Still Too Close To Call
This week it’s been tough to find inspiration. I’ve been trying to focus, but there’s a demolition happening next door metaphorically and literally.
What used to be a Toyota dealership beside our condo has been reduced to a pile of debris. On Monday there was a building, on Wednesday there wasn’t. All week Mark and I have been glued to the windows, watching trucks gobble up rubble like hungry hungry hippos.
When our faces aren’t pressed against the window, they’re pulled into our phone screens. Five days of election coverage straight. No breaks, no breathers, barely a winner. Biden is president elect, but not much feels different. I’m still waiting for a new update to crumble everything down.
We've seen that destruction is almost instantaneous. One demolition team for a few hours can tear a structure apart. Building from the ground up, however, takes years. It’s the difference between meticulous planning and an actual bulldozer.
Guess which one the Trump administration is.
In 2016 that bulldozer was taken to our hope. Since then we’ve been on edge, waiting for 2020 to right our wrongs. All week it felt like we might fall off that same cliff again, and I've been bracing myself for it.
I say we, but we’re only the bystanders. From our Canadian vantage point, there’s not much we can do but watch. In the same way Mark and I were powerless to the destruction of the dealership, not that we particularly cared. For us that demo has been entertaining. It affects us merely as a talking point. We are safe from this distance.
Actual picture of me all week
The states, on the other hand, are in the thick of it.The helplessness we feel around the election is doubled by our inability to participate. While the lives of US residents may be more tangibly altered, we don’t watch that demolitions and come out unscathed.
We are the Ned Flanders nation, seemingly only relevant to the chaotic plot of the states next door. What was there to say until we knew the fate of our neighbours? What other wild things will we find in their crumbling walls this week?Joe Biden has officially won, but the destruction is still unfolding around us, and all we can bring ourselves to do is stare through the window.
Give Me Something to Write About
In the panic it’s been challenging to find another topic to focus on, The last few weeks I’ve been writing from a more personal note. So much so that it feels like I’m writing my own ‘Letters of Truth”.
That was a super deep cut reference, so please let me know if any of you got it...
In full transparency I still haven’t found the right tone for this project. This week I was torn between writing about a female-owned skateboarding company or self-harm tendencies. If that sounds scattered, it’s because it is.
Early on I held anger in my topics. I wrote with a feminist angle and channeled frustration into WAP haters, cat callers, and Nike. Now it seems like my writing has flown out of anger and right into depression. The urgency that fuelled my first few weeks is gone, and I spend my morning typing out random musings until something sticks.
This week I’ve been running on empty.
Truthfully, it was impossible to look at anything besides the election, and this minimal amount of closure isn’t enough for me to switch gears completely. But what more is there to say that hasn’t been said? There’s been 24 hour news coverage on since Tuesday, and every topic has been exhausted. Nevada is slow, Pennsylvania was important. All I really care about is the outcome, and that announcement is already tired a day later.
I started this draft on Tuesday, and by Saturday I don’t have anything new to offer. I’m as tense as the rest of you, and still bracing myself for the worst. Chanel Miller, the author of Know My Name (which you all should read), gave the most perfect description of what this week has been like:
What I want to do is stretch. More than from the election, but from the heaviness of this whole term. It feels like weight has been stacking on all of our shoulders for weeks. My posture has been irreparably altered, and we are devolving into flighty, tense, cave people. Social skills are lacking, bodies are aching, and our attention constantly divided. Biden's win isn't enough to shed all of that weight, but it is a huge step in the right direction. The reality is just taking awhile to sink in.
The Hard Tooth
Despite the news cycle, this week I was committed to stop wallowing in my writing. I wanted to give everyone something tangible. I was searching for a cheery topic you could make use of.
I landed on 'feeling sexy during COVID'. It’s been awhile since we addressed how straight-up not hot it is to be stuck at home. On Monday I researched diminishing sex drives in quarantine, the impact of stress on sexual identity, and ways to feel more in-tune with yourself in limiting environments. I thought maybe I’d even put on a sexy outfit and let you know how my mentality changed.
Instead I booked an emergency dentist appointment for a lingering toothache. What they found was a dead tooth. The sexiest possible diagnosis.
