Denial is a Good Stage

Crawling out of bed this morning felt like climbing out of ashen ruins after the apocalypse. The extra dose of Seroquel I took helped me sleep after the nightmarish election returns, but didn't make getting up in a strange new world any easier.

The world initially didn't look any different. The cats needed feeding. The coffee needed making. The dishwasher, having been run overnight, needed emptying. I didn't want to shave, but I did. Clyde woke up by himself today so I didn't have to wake him.

We eventually got around to turning on the TV just to make sure it wasn't all a bad dream. It wasn't. Trump was elected, oh my god, I can't even say it.

The world was looking a little different after all.

Like many others, I live in a bubble of like-minded people. Almost everyone I know - friends and family, people I like and hang out with, have the same political views. I read and listen to news that reinforces what I already think and believe. So it's not a surprise when I say that I really don't know very many people that voted for Donald Trump; just a few people at work and on Facebook. In fact, the state I live in (Colorado) didn't go to him in the electoral collage. I have that thread to hold on to. So I simply can't wrap my head around how this disaster happened.

And I'm not even close to ready to contemplate the implications of a republican house and senate (no, I don't intend to capitalize those words for the next four years at least).

I'm still stunned and in shock. I haven't yet declared myself "no longer American," like some others I'm reading about. My extended family is hatching a pretty serious sounding plan to move to Canada. Even though it's guaranteed to be warmer up there in the future (thanks to runaway climate change), I'm not quite yet ready to go. I'm still waiting for it all to sink in.

I'm sure that later I'll be enraged. I'm sure that I'll be terrified. Later. I'm sure I'll be sad. Hopefully at some point in the future I'll be motivated towards activism, but that's not happening yet.

I think this is the denial stage. It's a good stage. This is the stage where you go on doing things which keep you going. So I eat, I work, I feed the cats. If not for denial, I couldn't function at all. I'd just curl up in a ball and not move. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.