I’m not sure I want to go to church anymore. I am ashamed of anyone who identifies as Christian who voted for this man. I don’t want to be around them. I don’t want to like them, to make nice, to pretend like everything is okay. I don’t want to offer them the Peace of the Lord. Nope.
I don’t want to talk to my pro-Trump neighbor, the one with the shredded American flag that I guess he thinks is super cute, and the Trump flag, high on the flagpole.
I don’t want to engage with anyone that I suspect voted for him.
I don’t want to see their gloating Facebook posts, knowing that more women will bleed out in hospital emergency rooms. Gay people will be targeted more than ever. I don’t want to watch how aghast Latino people who voted for him will be when their relatives are deported in droves.
Today on Facebook, many people have changed their profile picture to a black circle. It’s a dark day.
I don’t want to watch TV. I don’t want to hear about what went wrong in Harris’s campaign. What went wrong is old white people are still unwilling to vote for a woman, and especially one of color. Patriarchy still rules, and it’s been fueled by the Christian church. I hate it. Even though I belong to a progressive denomination, I’m not sure I can stick it out.
I don’t want to watch the inauguration. I don’t want to see what this vile man will do. I don’t want to see him sit in the oval office. I don’t want to watch him make us, again, become enemies of the good nations while he cozies up to dictators.
I am now assuming the worst about people. This is a new thing for me.
I went to the 7-11 this morning, to get Diet Pepsi after a night of fitful and insufficient sleep. Several old men, apparently unhoused, were standing outside. I overheard one grizzled old guy in a torn cowboy hat say, “I used to party with them people on Fry Street,” a nearby college area, known for its abundance of bars. The nation’s first head shop is located there, too. Maybe for them, their lives are unchanged today, because they’re already in desperate situations, but it’s hard for me to see how everyone else is unaffected. The rich will get richer, the hateful will spew more hate, and now, I have become one of them.
I thought about people in Ukraine today, and Gaza, and Israel, and all the countries where war is active and fierce, places where people are starving, where women have never had any rights and likely never will.
Despite the hate- and sorrow - in my heart right this minute, I am able to write these words from a place of extreme privilege. I am white, retired, college-education. I am not wealthy, but I own a home, a car, have a stable life. I have innumerable books and a fridge full of food. I am healthy and active. I have friends. I am not about to say I’m grateful or blessed, because I can’t get to that feeling today. Maybe later.
How do we get through this. How?
I don’t know. I just know that writing this down is the first step I had to take today, because I don’t want to stay in hate forever. Just for a little longer.