I do know a bit one thing about grief.
When the bottom falls out from underneath you, when the world is the other way up, when you find yourself simply damaged. So damaged.
I’ve been there.
And I’ve additionally come again. My toes discovered the bottom once more, the world turned proper aspect up, and the brokenness pale and pale till I used to be complete once more. Completely different, as a result of you possibly can’t return and be who you have been earlier than—however complete.
There’s no system for it. You possibly can’t calculate precisely how lengthy it’ll take to get there. You possibly can’t velocity by way of it, can’t skip the steps, can’t snap your fingers and simply be executed. It takes time. It takes work.
There aren’t any phrases that make it higher as a result of typically it may well’t be made higher. No perspective, no cliche, no silver lining. You possibly can’t convey again the useless.
Typically it simply sucks.
And it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks. Till it doesn’t.
I first wrote about Donald Trump in 2011, proper right here at Day by day Kos, after I was only a brand-new affiliate editor. Right here’s the lede:
This in all probability will not assist Donald Trump’s little drawback with being perceived as a racist asshole.
It’s stunning how effectively these phrases maintain up, 13 years later. And but not stunning in any respect. Trump was at all times a racist asshole, lengthy earlier than I wrote about it. Hell, lengthy earlier than I used to be even born. In 13 years, he’s solely gotten worse.
Again then, it was about his gleefully malicious promotion of the birther conspiracy concept about President Barack Obama. This 12 months, it was about Vice President Kamala Harris’ Blackness.
The extra issues change, the extra nothing modifications with this man.
In 2016, I watched each single Trump rally. That was my job. In these days, earlier than his now-78-year-old mind had utterly turned to mush and he struggled to open doorways, he was doing two and even three rallies a day. Day by day.
I watched all of them. It was for a great trigger. I used to be working with the workforce at Deliberate Parenthood to elect our first girl president, and I suffered by way of each horrible phrase he spewed.
It was agony, but it surely was value it as a result of we have been going to elect Hillary Clinton and eventually shatter that tumbler ceiling.
That fucking glass ceiling.
I wore my headband that day. I took all of the smiling selfies. My workforce proudly wore our “Madam President If You’re Nasty” sweatshirts we’d had made particular only for us.
After which the bottom fell out from underneath us, and the world turned the other way up, and we have been damaged. We have been all so damaged.
Nothing may make it higher. It simply sucked.
The grief was actual. It was deep. Like shedding a cherished one. We’d misplaced our nation, and nothing may make it higher. You possibly can’t convey again the useless.
Besides …
Via our grief, we marched and arranged and resisted. We fought again, and we received. We fucking received. And on that wonderful Saturday in November, I joined my fellow New Yorkers on the road to cheer for hours till we have been hoarse as a result of we’d executed it.
We’d overwhelmed the racist asshole, and we have been complete once more. Completely different—however complete.
The racist asshole is again.
The glass ceiling stays unshattered.
The world is the other way up once more.
And it simply sucks.
This grief is actual, and proper now nothing could make it higher. That is how grief works. We are able to’t know the way lengthy it’ll take to be complete once more. It can take time and work. It received’t be straightforward. Shedding a cherished one—or a rustic—by no means is.
However I’ve to imagine it’ll occur. As a result of I do know a bit one thing about grief. And I do know that despite the fact that it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks—we’ll discover the bottom once more. And we’ll come again.
