Constant, Endless Rage
I wish more than anything I weren’t so angry. I can feel myself radicalizing, thinking, “I don’t think I should have a gun, but I also don’t think lots of people should have guns and they have many. Maybe I really do need to arm myself for protection.” I hate this. I wish I didn’t have these thoughts. I don’t want to have to rely upon weapons to feel safe. This used to be a place of relative peace. But of course, it was only peaceful for the few, my privileged self amongst that number. It was always oppressive for people of color, immigrants, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQIA community, any and all marginalized populations. We have picked up full-speed on this colonialist, capitalist track and it’s hastening us swiftly toward hell, toward a boiling hot planet incompatible with life as it exists today. We are reaping what’s been sewn for centuries, accelerating for the last few decades.
I want to be compassionate. “I see why you feel that way, but I hope we can find solutions that take your considerations, my considerations, everyone else and their grandmother’s considerations, and the objective facts with equal weight.” There’s got to be a middle ground somewhere, right? I should state clearly that the Hulk is a good analogy for me: I am constantly enraged, triggered even more so these past days with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the hobbling of the EPA and its ability to regulate GHGs, the overreach of states into tribal sovereignty. You know, the judicial coup going on right this very moment. I want to be compassionate, but I am so livid, so infuriated, so full of hot lightning formerly without malice but with a newfound sense of paranoia, like my only option soon will be to acquire my own firearms. I don’t want to live in an armed country. I don’t want to live in an armed house. Maybe it’s the incessant heat roasting my brain, sharpening my uncivil tongue. What are we coming to? How far will the right take the culture wars and when will we be far enough over the cliff?
In the world at large there are brief and faint glimmers of hope, but never a sustained upward trajectory of improvement. My life personally remains as good as it can get all things considered, clear evidence from my point of view that the universe is conspiring to keep me here fighting in whatever way I can as long as I’m destined to be here. I wish it didn’t feel like I’m just endlessly beating my head against a wall. What will it take for the elders I’m supposed to honor and respect to see how far we’ve slipped away from safety and freedom, and are now entering a period of violence and destruction? I guess chaos is what we were meant to descend into all along. The religious texts predicting our collective downfall in hellfire were spot on. The Mayans were pretty close with a 2012 doomsday. Each day is a fresh nightmare, a new Pandora’s box of terrors, and yet we all survive to the next day, if we can.
Fundamentalist Constitutionalists, the most curmudgeonly kind of judge. Their viewpoints and legal opinions are akin to having a failing operating system you can never upgrade, a system of infrastructure you can never repair and improve. None of our governing documents were perfect the first time they were drafted and they desperately need amendments and relevant, time-sensitive adaptations.
Why can’t words be enough? Why can’t well-supported arguments win? What evidence would be convincing? Which emotional plea?
When I was 14, I remember learning the definition of misogyny in my freshman year English class, and I thought, “I’ve never experienced hatred toward women. This must be a philosophical concept.” Then when I was 16, I read the Handmaid’s Tale and thought, “What a provocative piece of literature! Surely we’ll never live in such a bleak dystopia, never let it get that bad.” Then I was 17 and Citizens v. United was decided and as I argued with my AP government debate team in Montpelier I thought, “I don’t fully understand the ramifications of how bad things will get, but it can’t be good or helpful to have corporations making endless campaign contributions and building Super PACs. Buying politicians is blatant corruption.” Then I was raped at 19 and saw how little is done in response, how many excuses and counter accusations get made, had my experience validated when I read “Missoula” by Jon Krakauer and realized this was the rule, not the exception. When I was 24 and the results of the 2016 election came out, I wept for two days straight, imagining all the horrors the Supreme Court, packed with Trump’s nominees, would unleash upon us for decades to come. And here we are. I’m 30 and terrified to become pregnant, not because I’m not longing for motherhood, but simply because I may not be able to access basic, life-saving reproductive healthcare. And I want to feel something resembling peace, but all I feel is pure, unadulterated rage. I fear who I’m becoming, the person I’m transitioning into as things grow darker and more desperate around all of us.
If anyone can let me in on the secret to inner calm in a sea of blood and despair, the nightmarish combination of gun violence and withholding of vital, life-saving healthcare, let me know. I don’t think therapy is the answer for individuals grappling with the larger picture of systemic injustice, just like I don’t think voting will ultimately be the tool that breaks the wheel and builds a better, more adaptive, streamlined, solution-oriented system of government.
