Hi there!
I come from a place where I’ve seen and felt what you guys are seeing and feeling right now. I’ve seen, felt, and heard the immediate meltdown of people upon hearing such terrible news. I’ve also seen, felt, and heard the celebrations from the other side of the results. What happens, and what will matter, in the next 10, 100, 1000 days will all depend on which side you are taking this news in.
Good for you, if you feel reinvigorated, energized, looking forward to days ahead, even. But there will be a whole population of people who will see their tombstones chiseled in advance. It’s just the way of the world every after significant mark in history.
I come from the side that felt dejected and insulted with what came next after being handed the unfortunate news (again–from our perspective). Never in my life have I had to console friends, colleagues, and family members over the the concept of losing on a magnitude that was just too hard to process. You “lose” sports bets. You “lose” cards and keys. You “lose” your way around the city.
The loss that crashed on us, it was almost on a deathly level that it actually scared me. You immediately think of the future. Your future. Will I, a person that doesn’t fit any conventional standards, find myself in the crosshairs of the people running this entire show? Two years in, and this I could tell–it doesn’t magically get better. If your convictions are iron-clad, you will abhor every single development, every single action, that is the result of this change. You will feel life continue to move on, and you will be forced to start walking because things just operate that way. In time, other things will start occupying your mind. But every now and then, your convictions will be called upon into exercise, and that fire in you will just set itself ablaze. You will help someone else. You will march for someone else’s right, for someone else’s life.
That fire comes and goes. But you will always know when you are needed.
I wish I could tell you that it will be better, because looking at it now, in our current lifetime there is now a higher probability that it will not get better. Why do you think people are languishing in nostalgia, excessively now more than ever before? People think times were lovely before, which confuses me because we seem to keep fumbling as we advance forward in this timeline. Why can we not extend those lovely periods to today? Well, things aren’t linear, so there’s that.
I could only tell you to take it one day at a time. It’s okay to feel angry, you have every right to feel so. Be an aggrieved person, because who else knows more than you that something is going to be taken away from you. It’s perfectly understandable that for now, you will detach yourself from compassion and empathy. Oh, you need help? Bummer, you might say to others. That’s okay. But don’t lose the light. Find yourself way back to humanity, because that’s the only way to fight forward. Hard lessons have to be gleaned from being served anguish in a plate–bring those with you, and still continue to fight for what you think is right.