair.  I don't feel like I have the spare internal resources to take on this fight.  And yet, I feel like I'm a bad person if I don't.  More than that, I fear that our freedoms and our safety will soon be lost if we don't all do...  something.

I have tried some.  I have been to a protest (just one so far).  I have written to representatives.  I have spoken out.  I doubt I have changed minds.  I know I should do more, but it feels so futile.  I have no clue what I have the capacity to do that will actually help.  I want to feel hopeful.  I want to believe in myself and in all of us, and to trust that good will prevail, but I don't know how to summon that faith.  Perhaps many of us feel this way, and it's exactly what he wants.  To overwhelm us and to make us give up.  I won't surrender to him, but I wish I knew how to rise to this moment without breaking myself.  I feel the cracks building in me, and once broken, I will be of no use to anyone.

So, this is my apology to the world, to my children, that I am not doing more, but also a promise that I will not give up.