Homecoming

Like many Americans, I am reeling.  In absolute shock.  I felt sure that we would pull this one out, that love and tolerance would trump hate and discord.  Sadly, I was wrong. 

For me, this election felt personal.  Eight years ago, I watched from my little flat screen TV in my home in Knoxville, TN as Obama gave his acceptance speech.  It was a moment few of us will forget.  A man of color becoming the leader of the free world.  Optimism was high.  I was elated and charged with a rejuvenated sense of wonder and possibility.  I found myself lighter, freer, and I truly began to look at others and see kindness in each of them, a kind of divinity.  It was a beautiful thing.

In the wake of this optimism, I deepened my newly found yoga practice.  I was meditating daily.  I loved my job, was surrounded by wonderful, like-minded friends, and I felt that life couldn’t be better.  So, full of all of this sunshine, I went and did something reckless—probably the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done.  I decided to move back home to rural Georgia.

I guess--no, I know--that Social Media had everything to do with it.  My news feed was full of faces from childhood.  So wonderful to feel connected with them after all these years.  I left Forsyth after high school and never really looked back.  I loved my family and my family home--the twelve acres of pine-wooded property that my parents pinched and saved fifty years ago to buy and build on-- but I never planned on returning to stay. Ever. Until I did.

 

It was too easy.  My newfound energy and optimism prompted some profound need for change, and an open Georgia territory in my company and my now uninhabited childhood home in the woods provided that opportunity.  It sounded so idyllic, so lovely.  I would have my little yoga studio in my house, and I would reconnect with old faces and pick up where I left off all of those years ago. 

But wait, where did I leave off?  I was happy to leave at eighteen because I knew my hometown was not a fit for me.  Something about me just never worked here.  Sadly, that hasn’t changed. 

Now, it’s eight years later.  For eight years now, I have been surrounded by voices from the Right.   I have heard constant references to “Killary,” I have heard about Obama’s “black ass” and how he is destroying our nation. I have heard about those abominable gay people violating God’s laws.  I have heard about those horrible Muslims, who want to infiltrate our country and behead our children.

Hillary was my hope.  I couldn’t find a pantsuit that flattered the five pounds I put on this year, so I opted for a sloppy white ensemble while we waited for the poll results to pour in.  And pour they did. 

So, eight years after that historic, moving moment, when a man of color gave his acceptance speech for POTUS, I watched aghast.  And I don’t think I realized until that moment how much I wanted to see a woman take that office.  And how grieved I am that once again, that door was closed to her. 

I don’t know where I’m going with this, or with anything.  I just know that I’m sad.  So deeply sad.  And I feel so isolated from members of my community.  My home yoga studio is cluttered with junk—we actually jokingly refer to it as “the room of shame” now.  My local friends are few and most of us can’t talk politics at all.

And about Trump. I don’t even really dislike the guy—I just think he truly initiated a movement that was lying in wait, ready to bubble forth.  A beast that emerged from the dark waters of hate for Otherness, a beast that claimed to be godly.  A beast that slouched towards Washington to be born on November 8. 

I want to feel the way I did eight years ago.  I want to see the good in everyone again—Republican and Democrat, black and white, Christian and Muslim.  I want to be full of love.  But right now I am steeped in grief and ego.  I am overwhelmed by the shock of it all and I have personalized this in a way that isn’t healthy or even rational.  I have made this a part of my narrative—the story of my disappointing homecoming.

I don’t want this pain, and I don’t want you to have it, and I don’t want it for Hillary, or for any of us.  And the biggest part of this pain is how utterly isolating it is.  I know there is good in them, I know there is love in their hearts, I know there is God in all of us.

After we get over the shock of all of this, let’s rise up, not with reactive hate or anger.  But with love.  Love for those who are guided by unconsciousness, and enough self-love to calmly stand up to willful ignorance.  I didn’t have enough of that self-love before.  I just looked away or changed the subject when I heard racial slurs or homophobic jokes.  That’s on me. No more.  I won’t be angry.  I will say, “I love you and respect you.  But you are wrong.”  And I will listen to Rumi: “There comes a time when nothing is meaningful except surrendering to love.”