There are moments that the words don't reach.
There's a suffering too terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can
and push away the unimaginable.
--Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
I absolutely love this show. Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love it. But I never ever allow myself to listen past the first part of the second act. I can't listen to their son, Phillip, die. I can't listen to what happens afterward. This lyric is taken from the song It's Quiet Uptown which is sung just after Phillip dies. I would love to be able to sing it because it is absolutely beautiful, but I can't, because this lyric breaks me every single time. This is what I do every single day. I push away the unimaginable because if I let myself imagine it, even if just for a split second, I am undone. The day is over. I can't move. I can't breath. I can't function.
This has been a bad week. Nothing catastrophic really, just a lot of the same little things, frustrations at work, bad time at chemo, arguments at home. I am on my second course of antibiotics in one week for two separate illnesses so I haven't felt so great either. I spend a lot of time looking outward, trying to find good things in the world that I can focus on, so I can say "at least this thing, this is a good thing." Seriously, when I can't find some goodness somewhere, in something, I become almost despondent. I had such a complete meltdown in church after the bombings in Paris that I ran out of the sanctuary in tears. I had a few of those things last week that I was able to focus on. Our church had a lovely service for the dead and a church dinner on All Souls Day. I couldn't bear to go to the service or even to socialize much but I was happy just to hangout behind the scenes setting things up and washing dishes because I knew that service was a good thing.
After Hurricane Matthew there was so much beauty to be found in our community. Neighbors checked on each other. They brought each other hot food and gave each other's kids safe places to play. It didn't matter who had a Trump sign and who had a Clinton sign. Trump voters and Clinton voters came together in our church hall and put together over 300 bag lunches that were given out to the children in our community who were missing out on school lunches due to the flooding. Supporters of both candidates gathered bottled water, clothing, and food and took it to the Salvation Army to make sure the people at the shelters had supplies. Hurricane Matthew went a long way to restoring my faith in humanity.
As the election draws closer, however, these outward signs of goodness in the world are becoming few and far between. I feel very strongly about who I voted for and it is hard for me to understand those who voted for the other candidate, but I try not to say anything, not on social media anyway. The things people have been posting on Facebook are so upsetting. Everyone is so vicious. I may need to step away from it all for awhile just because I don't want to see this. Families attacking each other. I just want to ask everyone out there to please remember that deep down, you love each other. Please remember that the sun is going to rise on November 9th and no matter who wins, we are all going to have work to do to repair the rifts that have formed in our nation. We don't want to have to repair rifts in our families as well. On November 9th your family will still be your family. Your friends will still be your friends. Your mom, your dad, your next door neighbor, your Uncle George, your great aunt Edith, your kid's best friends parents, they will still be there and they will still be the same people they were before the election. They are still the same people who read stories to your kid, who taught you how to tie your shoes, who cleaned up after you that time you OD'd on Nacho Cheese Doritos and threw up all over the velour interior of their car. They still love you and you love them. Please do not let this stupid election change all that.
In closing I'm going to ask each of you to do me a little favor. Before you post something election related on Facebook or Twitter this week, think about Great Aunt Ethel and the Nacho Cheese Dorito incident, think about your old friend and the time she held your hair after you overdid it at a party. Remember the time your other friend's husband helped you pack up and move on short notice. Help me find good things in this world so I can push away the unimaginable. Get involved in something wonderful that your community or your church is doing. Scan the news and share stories about people helping people. Remind yourself that no matter what happens on November 8th, when November 9th dawns the thing that will move our country forward will be the beautiful, complex human beings that make our country one of the best on the planet.
