Liberals have Tender Hearts, Bruise Easily
I’ve been trying to fight this off for over a week, but it persistently keeps bubbling up, and seems to be building steam as it goes so… it must be that I’m missing something. So here goes: I think I have a bruised heart. The constant battles and venom coming from the conservative right (and mind you, I don’t go out of my way to watch Fox News and such JUST to see what the other side is saying)… I see it in FB comments as well as tweets but I think it’s also something of an occupational hazard of being attentive to politics, trying to be actively engaged, and intensely left-leaning in that “I want to save the whole world” sort of way. This might be the first time I’ve ever felt anything akin to a depressive sensation that had a specific meaning attached to it.
I have a confession: I’ve fallen long out of any semblance of a yoga practice, even longer since I meditated. Today I was so hungry and out of food options at the library that I ended up buying a turkey sandwich cause I couldn’t find anything else. I spend too much time paying attention to social media messages about politics, not enough time on studying, and I have yet to get in a single work-out since moving out here to Wisconsin.
That said, I think I might be in love with Wisconsin, and I don’t really want to stop doing the things I’m doing (except maybe the neglecting of other duties), but gods, I feel off kilter and am struggling mightily uphill to stay afloat with no balance.
Maybe I am also heart-sore because I have always been sensitive to criticism, and especially vulnerable to critique from people I love. It’s naivety to be sure, to expect or desire loved ones to share all of your same views, but Ryan’s inability to understand the civil duty I feel to protest injustice goes far beyond specific issues that are ever going to impact me and insistence that there are “more important” things, that maybe I was misinformed in my outrage, and that “other people” will sort it all out anyway if there really is a problem, was hard to hear.
The truth is though, while I adamantly believe that dissenting views are important, I have a deep weakness to direct conflict, and negativity wears on me easily. It doesn’t necessarily make me change my views, I try to maintain some healthy skepticism to constantly question my own assumptions, but my Scorpio-soul is no strange to digging in heels when feeling attacked. And as an introvert, being out and loud and vocal about politics in a way that will provoke (necessary) confrontation and debate is a constant walk outside of my element, and I’m not really used to balancing these things in open view of potential hostility. (And yes, people really can be extremely hostile to the idea that, you know, the wealth disparity in this country is atrociously unjustifiable and the dominant theories pushed by “common sense” [read: the conservative Right] about poverty and achievement-by-merit are dead wrong…)
It’s worth noting that when I feel so out of sorts, both off balance as well as vulnerable, I end up craving surrender a lot more specifically. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I had a steady or reliable partner, but is much more difficult without (and much more difficult not to leak those energies out all over the place everywhere I go and cause all kinds of psychic annoyances for tops who are off-limits.) It’s not really a self-mutilation/depressive/harmful vulnerability, it’s just a sense of feeling so out of control that a visible re-establishing of control by someone else becomes much more important. …Which I guess means that no, there really is no such thing as a separation of sex and politics…? Hah.
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The upside is that writing this post made me look at feeling out of sorts not as a failure, but as a simple fact of weaknesses that I have always had, which I guess I needed more than I realized. When I got home this evening I forced myself straight into the shower to wash off the gunk and then spent a good 40 minutes smudging the whole apartment, focused on dead energy zones, played world drum music, burned candles and incense with the lights low, made sure to drink lots of tea and hit the yoga mat for first time in ages. (And also discovered that yes, I do have bruises on my back from falling last week on the steps at mom’s house.) Did some minor tidying, cleaned the bathroom. Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, smudging helped a lot and I felt worlds better by the time I was done. I guess all the Fitzwalkerstan demons really had followed me home over the past month.
Going to bed with music and a book. The world is a hopeful place, regardless of outward appearances otherwise.