Of Marbles, Music, and Manicures

Today, I briefly lost my marbles.  All of them – the cat eyes, the boulders, the peewees, the steelies, the clearies.  Every.  Last.  Marble. 

Ron came home from dropping off our ballots and found me sitting in the backyard, just weeping.  He asked me what had happened, and what was wrong.  I said that nothing had happened, and everything was wrong; that I had crossed the line from dissatisfaction, pessimism, and anger to pure hatred and fury.  I told him that I didn’t know how anyone could still support our existing president, and that I had finally come to a place where I never again wanted to have anything to do with a person who would vote for him again in November.  I told Ron, during the brief periods when I could actually get a sentence out, that I hated myself for hating people; that I didn’t want to feel this way; that I wished something would happen to make sure that our current president could never be elected again.  Then, I ceased being able to speak at all.

In reality, something DID happen.  I watched the Axios interview with Trump this morning, in its entirety.  After a 37-minute-long demonstration of pure egotism, gaslighting, and complete insanity, I boiled it all down to one conversation snippet (because I am a 1-or-0 person; that’s how my data-driven mind rolls).  Trump said that we only have way more cases than most countries because we test more (we are apparently the BEST at testing! We have tested 50 to 60 million people! [note: we have administered about 57 million tests, but lots of people get tested multiple times – some daily – so that doesn’t necessarily equate to 57 million people]).  Then, he said we are the BEST because we have the lowest number of deaths PER CASE.  Hmmmm….he already said the case numbers are huge, so that means the denominator in the “deaths per case” is much higher than in other countries; therefore, we would definitely have a lower number of deaths per case.  The reporter, Jonathan Swan, reminded Trump that we are very high (in fact, we are the seventh-highest in the world) if you look at deaths per capita.  Trump said, “You can’t do that,” and continued to hold out pieces of paper with simplistic bar charts on them to prove that we are the BEST while Swan kept saying, “but it’s DEATHS…”.  Everyone really should watch the entire interview, because it holds great insight into the absolute mental illness of the man who can push a button and release nuclear missiles, but this one anti-arithmetical bit of conversation made me lose my marbles (even the aggies and red devils).

I decided, while sitting in the backyard waiting for the birds and the breeze to calm me down, that there are a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who likely won’t vote or him again; some of those people are dear friends of mine.  But if people vote for him again?  I have literally not one inch of space in my life for them.  I want them out of my life (I’d love for them to be off the planet, but I can’t control that).  Then, the guilt set in and the weeping began (cue Ron’s homecoming).

After a long conversation (during which, I’ll admit, I was asked very gently if I needed medication and I thought yeah, if it’s cyanide and I get to administer it to whomever I desire), Ron finally got down to the simplest question: Do I want to have a contentious, hate-filled relationship with my next-door neighbors?  (They were the closest, most glaring example of people who will again vote for Trump).  I had to think about that; I do, honestly, believe that another four years under Trump will mean that my children will not die from natural causes.  Do I want to continue hating people who will empower him to start the spiral into global destruction?  No, I do not want to hate anyone.  It takes too much energy, and it makes me miserable.  Well, he said, then ignore them.  If they speak to you, just don’t respond.  When you post something about our responsibility to wear masks on Next Door and they add insane conspiracy theory propaganda as comments, shut the post down to future comments and state why (I have done this, in the past).  Stop hating and start ignoring.  In fact, ignore everything for a few hours, to get a feel for it.

I thought my beloved was being overly simplistic, and just didn’t get it.

But hey, my current way of being sure as hell isn’t working for me, so I gave it an afternoon.

Every day, my sweet friend Alba sends me a link to a song on Spotify, as well as a text with what she’s grateful for and what her “manifest” is for the day.  So, I clicked on the song link.  It was a song from the latest Taylor Swift album.  I love Taylor Swift.

While I was listening, I added to my Spotify playlist about a dozen albums from bands I had never heard of, based on an email my dear brother had sent me a couple days ago to get me listening to music again, instead of mind-exploding news.  Then, once Taylor had finished her song, I started in on one of those albums (the eponymous first album by a group called The Meadows).

To top it off, I listened to this while sitting in the sunshine and giving myself a really good manicure (the ultimate act of self-pampering).

An hour later, my nails are less splintered, my eyes are less red, and I have hope again.

Of course, this is all made easier by the fact that my neighbors are currently not in residence next door; but, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  And, my attitude towards Trump supporters will be like that of Trump himself toward Ghislaine Maxwell; I’ll know that they’re contributing to corruption, pain, and criminal behavior, but I’ll wish them well and then say I don’t know them.