45 was a good age, but I’m happy to leave that cursed
number behind. As I wrote the first draft of this inventory, I was in a
shocking sense of well-being. A lot of the time, there’s a magic in the resignation
and hardship of 2020 that translates to calm. Other times, I have to go back to
bed and play Merge Dragons until the panic subsides. This morning I’m somewhere
in the middle.
Like the world (and so, SO much less than so many
people in the world) my heart is trying to heal from so, so much loss and pain.
Business suffered, but more importantly, there was fear in every breath. There
was grief in every breath too, mourning the very many who had their breath
stolen from them by the violence of police, the violence of white terrorism,
and the violence of national medical neglect. It’s hard to write about my heart
while we’re all in an ongoing, unfathomable trauma.
On May 31st, I watched the Philly riots
start, I saw the first police car catch fire in a moment when I didn’t know
where several of my friends were. Two friends were pinging me from where they
were boxed in by the police near the flames, but some I worried were dead for
days. The streets where my friends live were under police and military
occupation for weeks. I saw my regular Target getting looted on the national
news, and for all the people-over-property, it hurt. I still see people whose
bodies and whose ancestors’ bodies have been looted by America for centuries
selling good from those weeks on the sidewalk, and that part makes me glad.
This year my heart learned that you can reject someone
and feel abandoned by them at the same time. Some of my family members seem to have
been swept into the slimy Russian internet sea forever. I’m trying partial estrangement
with my mom and some extended family because I just couldn’t make room in my
psyche for all of the gaslighting. The loss is real, painful, and the
culmination of lifelong political abandonment. Even though I’ll be 46 tomorrow,
I’m still a little kid who wants to scream WHY WON’T YOU JUST TAKE MY SIDE?! I’m
realizing to a deeper and deeper degree that you can’t both fight white
supremacy and keep all of the familial amenities it provides.
The mental and emotional space I gained by blocking
Mom’s facebook made room for so much new community connection. Whether it’s
marching, stopping by the daily 8:46 vigil in my neighborhood, or offering
support to liberal friends stranded in more hostile places, the community of
the Movements feels like true love. It feels like what my life means.
I’m still mourning the loss of John Lewis. Though he’ll
be a source of advice in my head forever, I miss sharing the planet with him. I
can feel the warmth and generosity of his handshake when I met him in September
of 2016, and that’s a big part of what keeps me going. What keeps me, most
days, hopeful.
To counteract the bitterness, hurt, and self-recrimination
of this hard hard year, I chose MERCY as my word for this new birthday year. Mercy
is more badass even than lovingkindness because it asks me to recognize the
power I have and asks me to wield that power with benevolence and discernment.
That’s a pretty tall order, but I’ve got a year to work on it.
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