I could begin this musing the way I began a post earlier this week: “Each time I take to my keyboard, I wind up setting aside my draft.” But… Here I am. Days later than I intended to write. Because the fact is, I have been an exhausted mess. Lying in bed with my eyes closed. Or crumpled up on the couch in a little ball, worn out.
No, not in the fetal position. Not really. Nothing so dramatic! But I’m beat — after spending most of Wednesday watching all of the inaugural activities on TV, after picking my way through a muddle of emotions throughout, after shedding tears multiple times (to my surprise), and likewise in the days since, days of almost unbelievable “normalcy.”
Normalcy? Go figure. I had almost forgotten. “Normalcy” in so far as we have government officials at the highest level delivering information and doing so without expletives or bluster, doing so with scientists speaking facts freely, doing so with dignity (befitting their positions) yet without pretentiousness. These impressions follow in the wake of a rush of elation as I listened to the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman perform her extraordinary poem, The Hill We Climb, which has dazzled millions of us.
What can I say — Ms. Gorman, only 22 years old, cast a spell with her eloquent and provocative words, her balletic hand movements as she recited, and wisdom belying her years. If you haven’t seen it, go NOW and find a clip! Watch, listen, rewatch, relisten. In all the years that I attended poetry open mic nights and listened to spoken word, never have I felt so moved or so mesmerized.
And yet.
I am weepy, ragged, and dragging. I am emotionally and physically spent, the result of waves of relief (though not nearly as much as I expected) and releasing pent-up fear (though only partially). And this. For years now, I couldn’t recognize the world into which we Americans were sinking. Yes, sinking.
As to that world, my comments aren’t about policy really (although to a degree, of course, they are). Rather, they refer to words and behaviors that degrade our expectations, our values, and our humanity. It’s the story of the frog in the slow boil; we don’t realize that what we think we can withstand is actually killing us.
Frankly, I have been too tired to move. And each time I sat down to write — on Thursday morning, on Thursday afternoon, on Friday morning, on Friday afternoon, even in the pre-dawn hours this morning, Saturday — I could not nudge myself beyond a kind of heaviness in my chest and my brain. For all the swell of inchoate feelings that I tried to coral and transform into language, I couldn’t. I felt as silent as a stone. So, now, many hours (and cups of caffeine) later, I am resorting to the mode of “morning pages,” however insufficient and imprecise.
A confession: Every time I hear a commentator say “President Biden,” I swear I experience a tiny jolt of dopamine! It’s as if I sunk my teeth into a freshly baked glazed donut after four years of a starvation diet that left me deprived of pleasure and perpetually famished. Forgive me. That’s a flawed metaphor. I’m not suggesting a lack of substance to what is said, merely expressing my delight at hearing “President Biden” and no longer being bombarded by 45, commentary on 45, or a barrage of tweets by 45 and the commentary (and confusion) that follow.
As I said, a donut-induced sugar high is definitely not what this administration is already showing itself to be; we have only to witness the press conferences and briefings taking place each day. Those, for me, are like dining on a good steak after that starvation diet. In other words, in addition to a strange sense of disbelief as I watch and listen, I am beginning to think I may once again feel nourished.
One more subject, if I may.
Watching Senator Kamala Harris become Vice President Kamala Harris, even now, leaves me choked up. Several commentators during the inauguration and after remarked that little black girls and little South Asian girls and all little girls across the country would now be able to see themselves in her. To see possibilities. Indeed. Well, I am certainly no longer a little girl, but this woman – me – feels as if Amanda Gorman’s words about climbing the hill are also about the long struggle of women, everyday women, trying to be seen and heard, their voices ringing out without fear of derision or dismissal or so much worse.
Each time Vice President Harris has appeared on the news, in the “vice president’s chair” in the Senate, for example, I begin to feel a sort of salve for all the small slights and snubs that women have had to let go of if we were to survive much less to thrive; all the battles that we have had to turn away from because there are too damn many even in a single day and we know, we have learned, we have to pick our battles. I begin to accept that even if it is too late for my generation to undo the lifelong impacts of more significant obstacles that have held us back, this one glass ceiling has been shattered at last. And triply barrier-shattering at that. And I feel overcome. Just overcome. Somehow, it feels like she did it for all of us who couldn’t do it in our own personal and professional lives.
And I am humbled. And inspired. And grateful.
I will add: I can use those very same adjectives — humbled, inspired, grateful — as I watch and listen to Amanda Gorman, and not only in appreciation for the message and music in her poetry but also as I applaud her desire to TAKE BACK LANGUAGE from those who have so degraded and bastardized it in the past four years.
For now, I feel like crawling into bed, pulling the covers up over my head, and staying there. Cocooning. Attempting to heal something in me that feels broken. Hoping that it isn’t irrevocably broken. Hoping that rest and tears (with “rinse and repeat” as needed) will allow me to regroup and regain my fighting spirit. I know it’s there, that spirit; I also know it is, as in Ms. Gorman’s words, “battered and beautiful.”
