The beginning of the end of our democracy

 8/26/21

I give up. I didn't know what my last straw was going to be on hope for "my" America to return, but last week was it - and I didn't expect that.

Seeing Kabul in Afghanistan fall to the Taliban in 10 days after the American military started to pull out and seeing the Afghans clinging to plane wings and falling to their deaths....gave me PTSD from my childhood visions of leaving Saigon. And I fell apart.

I stopping being able to eat or sleep. I had to pull out my anxiety meds full time. Trying to live a normal life and work (amid a shitshow of audits that had me pissed anyway) and getting Ben ready for his last year of school. And yesterday was the first day I didn't need to take any Xanax. 

This  morning...suicide bombers at the Kabul airport kill American civilians and military..and no response from the White House for hours.

I was hoping after the horror of the Trump years, at least Biden wouldn't do anything horrible. Up til now, he had done awesome with vaccinations, the American Rescue act to help pandemic money issues and trying to get legal voting rights back to all Americans.

And then he blew this bad. Very bad. Enough where I'm pretty sure the Republicans can spin this and win in 2022 and 2024. And that's the end. No decent person in either party can save us at this point. We're done.

I'm pretty sure than in 4 to 8 years we'll be back to a full Jim Crow/idiocracy/autocracy/theocracy.

What a disaster. Our worship of capitalism won over our love of democracy. Democracy lost. :(

Staring down 60

It's 1:30pm on a Sunday. George has been gone for 4 days now keeping watch with family during Uncle Joe's last days on the planet. The boys have been gold, of course, and the house has been unbelievably quiet. Kaileb is visiting with Erin today while she is temporarily living with us, so the house has come loudly to life. After a little playtime with him, I'm hiding in the bedroom with my thoughts.

I'm tired. Every day at this time, my small quantity of energy fails me and my back hurts too much to walk or even sit in my office chair. I only have two choices: spend the day in bed too tired to even open my eyelids to watch TV or take my pain meds for my back and allow this to conjure enough pain-free energy for me to participate in life for another day. So I took my pill and type while I feel my body come back to a little life.

I'm seeing a snapshot of one of my possible futures. A very quiet house and just me (the boys don't count because they RARELY leave their rooms) ....and maybe life without George. That life is sometimes wonderfully solitary. I have time to just be with my own thoughts. And then I realize how much he is my best friend and how blessed I am that we are at this lovely, comfortable part of our marriage and I am glad he is coming home soon and I am going to enjoy it as long as we have it together.

I have felt a real shift since I heard the news in July that I have another slipping vertebra (which also feels unstable, which bodes worse) and the knowledge that I have less than a month until I turn 60.

The Frantic Fifties are gone.

I had a great and crazy decade. 

My boys made it through homeschool, private school and public high school.

Danny has started college and Ben has been accepted to his.

I think my girls have had all their kids so my 4 oldest grandchildren are here and I know they love me.

My youngest daughter changed her name, moved away and forbids me to see her daughters. I grieved but I know my granddaughters love me and I hope I am still here when they can see me again.

I retooled my skills, started a new career - but after 6 years I am now down to 20 hrs/week. From my back pain and my fatigue, I know my working days are coming to an end.

But while life was moving and children were growing, I took the last grasp at life that I could by

Learning the flute after an original three week attempt 50 years ago in 4th grade. 

Trying ballroom dancing with the best husband ever and thinking it was going finally to be my dance thing after I stopped ballet 40 years ago...until the back betrayed me again.

Taking up painting, for the first time ever, and loving it...and understanding that I never realized how good a painter my mom was. This is unexpected and soul fulfilling and I think where life is leading me...if I'll listen.

So I've had a good run at taking my second chances. I thought I might have a shot at that women "who is the best shape of her life!" thing after 50...but that's not going to be me. 

I feel my life calming down when I accept that. I do not feel the little kid in me anymore. I have lived a very busy and fulfilling life but it's time to wind down. But I don't mean this in an "end of life" way. I mean that I feel that the way I will live my life from now on will be different. I will not be trying to conquer new things or new places or new challenges anymore. I have enough of them to last me for a life time.

I feel like it is time to embrace what I already have. What I already am. To love it, and appreciate it and nurture it. I feel a contracting of my world from trying to include everything I might miss - into not needing anything more than I already have and loving it more.

I don't know where the next decade will take me, but I know I will go there more slowly. Less helter skelter into new adventures. I will walk deliberately and gratefully into these years. And when I am done, I will be 70 and retired and living who knows where and who knows how. I try not to think about the fact that my mom didn't make it to her 70th birthday. That is the only thought that really terrifies me.

It is a daunting thought. I am trying not to be scared but calm and brave.

Well anyway, here's to the Scary Sixties to come.

 

Walls

This morning I'm thinking about the protection my own "walls" have given me against the outside world and it's is sorta changing my world.

For someone who spent their life protecting her gentle sensitive and "different" soul from others, why would I allow myself to open myself to nameless faceless miscreants on the internet? 

Why would I allow myself to be hurt by ignorant abusive comments by someone I wouldn't even allow myself to get close to in real life?

