I’m in a weird place this week.
That sentence could have been written in almost any of the weeks of the last fifteen months. The world has gone strange on us, as frightening news and bile and threats and unhinged behavior seem to be running rampant.
A large percentage of my fellow Americans seem to live in a world entirely different from my own, and while this has always been true, I’ve never felt so under seige by that world as I do today.
It has beaten me down.
I don’t want to run away. I want to be strong in the face of adversity, to stand up to all the things that are wrong in the world. But my world has been flooded with an overwhelming tide of nastiness and filth, and I can’t swim in it anymore.
And so I retreat.
Our little home is a sanctuary, a place where normal reality re-exerts itself, where the rules of human decency and kindness and love still apply. Here I can breathe. Here I can remember what the world was like before. Here I can let new hopes start to germinate.
Things will not always be like this.
There is still good and love and decency in people.
We are being tested in this terrible time, and we will rise to meet that test.
For now, I am keeping out the world, licking my wounds, trying to heal. Trying to come to terms with what has happened to us, and what can be done about it.
One day soon, I will go out again. I will brave the world, to fight for change, to turn back the tide of hatred and anger that threatens to engulf us all.
One day soon, I will rise.
Hang in there! it DOES get better, but we have to persevere.
Thanks Jeff!
Very touching. Very Understandable.
After I wrote my article in September 2015 explaining why Donald Trump would be our next president (which resulted in a torrent of insults from people caught up with their own disgust for him and missing the point), I decided I would be living in two worlds. In one, everyone who can’t get past their hate and revels in their greed and selfishness is dragging down civilization, pillaging the world, and supplying a bleak future. In the other, I have nurturing relationships, people are compassionate, beauty abounds if I look for it, and I am content and serene. I do my best to carry that second world around with me like a bubble. Sometimes, the raw sharpness of that first world deflates the bubble and I must use all my strength and wits to clear enough space for a new bubble. I am angry, righteous, and intolerant of ignorance as I force back the vile, cruel world, until I am safe in my preferred world.
As I said many times during the 2016 election process, people were far too interested in gawking at and talking about the misfit when they ought to have been ignoring him and not feeding his ego. It’s the people who complain incessantly about Trump and his world who allow him and it to thrive. They would be better off doing constructive things rather than trying to demolish someone who gains strength from negativity.
I appreciate that. And, yes, we all live in two worlds now, don’t we? * hugs *
I’m not part of your community. Actually I’m a 65 year old mother of 2 great kids & no grandchildren in the future. However, I do have 3 long-haired, miniature dachshunds for grand-dogs!! I’m commenting on your post because I feel that tolerance, decency and truth have taken a flying leap through some “gateway”…lost to us for some time to come.
However, you bring moments of adventure, love, and good over evil. You allow your readers to tag along, feeling all your characters’ emotions as if we were there! Skythane and Lander were wonderful & I can’t wait to read Ithani!!!
So please hang in there!!
awwww… thanks so much!!!