Breathing Again

I’m in recovery, still exhausted but coming back. I have a long ways to go, frankly. One doesn’t plunge to the depths of depressing exhaustion enduring four years in hell and, when it’s over, bounce back, chipper and perky, in a week.

The remnants of fatigue were everywhere from how hard it was to imagine getting out of bed to the most mundane, routine activities. Brushing my teeth. Getting dressed. Making coffee. Answering the phone. Within an hour of getting up, I needed to go back to bed.

I’m not the only person who’s been exhausted. We’ve got a country full of people who’ve been drained by a 4-year struggle with deceit and indecency. There’s a reason #sleep trended on Twitter on January 20th. We were, for the first time in years, able not only to sleep but to breathe. As one wise man said, “I feel like the elephant is off my chest.” Once we let go of that national, collective exhale, we realized that it wasn’t only our breath that we had been holding. We were holding every muscle in our body stiff, tight, locked into defensiveness, ready to take the next blow.

No wonder we spent so much of January 20 in tears. We were emotionally fragile after years of anxiety and we were vulnerable to moments of sheer grace: from Lady Gaga’s soaring anthem to Amanda Gorman’s impossible genius, we felt the possibility of coming home. We were alive again, resurrected. We wept, our tears releasing 1,461 days of gasping shame.

One day was good but it’s going to take some time. I’m going to need to change some habits and beliefs. I’ll need to rebuild confidence that the world isn’t ending under a tidal wave of white nationalism, that the better angels of America are still to be found.

To be clear, I need to shift my mindset. That’s hard. I’ve been living on-edge, feeling that so long as there are armed Proud Boys or crowds of QAnon, we’re doomed. I dismissed any proof of good news because it ran hard into my mental reservations. If you told me something was good I’d tell you what was wrong with it. Positive or encouraging events were, always, polluted with some broadcast evidence saying it could change. I wanted 100% assurance, and so long as there was any evil afoot, there could be zero good. The problem with this is that It’s not true. There is good news, despite the fact there’s also hard news. A riot in the Capitol, unthinkable as it is, does not disprove that there are also good, even heroic, people. Some police risked their lives. Some leaders are honest. Some public servants really are servants.

I needed time to have President Biden’s claim sink in: “If there are enough of us” we can make the necessary changes. It isn’t going to take all of us, only enough of us. The Proud Boys can rev their engines and QAnon can spout ridiculous conspiracies. They, and others like them, can carry on. But the fact of their presence doesn’t contradict the broader, bolder truth that there really are enough of us who can stand up, oppose what’s wrong, press for what’s right, thereby recovering the power of decency, respect and truthfulness. We can breathe. We can #sleep.

Part of what drove me into exhaustion was my sense that nothing I could do would stop the damage and the lies. I hate powerlessness. I felt simultaneously responsible and useless. On January 20, reality returned. I no longer felt the personal need to shut down the damage machine. That work has now been taken on by a decent man in the White House who can be counted on to speak respectfully and truthfully. That was enough to light a candle of hope in my soul and whisper “breathe.”

I realize now that most of my days and many of my nights, my heart, mind and soul were residing in Washington DC. I saw the hallways and chambers where I’ve worked. I was living in the middle of crisis-on-crisis, lie-on-lie. In fact, I live two thousand miles from Washington DC. I want to bring my focus back here to the home where I have the luxury of being isolated. I need to live here, not there, with thoughts and dreams for my grandchild replacing fears and furies driven by him who shall not be named.

If I’m going to be exhausted, I’d like to tire myself by doing things that actually matter. They’ll be little things. They won’t change the world. They may barely be noticed by others. But they will shift my posture from defensive wariness to open-handed service. Always, serving others changes us. And that’s the point.

I’m going to look for new ways to encourage my children. I’m going to find a new charity that could use a small boost. I’ll send a note to someone who’s grieving, or celebrating, or simply experiencing the same isolation I am. I’ll make a call to my cousin. Maybe I’ll pull out the journal in which I’ve not made an entry for more than four years, and write a paragraph or two before I sleep tonight. Instead of feeding my fears on a diet of TV news, I’m going to declare a 3-day sabbath from electronic media and help a charity feeding hungry families.

And — please don’t tell anyone — I may even sing in the shower and dance with a broom in the kitchen. Shhh.

Exhausted? Depressed? Been there, done that. I’m going to take responsibility for my own mood and try, hard, to change it. I don’t need to live with the exhaustion of the past four years because they’re over and he’s (mostly) gone. On a good afternoon now, I could pour a cup of tea, sit back and yawn my way to a pre-dinner nap, satisfied that — knowing I can’t do everything — I’ve done something.

I’m emerging from four years of exhausting damage done to a country I very much love. At least for today, I’m convinced that there are enough of us to grow weary making little differences that will add up to hope.