Thank you, Donald

I want to thank you, personally, for winning the election. No, I’m not being facetious, I really do want to thank you, on many levels. I did not vote for you. Oh, no, I’m one of those “nasty women” who thought experience and dedication were worth the office, but now I’m here to thank you.

            I want to thank you first, for showing me the true meaning of Privilege. I never felt threatened in my life by my government, my neighbors, my civil servants before you ran for the highest office in the country. I know I’m a woman, and that my work isn’t worth being paid equal to a man, but I was willing to look the other way on that one. I mean, I’m lucky I can go out and get a job, considering it was looked down upon if my Grandma had wanted to. I have never been racially profiled. I never got stopped and had to have my car inspected with the excuse of a burnt out taillight because of the color of my skin. I have never been harassed over what God I choose to worship. I’ve never had to defend my faith to someone who had no interest in learning about it, only to belittle and disparage it based on a small percentage of radicals. I was safely ensconced within my bubble of middle-class white suburbia, and then you came along.

            I had the luxury of being apolitical. Sure, I voted--once every 4 years—

and even then, I really only paid attention to the Presidential race. I never vetted my Senators, my Representatives. I kind of followed along party lines and just went with the flow. Local positions? I didn’t pay any attention, they didn’t seem to matter to me.  How big of an impact could they make?

            Doubt began to seep in when you secured the Republican nomination, but I was sure that common sense would prevail. Surely the masses would see that a reality TV personality was not a qualified candidate. I know that Reagan was an actor, but he had at least held a public office for years before being elected. You had no experience and a lot of money, but you claimed not to be of the establishment. Surely, voters would recognize that a business tycoon was the epitome of the establishment, even if he wasn’t a party pawn. Surely, it was obvious.

            November 8 came, as it got closer, I realized that I was making a mistake. Voting wasn’t enough. I was proud of Hillary, and the obstacles she overcame to get to the point she did. She was as cutthroat as any politician, but I didn’t fault her for her flaws, we all have them. My mistake was thinking that voting was enough. As I watched election results flood in for the first time in my entire life, I realized I should have worked for it. I work for everything else in my life, I need to work for my government, too.

            This is why I want to thank you, Donald. I want to thank you for bursting my bubble. I want to thank you for shaking my world. I want to thank you for showing me that being a passive supporter of the status quo is unacceptable. I had hope when you took that oath, the things you promised were like so many other campaign promises; chaff in the wind. I thought that maybe life would continue as uneventfully as it always has. These first days of your term have proven me wrong.

            Thank you, Mr. Trump, for showing me that there is a fire burning inside me for my country. Thank you for showing me that there is a passion for politics that I didn’t know existed. I have a lot to learn, civics class was a long time ago, but I am committed to educating myself. There are marches to go on, petitions that need to be signed, groups with more experience and knowledge than I have that need volunteers.

            You have destroyed my rose-colored glasses, and I once again thank you. You have united my sisters and brothers to rise up against injustice and moral bankruptcy. It is no longer acceptable to sit in the back seat and enjoy the view. I will no longer wait for someone else to take up the yoke and pound the pavement. It may start small, like phone calls to Senators, but it will grow. The marches and protests will continue, and they will get bigger and bigger. I know you can appreciate that, you like all things that are big, like your buildings. The resistance will take seed and will grow larger than your tallest skyscraper. Only this one will not have your name on it, it will have mine: America. We can agree on one thing; we need to make America great again, and we will do it by getting your dirty hands off of it.

I Am the Phoenix

            When you find out he cheated, your first instinct is to fight back. To reclaim your territory and re-establish the life you’ve built. Even though you’ve imagined leaving for years, and told yourself that if he cheated, that would be the one thing that would drive you away. But, when you find out that he’s betrayed you, your first reaction is to think, “I can get him to come back to me and this family won’t be broken.”

            In my case, fortunately, that feeling didn’t last long. I let him go with no further fight and never looked back. I am worth more than what he was willing to give me. I deserve to be with a person who thinks I am amazing and is not threatened by what I have to offer. I deserve to be with a man who loves how much I adore my child and thinks it’s something to be celebrated. I deserve to be with a person who wants to see me improve and remake my life into something I’ve always felt like it should be. I deserve to be put on a pedestal.

            I was a broken person. I was beaten down. I had poured every last ounce of my being into my marriage. I kept giving and giving and giving, it was still not enough. He wanted more. He wanted me to be his strength, but he didn’t give me any in return. I chose to abandon ship. I was on the sinking Titanic, and chose to find a lifeboat instead of go down with the ship. I knew that the best chance of survival was as far away from his wreckage as I could possibly get, so I ran away and took my baby with me.

            Leaving saved my life. Leaving saved my boy. It is not the answer for everyone, but it was my answer. Leaving gave me strength. Leaving gave me hope. Leaving gave me a purpose. Leaving gave me the ability to become the person I forgot that I was. Leaving helped me to remember the woman that I was raised to be. Leaving was a beginning.

