Don't Gaslight Yourself. You're Right To Grieve What's Happening to America.

Photo by Doğukan Şahin on Unsplash

I know what you're thinking.

I know you feel something breaking inside lately; an invisible fracture that only you're fully aware of.

I know the way you walk away from conversations with people you once relied on for wisdom and clarity and compassion, doubting your own sanity because you no longer recognize those things in them and worry you may be overreacting.

I know the way you feel internally estranged from the friends, coworkers, family members, and neighbors you used to find affinity with, and you wonder if you're losing your mind.

I understand how you stare at the perpetual parade of horrible scrolling past you, from the second you wake up prematurely in the early morning until the stretched out nighttime moments you try unsuccessfully to fall asleep, and how you question the grip you have on reality.

I know the disbelief you feel in the presence of loved ones and ministers and leaders who now seem to be speaking some strange foreign tongue that you can't make any sense of anymore.

I hear the nagging question you ask inside your head a few hundred times a day: "Is it me, or has a huge portion of this country lost its mind?"

It isn't you.

You're quite fine, and this is of course both good and terrible news—because of what it says about you and about the place you find yourself.

The fact that you see how wrong this all is, means your faculties are intact, your mind is fully right, and your heart is working properly. It's all confirmation that you still have a soul doing what souls are supposed to do: keep you deeply human in profoundly inhumane times.

This is why you need to hold tightly to that soul because it is more rare and valuable than ever.
It's why you need to embrace this holy unrest in the center of your belly; because it is the greatest weapon against the present epidemic of apathy.
It's why you can't allow your right mind to make peace with such abject madness.

If enough time passes, an otherwise healthy person can start to get used to sickness. They can slowly begin to convince themselves that almost any horrifying, toxic, painful, twisted reality is acceptable.
Little by little they can gradually allow themselves to acclimate to the nightmare, to come to see it as normal.
Either that, or they determine that they're actually out of their minds and they collapse inside.

This is a reminder that what is happening in America right now is not at all normal and that you are right to feel this disorientation.

I need you to hear this, friend:
You're okay.
You're not crazy.
You're also in good company.

Right now there is a massive army of similarly walking wounded sharing this place with you; fellow exhausted souls who realize that none of this makes any sense—people concluding that for their health, they will need to create distance from people they once allowed close proximity.
There are millions of good people out here still looking to be the kind of people the world needs; those committed to doing no harm, burdened to bring something decent where it is missing.

There are many of us who see clearly:

We can see that this movement in our nation is a bastardization of humanity, a rebellion against goodness, a mutiny against sanity.
We can see that those sanctioning and defending and co-signing it are similarly unwell, equally disconnected from anything benevolent, similarly propelled by fear and greed and bitterness.

And that's why we need to keep resisting it.

You need to push back against the surrounding madness that tries to convince you that you've gone mad.

You need to refuse to be gaslit by people when they try to diminish your worries, mock your anxiety, or tell you you’re being overly emotional—even when that person is the one staring back at you in the mirror.

You need to press on, because in days when evil is normalized, goodness matters most.

Right now, work to find your people, those who are as heartbroken and furious as you are, and begin find ways to care for human beings in duress, to organize against the legislative assaults, and to be strengthened by loving community.

In times when truth and news are pliable, truth-tellers are worth more than gold.

You’re not crazy, but these days surely are.

You're not upside down right now, friend—a good portion of this place is.

Loving resistance is a world-turner.

People of faith, morality, and conscience together, from every corner of this nation will right-side it.