Stages-of-Grief Pinball

It’s just over two weeks since I woke to the news that Trump and Vance won the election. Since, I can’t find the right verb for the velocity and force of my mood swings. Pinballing comes close in the painfully loud propulsion from one barrier to another. It’s not a precise metaphor. It implies one thing at a time, which isn’t how feelings work. Even the Kubler-Ross stages of grief aren’t perfect, however tidy and useful it can feel to set down five words and categorize among them. As anyone who has lost someone knows (in our COVID world, that’s every one of us, some more than others) grief isn’t linear. It doesn’t make sense. It’s messy and huge and never just one thing.

One of my doctor dad’s favorite sayings was “it’s all physics.” Sometimes I wonder what he felt they embodied. There’s an earthy respect for science, the physicality of the world, and our place in it. I used to tease back and say, no, some of it’s chemistry and biology, too! I think that still gives short shrift to the ephemeral—ideas and emotions like love and hate, ignorance and fear.

I’ve been writing this essay in my head over the last two weeks. I don’t feel capable of putting words to the seething tangle of thoughts and feelings. But I’m gonna do it anyway. I have a lot of rage. Sadness. Chagrin at the hope I had for different outcomes. So much fear. Not so much for myself. I’m a cis-het white married woman living in a blue state with good protections. My privileged self is pretty safe. But what about my LGBTQ+ and BIPOC family, friends, and neighbors? The earth? The ongoing genocides? The people dying because they can’t get healthcare? The immigrants and refugees? What about everybody and everything else?

That list of questions winds me up; I spiral violently among the stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. They crash and bleed into one another, smeary edged from tears and the spit of rage.

The morning after the election, I went to Target. I saw my friend Courteney. We hugged, our mom bellies squashing into one another, cried, and talked about our kids. I went to the grocery store. I saw my friend Alice. We hugged, cried, and talked about our kids. Her son is only five years old; she wondered what to tell him. I went home and cooked a meal for a friend who’s had so much misfortune rain down over the past year that I don’t know how he hasn’t drowned. I can’t do anything about the misfortunes. Or the election results. But I could make a meal, deliver it, and give him a hug. That’s not nothing. Those three words are one of my favorite sayings.

Since the election, as the news trickled in, I first believed, then came to KNOW, that someone’s finger was one the scale. The rejected ballots? The bomb threats to polling places in Georgia? The online misinformation? Those cowardly newspapers who didn’t endorse? All these have me pinballing between anger and sadness.

Where am I today in the Kubler-Ross stages? At the grief buffet; I’ll have a little of everything, please, with an extra dose of carbs. I’m in tears or raging at how half the country could vote for Trump and Vance and Musk and Putin. I’m depressed and moving slow. I’m wondering what can be done; what can I do? Half the country voted against the other half.

I see a lot of platitudinous posts online. About hope. Coming together. Trying to understand one another. I have no use for that.

The day after the election in 2016, I walked in the predawn to work. I passed a neighbor sitting on her stoop. She and I looked at each other, tears in our eyes, and didn’t say a word.

I saw her recently. Reminded her of that moment. “Oh, that was YOU!” she exclaimed. We smiled; this was before the election.

I don’t know the particulars of what’s coming. But I know it’s going to be bad. People are going to die. No, MORE people are going to die. Also, birds and animals and flora and so much more.

I will never accept a Trump and Vance and Musk and Putin presidency. That is some bullshit. Is this denial? Maybe. Acceptance isn’t available to me today. I’m gonna fight. I don’t know how. I don’t know with whom.  There’s got to be a better way. A third way. A way that isn’t two groups yelling at one another. I don’t know what that is. But I’m listening for it.

I hope—I hesitate to use that word; I’m gonna do it anyway—you are too.