I know that I first got on social media to connect. I was in a new marriage, new house, new babies and basically trapped in my big, beautiful house with all men. So - I needed to connect.

At first, it was great! I found games to play with others, connected with old classmates I hadn't seen in decades and found an easy (and nonverbal interactive) way to communicate with my friends and family.

How has it morphed into this? Yes, the social media platforms are still my primary method of communicating with my family. But over the last two decades, I've trimmed my acquaintances and "friends" back to basically the few I had to begin with - with the wonderful exceptions of friends I had lost touch with in my childhood and a couple of "game" friends who turned into real, albeit online, friends.

Everything else out there has become toxic. Watch a few fun cat videos and then BAM a stupid ad or politic post interrupts the fun. All my news alerts have become climate change wildfires and floods, or horrible political horseshit flung by elected idiots with no intellect at all. I cringe when I open my phone now. 

I'm starting to realize what has happened. I don't know if it's me or the world, but most of the world is certifiably insane now - weather included. I need to build the wall again.

I don't know how to do that without losing contact with the people I love so I need to think about it. It's not hard, I just need to do it. It has been an addiction, and sometimes necessary to distract myself from a day of physical pain, but I need to find a way to put up that wall again. 

I need that wall. I always have. Until now, I've seen it as one of my flaws. But from here on out, I will see it as a way I protect myself because I love myself :)

I came back from vacation angry

Saturday night two weeks ago, I came back from vacation angry. For no apparent reason other than Florida being as hot as the face of the sun in July.

Ten days later, I've lived through such intense days of depression and now have moved into extreme anxiety that never seems to end.

Can't-take-a-breath anxiety.

Dreams-of-being-abducted-and-trying-to-signal-for-help level of anxiety.

I don't know what has stirred all this up. It could honestly be anything...the world in general is a complete mess right now. 

The Delta variant of COVID has spiked hugely in non-vaccinated states. We dodged a bullet during our Florida vacation to maskless Disney World...they went back to masking the week after we left and Florida is being overrun with COVID cases and deaths. And the governor is mad at people complaining he's FORBIDDEN mask ordinances!! The heat made him crazy....best guess, right?

Nothing can make the world feel normal or safe again. Disney was as close as I can get, and it felt lovely as it could while I was melting from the climate change Hell that is Earth now.

I had two lovely epiphanies this week, however, and I want to make sure I stop and appreciate them before they're lost.

First - this one was given to me by my anxiety sister, Tana. I had told her the story of how my Nanny had cried over me. During a family event at her house, I had gotten overwhelmed/bored/anxious as usual and retreated to her bedroom to read a book. Always the best place for me. Nanny followed me in and was in tears saying she was so worried about me. 

That has haunted me my whole life. Not only had I worried and disappointed myself because I couldn't handle crowds and gatherings, now I had disappointed the grandparent I loved most in the world by just being myself. It couldn't make me hate myself more.

But Tana said..."maybe she was worried she couldn't protect you from what she went through". I didn't understand at first. But she reminded me that Nanny was the one in the family with anxiety. She needed her daily Scotch Mist at 4pm every day to get through. She self-medicated her anxiety. And maybe...just maybe...she felt terrible that I was that way, too. I don't know, but it was such a different take on the situation and made me feel much better. Maybe she just felt bad for ME having to be the way I was. 

Second, I had a thunderbolt moment that came from I don't know where. I realized that so many women near me had to deal with narcissistic people in their life and I didn't know why they had to be subjected to that. I get so angry when I feel how they were treated. And that thought came together at the same time I was talking with Tana about how I have "had a wall up" my whole life that kept people out. I've never been picked up at a bar, never attracted people as friends, etc. My terror and mistrust of people has turned into a wall that keeps people away. 

A grey rock wall.

I've been grey rocking narcissists since I put up my wall as a child and they don't get through. I put off the vibe that I won't allow any bullshit so they don't bother. I guess. I have seen it that way for the first time and it is so freeing!

I started thinking about that one time I was corralled into a room with two narcissists in my extended family and verbally assaulted....I totally grey rocked. It was still traumatic and I had PTSD for years afterwards, but I remember the sense of total calm that came over me as I didn't respond and how they totally lost it and ran off in hysterical anger. It felt like a near miss...but it was my grey rock wall saving me again.

They've been furious at me ever since and I'm glad. Now I know they can't hurt me.

So...I've saved myself. Over and over again. I've suffered from my feelings of inadequacy that build the wall...but I'm so sensitive to people's body language and attitude and feelings that it's the only thing that has saved me from overload.  So it's the place I have to live to survive this life.

And these days, every day is overload. Every where I turn, the crazy of the world slams against my walls. Narcissists are multiplying like rabbits. For Lord's sake, we one for President!!

My walls aren't high enough anymore for the world. It's been years now of the post-truth, reality challenged, COVID killing world. 

I don't think we're every going back to normal.

The planet won't get cooler again.

People won't get nicer again.

Politics won't be "gentlemanly" again.

My vertebra won't back into place again.

Okay....so I understand the anger and depression and anxiety that roil up every day and bubble over.

I just don't know how to live with it.

And I'm so sad for my children....