Well, here we are.
We persevere because we have no other choice.
Hi Readers,
It’s been awhile since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I got married last month and it was incredible. After the wedding Collin and I took a week off to eat our way through Tucson, Arizona before returning to the last few weeks of our work-travel season.
The newsletter recapping the wedding was supposed to come out on Halloween but work was overwhelming and I didn’t want to spend more time than I had to in front of a screen.
Then I planned to finish it up on Election Night as a way to distract myself. As the night progressed I stepped away from my computer for reasons known now.
I have never experienced such a visceral response to an election before. I didn’t sleep much on Tuesday night and when I checked the news of his victory, my body rejected it. I immediately ran to the bathroom and vomited.
So that’s where this newsletter finds us.
Wednesday was a day for collective grieving. I felt the sadness and let myself be devastated. I doomscrolled for as long as I wanted to without any self-judgement.
I spent most of the day cuddled in bed with my husband, letting myself experience every bit of anger, sadness, and helplessness.
And then my sister called. My phone was across the room so I missed her call. She called Collin and told him to go outside and look out the window.
We walked to our kitchen window and opened the blinds. My sister was parked across the street with her windows down. My niece’s butt hung out the rear window while her brother laughed in the background.
In that moment I remembered that there will still be joy to experience.
It’s probably not a surprise that I turn to books for comfort. Two quotes from two of my all-time favorite books come to mind.
“There is always something left to love.” — One Hundred Years of Solitude
“You think there’s some nobility in being above anger?… Anger is a kind of fear. And fear saved you. When the world was all kneecaps and corners of coffee tables, fear kept you safe…. Fear made me work hard, get better. It’s a dirty fuel, but it works. And anger? Anger helped me to leave him. To get my boys away from him as soon as I could. To come thrive in this country that didn’t even believe we were people. To prove it wrong. You can put a saddle on anger, Cyrus.” — Martyr!
I am going to saddle up anger and ride it to a good life despite the circumstances. I will continue to thrive out of pure, unadulterated spite.