I know I won’t stay in bed under the covers for very long – I will be up to make tea and eat a piece of toast and warm a cup of soup and watch an old movie and do some “adult things” that need to be taken care of because I am, after all, an adult with responsibilities. Yet I wonder how long it will take to begin to recognize who I am, what role I may still play even in captivity and even as I age more rapidly than I ever thought I would, as I count down the months before I can emerge for a vaccination, and hope, again, to explore the community I inhabit and the nation that we are all trying to share in our different ways through the hard challenges and conflicts that we know remain.
I welcome your thoughts.
Image of Amanda Gorman, screen capture from TV
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We’re losing it. Collectively. I feel sometimes as if I am losing my mind, even though pre-pandemic I worked from home. Those two-to-four-times-a-month dinner parties and weekly Pilates classes were more important to my mental health than I realized, even though I treasured them even then. I had started looking for a job in an office, just to be around people more. Now, offices are mostly empty.
I was invited to dine with friends today. I turned them down–it’s irresponsible to gather. My friends and I are maybe two months from being vaccinated; it would be stupid to get sick now. They protested that they were careful, and so am I, but not feeling sick isn’t proof of not carrying this $%*@ing virus. I’m not going to make more work for a testing site so I can socialize; I’m going to just stay home. It’s like having to hold your breath, just a second longer, but it feels like an eternity and you think you might pass out. In fact, if it goes on too long, you WILL pass out.
It is a relief that Biden was sworn in without further violence and that we are back to competency in government. McConnell isn’t through with his craven machinations, though. And I worry that people will start to forget or downplay/justify the insurrectionists and there won’t be accountability.
I have precisely the same worry.
me, too
“… all the small slights and snubs that women have had to let go of if we were to survive much less to thrive; all the battles that we have had to turn away from because there are too damn many even in a single day and we know, we have learned, we have to pick our battles.” Kamala aside, how do we not burn up in anger?
As I get older, I get angrier. Not just about plainly misogynistic colleagues. But also at my dearest adult sons, my husband who, in every joint conversation, not so much in one to ones, commit a multitude of summary offences. What are we to do?
The anger. That’s a tough one. I suspect that the only reason my anger has subsided is because I am so disconnected from the traditional working world and even more disconnected from the world in general, including once “normal” interactions with the opposite sex. And of course, approaching a year of isolation due to the pandemic, that disconnection is even more significant.
Nonetheless, a lifetime of those misogynistic words, behaviors, and assumptions – some committed thoughtlessly by men we may be close to (or love or even give birth to) aren’t easily erased. Nor should they be. We shouldn’t have to accept them and I know that generations after my own, generations of women, will need to battle them.
I believe that many men can be engaged with and a light shined on their perceptions, words and actions — for example, I think one of my sons is a bit more open to seeing and not engaging in certain behaviors – in part as a result of his girlfriend’s influence not to mention yours truly, and the life the three of us (myself and my sons) led together for so many years.
I know that the term “white privilege” is much in the news and on the lips of everyone these days, so it seems. And rightly so, in my opinion. Front and center where I believe it belongs. But we never speak of “male privilege.” And why don’t we?
It’s just a question. An obvious one I think.
Bottom line: I understand your anger. There are days when I still feel it, especially when I think about the fact that there is a major financial impact to all of this (years of lower earnings and their accumulations resulting in much lower Social Security here in the US). And that impact sends scores of us, women as we age, spiraling down into poverty as a result.
Kamala making it to VP still wasn’t enough. A jarring visual from the inauguration was watching Garth Brooks shake Biden’s hand, while ignoring and reaching around Harris to reach for Pence, who was standing behind her. Then he came back and shook her hand as an afterthought.
The clip of Kamala presiding over the senate as they named her successor in the senate, and how she giggled as she read her own name and said how weird it felt… I loved that. She exuded joy and humanity and just being who she is. Or so it seemed to me from far away in another country.
I know you’ll get your mojo back, just as you said. Until then, take care.
Yes! Kamala making that remark in the Senate was delightful. Indeed, she seems so real. Herself. We need more “real” in this country. (I’m also enjoying the fact that the press secretary isn’t slathered in makeup and big false eyelashes. Not something I would normally comment on, but the difference is so noticeable.) She (Press Secretary Jen Psaki) seems real, too — and more importantly, her knowledge and professional manner are uber-welcome.
In general, the number of women in the Cabinet and key positions is a source of relief (to me) as well. (It’s about time.)
AS THE ITALIAN SAID LAST NIGHT!
“THE NEWS IS BORING NOW!”
AND MY REPLY was “I’LL TAKE BORING NEWS ANY DAY!”
I too have been climbing back in to bed A LOT. I think it took its TOLL ON US!
SUCH COMFORT…..is there NOW!
XXX
Yup. Boring is a welcome change! ?
Well said, D.A.! You captured most of my thoughts and feelings. I was so emotionally exhausted and crawled right into bed after watching all of it to when the family entered their new home. All of it was beautiful from the tears of relief to right out balling at all the history right before my eyes.