I’m here.
I’m surviving.
And in some ways I feel myself thriving. The key for me is digestible small chunks of information. No doom scrolling, no freaking myself out with hours of reading the news on various platforms and social media accounts. The key for me is to preveng panic because that’s what takes away my strength. I exhaust myself with anxiety when I don’t tone it down and relax.
The thing is that in my general real life world, things are ok. The kids are all doing fairly well and seem mostly happy. I have more support of the real me than I ever dreamed possible. I have friends and the lacrosse team and the museum staff and volunteers and things that are really exciting and hopefully going to actually happen in the future that I look forward to, like taking the kids to see Weird Al in the fall.
I think I finally understand how my grandmother used to feel when she said she was worried about the whole world and “all the things on the news.” She only had an hour of news coverage an evening, though. There was no 24 hour news cycle. She saw mostly facts that were concerning to her. She didn’t like to see people suffering. I get that. I feel like I might break if I read too much about people not knowing how they will handle a recent, unexpected job loss.
The hardest part of all of this is where do we go from here? How do we get to a world where people respect each other and don’t act like everything around them is a threat. I’m not asking for phoney niceness, just basic respect. The other side of this is why does everyone think their opinion matters? It goes like this on social media-someone shares a thing. Another person feels the need to descriptively share why they hate that thing SO MUCH. A third person rolls up in the comments with what a stupid loser, bitch, asshole, communist, whatever -ist someone is. And then everyone else files in with some comment agreeing with person 2, person 3, or some other take on the original thing. It’s exhausting.
We had a friend RUN to social media within minutes of the halftime show ending to share how much she hated it. Who cares? Mute the tv, walk away, complain to your family. I don’t care what she thinks about the halftime show. I don’t care what anyone thinks about the halftime show but finally, after a week and a half, it’s out of the news cycle mostly. No one wants to discuss, they just want to flip out and fight.
I shared something about the irony of the executive order about trans athletes and women’s sports and how everyone is all about protecting women’s sports NOW but complains about the WNBA and US women’s soccer. An old acquaintance from the military jumped in to comment how he doesn’t want his tiny daughter hurt by men in sports, that women should have the opportunity to excel in sports without “biological males” taking away opportunities from girls and women. He complained about the Olympics. After all that commentary, he basically said something about the greater themes about women in professional sports and earning respect. After his stupid diatribe, I responded that I was talking about the greater themes of no respect for women’s professional sports and gave him some examples of my coaching experiences. Did he respond to me? Nope. Not a word. This was someone I have barely interacted with in years who never comments on anything else I share. And another such lurker liked his comment, but nothing on mine.
So I dropped them both. I am not going to be social media “friends” with anyone who can’t have a discussion in good faith. Bruh, if you are going to come on over to my page and make your comments, don’t expect me to not respond. And if you refuse to come back and actually have the conversation, you are gone. I deliberately don’t jump into comments on someone’s page who I don’t interact with often unless it’s to offer support. You know why?
BECAUSE MY OPINION ISN’T SOME DIVINE TRUTH THEY MUST COME TO LEARN AND RESPECT. Facts are facts but opinions are just opinions and are not facts.
Facts: Trump appears to have won the election until there is proof showing otherwise. Elon Musk was never elected and cannot be president according to the Constitution. The Holocaust is real. It actually happened. The Eagles beat KC in the Super Bowl. Kendrick Lamar did the half time show.
Opinions: I like/dislike Donald Trump for XYZ reasons. Elon Musk is a terrible/wonderful business leader. The half time show by Kendrick Lamar was great/the worst ever.
I am not sure anyone can be of the opinion that the Holocaust was a good thing. Unless maybe you are an anti-semite. But you would be in a strange, rare minority. There’s nothing good about genocide and hatred of anyone. But here we are.
I allow people to exist as my social media friends even if I know their political beliefs but they don’t advertise them. There are many people whose beliefs I don’t really know and they don’t share publicly. I assume they probably fall to the right based on what I know about them, but they just don’t share all that. I value differences in opinion, but when someone becomes unhinged I cannot allow them in my circle. I get sucked into reading their drama and it messes me up. Stupid ADHD makes me unable to control the impulse to read their stuff and get worked up. But that’s the stress that affects me physically in a bad way. I don’t want to continue taking that on. My health can’t tolerate me taking on unnecessary stress. That’s the inner strength I’m building in these times. The strength to say bye to people who don’t bring out the best in me. The ones who believe their opinions are facts.
These people are often fueled by fear. They do not and cannot accept that the media and their favorite politicians and pushing all this fear on them to drive the masses. The crazy part is that both sides do it. I have to read everything I get carefully and ask myself if something seems real and plausible or if it sounds like it’s doomsday and unlikely to actually happen. Although lately I would say that this line is a moving target and some scary things have happened. Mass unemployment in the federal government isn’t good for this country.
But I will continue to be here. Doing the best I can to stay strong and to keep my head above water.
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