            I would not wish being cheated on to any person, friend or foe. It is destabilizing, being told you’re not good enough in not so many words, and can shake you to your core. It can make you doubt yourself and everything you stand for. It can gut you in the most visceral way. I couldn’t have imagined what it would do to me before it happened and I wouldn’t want anyone else to have to go through it. I recognize this didn’t happen in a vacuum. I recognize that I take some of the responsibility for the devolution of my marriage. I don’t hate him for his choice.  But, I do recognize the cowardly road he took to remove himself from the situation. I recognize the weakness that drove him into her arms. I recognize that healthy relationships take hard work and we both stopped putting that work into our marriage. I will, however, argue, that I was putting that work in long after he stopped contributing.

            You want to scream when the ultimate betrayal is uncovered. You want to shout, and punch someone, protest, and rebel. For me, it shook me from the complacency that I had created for myself. I knew that our life was not the one that we had aspired to when we were young and idealistic, but I thought we would be OK. What a gift it was to not be OK.

            Discovering that I had to start over was the best thing that could happen to me. Realizing that I had to grow and adapt was a blessing I didn’t count on. Getting away from the toxic situation I lived in day in and day out bestowed a perspective that I hadn’t realized that I needed. Meeting someone who respects and encourages me, and accepts me for who and what I am has been life-changing. Remembering the girl I used to be and the woman I aspired to be has been invaluable. It has not been easy, it has not been natural, but it has woken me from the coma that I inhabited for so many years. I have rediscovered my fire and tapped into my purpose. Recalling what it means to stand on my own and strive for a better future has given me the strength to pursue dreams that I forgot existed. After years of being someone else, I have rediscovered myself and, for that, I am eternally grateful. I have fought back against my situation, and found that I can prevail. I am the Phoenix, rising from the ashes of the life I thought I deserved, and ascending into the life that I can create. I have been victim to the deepest betrayal a person can experience, and I have prevailed. No, not simply prevailed, but I have conquered. My road stretches into the wood, but I am no longer afraid to take that overgrown path. It is time. I thank that betrayal, and the fight it reignited in my soul. My eyes glow with the fire that had smoldered into embers, the flames now leap from my soul. I sit in my lifeboat, and continue to paddle it to shore. The closer I get, the more distant a memory is the wreckage I leave behind me. I can read the map that guides me, and I follow it to the golden shore of my dreams. 

New Year's Un-Resolutions

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions as a rule. I tend to make myself a slew of promises, feel guilty when I don’t follow through on them, and then abandon them sometime in February (who am I kidding, I don’t usually even make it that long)!

            However, I am also an eternal optimist. I love the idea of starting fresh and improving myself and the world around me. I can’t entirely disregard the tradition, but I can’t justify writing myself a list of tasks for the year ahead. That being said, I’m going to write a list of un-resolutions that I hope to valiantly attempt to incorporate into my life. These are my aspirations for the year, hopefully to improve myself and become happier, healthier, and more in touch with my family. I choose not to make them as a promise, but as a hope and desire to make them a part of my everyday life, a desire to improve myself permanently and not just for a few months.

1)    Be Healthier. Rather than pledging to lose 20 pounds or eliminate carbs, I want to be more mindful of my overall health and well-being. I want to eat better, get more quality sleep and exercise more. I hope this will make me more rested, even-tempered, give me more energy, and if it has the added bonus of losing a few extra pounds, great!

2)    Take joy from the Little Things. It is easy to get caught up in all the demands of life. I tend to get overwhelmed with responsibilities and spend too much time trying to check items off of an imaginary list. This year, I want to make a conscious effort to slow down and notice the feel of spring rain on my skin, the scent of the flowers in my flower bed, savor the hugs of those I love, listen more and indulge the art of conversation without rushing through it to the next item on my list.

3)    Spend Quality Time with my family. My son is only going to be young once. I would like to try to remember to get down on the floor and play games, look beyond the mess, enjoy the insights he chooses to share with me, and indulge the childhood whims he imagines—within reason, of course.

4)    Disconnect from Social Media more often. Rather than compare my life to others through a screen, I would like to make time to get coffee with a friend, or take a walk in the woods. The amount of time and energy I spend online could be channeled into more productive and fulfilling activities that feed my soul.

5)    Read more. There are so many books I want to read, I need to spend more time with my to-be-read pile and less time watching TV.

6)    Write more. I never write enough. If I cut back on social media time and TV watching time, I’ll have much more free time to dedicate to writing. I need to devote more time to it, because I always feel better after I’ve completed a piece, whether it’s short or long, so I need to make an effort to spend more time on it.

I will have to start small. This list is not something I can accomplish all at once, but hopefully, over time, with small changes, I can improve myself and my life for the long-term. It’s a grand plan, it may not be something I can accomplish, but I intend to give it a shot and see how it affects my daily life and relationships.