Rage

Rage rears her head at interesting times. Today it was the Facebook year in review video. Yes, I watched what Facebook extracted from my yearly posts, but no I will not share it. I refuse to turn this craptastic year into some saccharine sweet video that suggests I have good memories of it. This year was horrible. We were driven from our home by bigots and bullies and unable to return because our dog was banned from the county where we owned a home. I cannot normalize that and package it into a year of memories.

The election results also stirred up the rage inside me from the events of last year. In many ways, I consider Tibe and our experience with him and our neighborhood to be a harbinger of the Trump era. If Trump is a bully who gets his way, we saw the effects of bullies on our lives last year and earlier this year: we lost our home and our sense of safety in the world; we learned how vulnerable we are to the angry mob, how isolated we are as lesbians, how few people spoke up for us, and what the consequences are of now bowing to the angry mob of bullies.

And I am still enraged about it. I know that for my own mental health, I am to let go of the anger, let go of the rage. I know it hurts me and has no effect on the bullies. I understand all of that, but it does not change my feelings. I continue to be enraged, and there is little that I can do about it.

So given that rage makes these appearances and I cannot banish her, given that I am not courting rage and yet she still appears, I want to observe rage and understand her contours. Efforts to deny her, to gloss over her, to apply frosting to cover her up (even delicious fondant, which I could eat day and night) only exacerbate her. I learned that from the Facebook video. Trump winning seemed to reanimate the rage, but it also exposed her cousin: shadenfreude.

I know as much as I am supposed to let go of anger, I am not to embrace schadenfreude; I am not to delight in the misfortunes of others. But, let me whisper here, I do. The bigots and bullies who drove us from our home? Many of them work for the federal government. One works for the Justice Department (oh, the rich irony there) and another for EPA. Can I tell you, still whispering here, how delighted I am that they will be working for Jeff Sessions and Scott Pruitt? Yes, we are all screwed by these appointments, but I hope the pain is especially palpable for the bullies in our neighborhood. I hope they labor for years in misery. I hope the bites in their skin by the republicans are deep and cutting and long-lasting. I hope they suffer in ways they had never imagined. Yes, the bigots and bullies now work for bigots and bullies. Everyone gets what they deserve. And Tibe? Tibe lives.

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