I know a little something about grief.
When the ground falls out from under you, when the world is upside down, when you are just broken. So broken.
I’ve been there.
And I’ve also come back. My feet found the ground again, the world turned right side up, and the brokenness faded and faded until I was whole again. Different, because you can’t go back and be who you were before—but whole.
There’s no formula for it. You can’t calculate exactly how long it will take to get there. You can’t speed through it, can’t skip the steps, can’t snap your fingers and just be done. It takes time. It takes work.
There are no words that make it better because sometimes it can’t be made better. No perspective, no cliche, no silver lining. You can’t bring back the dead.
Sometimes it just sucks.
And it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks. Until it doesn’t.
I first wrote about Donald Trump in 2011, right here at Daily Kos, when I was just a brand-new associate editor. Here’s the lede:
This probably won't help Donald Trump's little problem with being perceived as a racist asshole.
It’s shocking how well those words hold up, 13 years later. And yet not shocking at all. Trump was always a racist asshole, long before I wrote about it. Hell, long before I was even born. In 13 years, he’s only gotten worse.
Back then, it was about his gleefully malicious promotion of the birther conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama. This year, it was about Vice President Kamala Harris’ Blackness.
The more things change, the more nothing changes with this man.
In 2016, I watched every single Trump rally. That was my job. In those days, before his now-78-year-old brain had completely turned to mush and he struggled to open doors, he was doing two or even three rallies a day. Every day.
I watched them all. It was for a good cause. I was working with the team at Planned Parenthood to elect our first woman president, and I suffered through every terrible word he spewed.
It was agony, but it was worth it because we were going to elect Hillary Clinton and finally shatter that glass ceiling.
That fucking glass ceiling.
I wore my headband that day. I took all the smiling selfies. My team proudly wore our “Madam President If You’re Nasty” sweatshirts we’d had made special just for us.
And then the ground fell out from under us, and the world turned upside down, and we were broken. We were all so broken.
Nothing could make it better. It just sucked.
The grief was real. It was deep. Like losing a loved one. We’d lost our country, and nothing could make it better. You can’t bring back the dead.
Except …
Through our grief, we marched and organized and resisted. We fought back, and we won. We fucking won. And on that glorious Saturday in November, I joined my fellow New Yorkers on the street to cheer for hours until we were hoarse because we’d done it.
We’d beaten the racist asshole, and we were whole again. Different—but whole.
The racist asshole is back.
The glass ceiling remains unshattered.
The world is upside down again.
And it just sucks.
This grief is real, and right now nothing can make it better. This is how grief works. We can’t know how long it will take to be whole again. It will take time and work. It won’t be easy. Losing a loved one—or a country—never is.
But I have to believe it will happen. Because I know a little something about grief. And I know that even though it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks and it sucks—we will find the ground again. And we will come back.
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