Finding faith, hope, and optimism while surviving life under fascism.
I fell into or jumped into, or perhaps slid into the abyss back in December. I can’t say exactly what it was could’ve been something minor could’ve been something major. It could’ve been just cumulative effects, but for the first time, I think I just lost all faith in humanity and hope that things will get better whether that be getting better personally getting better globally in any context.
I remarked to my fiancé over the weekend that I couldn’t understand how he still has faith in the universe and humanity and knows that somehow someway things will get better and we will build a new world. We aren’t going back to the way things were, but obviously things have to change greatly. I just had been stuck in that hopeless void of it’s never going to get better though to be fair I am Eastern/Central European and much of our history reads “and then it got worse.” So I sometimes have a hard time seeing the big picture beyond the darkness beyond the despair beyond the depression beyond the hopelessness, and all of that, and I still struggle with it, but I had to sit with it. I had to sit with it for a while to understand it fully to understand what I was feeling.
And what I was feeling was a catastrophic combination of abject rage, the loss of faith and hope and humanity and the world at large and anything ever getting better so I was angry. I was sad and I was just holding it all in as best as I could side note I don’t think dialectical behavioral therapy really works for me. It just crushes everything down under. I’m being mindful and stress tolerance, and it just pushes things down until the only option is the nuclear option.
To explain this I am using an example from the 1983 film 'The Day After' about nuclear war, there’s a scene in the beginning of the family preparing for the daughter‘s wedding the next day -- this is during the nukes flying as they’re getting ready to family is getting ready to go to the bomb shelter. The mother is dissociated out making the beds getting everything ready because the wedding guests are all gonna be there and we’re gonna be doing the wedding and she’s just she’s just not stopping doing what she’s doing and I was personally I feel like I was stuck in that moment going through the motions if I keep myself busy if I keep moving, if I keep moving, I don’t have to acknowledge what is going on and at the scene at which the husband has no other choice but to literally physically grab her to take her down to the bomb shelter, and the full weight of what is happening hits her and she just begins wailing and I feel like I’ve been stuck in that moment for so long so it took my my fiancé telling me to take this full day off, which for me as a rare occasion, and we’re just gonna do whatever because he knew he knew I had all this stuck emotions of it for stuff that’s going on my personal life professional life trying to navigate being disabled in this world all the terrible shit going on, etc. and had to feel my feels.
He gave me the space to just fall apart incoherently sobbing and he didn’t judge me and he held space for me and he helped me through it and getting to that other side I feel a lot better now. Sometimes we have to let it out, and there is no shame in having emotions, no matter how big they are no matter how loud they are no matter you’re allowed to feel your feelings, and sometimes you have to hold space for the person, even though those feelings and the things that they might be saying or doing might be triggering to you. But you put it aside because you hold space for that person you hold your stuff to the side so that they can get through what they need to get through. It’s not to say that your stuff doesn’t matter not even in that moment it’s just that sometimes holding space just means I got my shit. I’m gonna put it in a box over here right now. I’m gonna let you have centerstage to do to deal with your shit.