My body is different to how it was 5 years ago, 3 years ago, at the start of this year even. I don’t care much. I know where I’m strong and I communicate well with it still.
It’s tricky knowing at what point you should let go of things that hold little value or harmful value and when you should keep a stubbornness around certain issues.
Let’s use a relevant framing device for this litte chat! (The US election is swinging 224/213 in this moment and I am nervous.)
Let's say you are living with someone you wouldn’t vote for. You’ve outgrown their policies or never agreed with them anyway. You wouldn’t go out and tell people they have your backing.
It’s caring enough, more, for your beliefs than for what makes that other person push the agenda they do. There’s a devilish trick that some politicians play. They become wounded and sew personal details into their sorrowful response, on hearing that you vote the other way.
In the past couple of days, I have had two dreams that have stuck out to me.
The first: a nightmarish, fast-forwarded computer screen of Excel spreadsheets in a sick, twisted, dark green reliving of my many hours doing freelance work. The work that pays me and – by and large – is the main nail that keeps me in the coffin of this political no man’s land.
The other: this dream called up a lovely notion I have stitched together with a good friend about living together, the undercurrent of this plan is just to get away. But in this dream, I failed this friend. (Involving me forgetting lines in a play and chickening out of going on stage again. My sister was also there. It was nice to see her, at least.)
When you have dreams that cling to two of the most prevalent things in your head, it definitely shrugs a sense of 'tight-corneredness' around you which is only exasperated by another national lockdown. When you wake up in a shared space between just you and a polarising voter, and when they return home you hear the 24-hour siren being wound up of their political campaign and choices then you hit a point where you try to – bravely – understand at least one of their policies.
In this case?
There’s nothing there. No substance or figures that can even semi-fit in my brain, even by force.
At that point, when it becomes harmful to find the logic – cease. It’s doing nothing for you. Differences of opinion should never be personal to the point of re-enacting emotional trauma. At that point, you have to choose to care a lot more for yourself above anyone else’s campaign. No matter if they’re firing off statements that physically hurt when they hit your ears. There’s really no point digging a rabbit hole if it leads to sad. Sad is to be avoided. What also is to be avoided by worldly citizens is making things that shouldn't be personal personal. When you cast a vote, it's for the greater, national, good.
If Trump gets re-elected, I’ll be sad. But I’m not living in his house. Even if I was, I wouldn't make it personal. I wouldn't even look at him. I'd be out, a lot. But with lockdown, you have to be in his house whether you like it or not.
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