Apparently corrective orthodontics can lead to longterm damage to nerves.Trauma from braces over the course of my teen years have caused my tooth to slowly calcify up the root, sealing it from the inside. My recent stress and jaw clenching have expedited the process, so now it's fully necrotic and slightly grey. In essence we tried so hard to make my smile palatable that we accidentally killed it.
There’s an Anna Nicole Smith parallel there that I won’t get into, but you get the idea.
What I will touch on, however, is the thought that not everything needs to perfectly fit into place. Maybe this once I’m allowed a newsletter with no thesis. I tried to put a bandaid on my stress by focusing on a light topic, and I murdered my tooth in the process. Maybe this lengthy election was needed to force us all on pause...again. A break within a break. A reminder that the world isn't normal right now, and we should take a minute to stretch, breath, and touch base with ourselves.
Biden isn't our saviour - he's just a guy that isn't Trump. That has to be enough for us now, and we can't force him to be anything different. Personally, I’m banging this newsletter out on a few T3s waiting for my next endodontist appointment on Friday the 13th. I can't say that upcoming date is easing any of my stress, but the drugs are definitely a start. At the very least, they're forcing me relax my jaw and take stock of the damage.
Jesus Carrie
Biggie Biggie Biggie Can’t You See?
It's impossible to ignore that the last four years have been traumatic. COVID may be the final clench, but our internal channels of hope have been calcifying for years. We have been trained to expect chaos, and our nerves have been slowly dying since 2016. Every insane headline and derogatory statement has hardened our insides, and we need a full root canal to clean out our collective damage.
For now I wonder if we’ll be able to handle a world without the president screaming in the headlines. The problem with unstable environments, is that they create a need for us to constantly destroy. Stress becomes our default, and any form of silence is suspicious. We say we’re ready for calm, but I think we’ve been hardwired to mishandle it. Can we even accept stability when it's offered?
Leaving a toxic relationship takes time. That's why we can't be mad at Carrie for always choosing Big. In reality PTSD sufferers often put themselves into dangerous situations to not have to deal with the memories of fear internally. In losing the chaos of Trump, we now have to prepare to heal without distraction. We are so used to constant stimulus that sitting in silence will be uncomfortable, and I worry about the outbursts and pain people will unleash in the quieter moments. We will find our own Bigs to chase in order to cope with the alarming amount of security.
More than that, people have a morbid curiosity around drama and mayhem. We revel in seeing Carrie make the wrong choice over and over again. Some of us even root for it. There’s a theory that people love destruction because it makes us feel powerful. Breaking shit is cathartic. We're also inherently curious. There is something satisfying in imagining the worst possible outcome. We want to know what everything will be like once it’s been ruined
That said, I spent all week bracing myself for Trump to win, and I feel anything but powerful. In the same way that I love true crime and the Bachelorette, I was preparing for another four years of Trump because it’s fascinating to imagine. I was playing the “what’s the worst case scenario” game as a coping mechanism because it's easier to prepare for doomsday than to hold onto hope. I stressed about the outcome so much that I killed my own tooth, and now I'm having a hard time seeing the positives.
Views from the six….
STILL Too Close to Call
As stressful as the last week has been, the flipping from red to blue highlights what we already know: The States are divided. It was too close to call all week, and that in and of itself is worrying. It might not be too close to call anymore, but it was too close for comfort.
Who knows how we can start to bridge that gap, but for now we can take solace in the fact that our side won.
With Biden confirmed we can take a breather, presuming we all remember how to breath. It feels like I’ve been conserving air in my lungs forever, using short bursts incase we have to sprint somewhere on a moments notice. When was the last time you fully exhaled? Fully let your chest expand? As a continent it’s been about 4 years.
In his speech last night Biden called this a time to heal. Not just from a virus, a horrible president, and our personal lives, but from stress. We've been coping with chaos and watching destruction around us since Hilary lost. It's impossible not to internalize those stressors. We need time to clean out our roots, ease our clenching, and stretch. We need time to sit in quiet and stop ogling at the ruins. We need time to tend to our minds, hearts, and nerves. And, for some of us, our teeth.
Take a moment right now to relax your jaw. How good did that feel?
Now take a moment to recognize that we've made it through this week, this month, this year, and this term. There is residual damage, but as of today we can start to clean it all out. For me, that starts on with a root canal on Friday the 13th. A weird date to associate with healing, but we have to start somewhere.
None of this year has been conventional anyway...
