It’s almost December. We’ve survived nearly a year of Trump, and often I’ve looked at this crazy unreality as a challenge. It seems like just yesterday I walked through Washington DC with hundreds of thousands of others. Today it was reported that North Korea launched a ballistic missile and probably has the capability to strike Washington DC. The leader of the US will most likely make matters worse, but is it possible to make matters better? Meanwhile, refugee crises and climate change worsen by the day–problems that will never be solved by corrupt leaders since they dismiss and deny these problems altogether. I am honestly saddened to hear news of horror–animals going extinct, for instance. In the meantime, I have kind of felt like a deer-in-headlights person in the last few weeks, with each passing day and each harrowing news story. It’s partly because I’ve been too still. I haven’t run at all for weeks, and not regularly since June. I haven’t let myself go free. I am reminded of a song by Ingrid Michaelson, with the lyrics:
I want to change the world, instead I sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me.
But all that I know is I’m breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing
It’s the outcome of feeling powerless too many times. For a lack of trust in those who are supposed to lead, who we are supposed to be able to trust but who instead are clowns in a circus, leaving us to feel lucky to breathe one day at a time and, if having a really good day, maybe do something positive and build hope–in my case, through writing (not blogging, necessarily).
The storm is coming but I don’t mind.
People are dying, I close my blinds.
All that I know is I’m breathing now.
My new year goals are stronger than they were last year, when I felt like I just wanted to dance free-form in the living room and maybe learn to play the fiddle. I have danced. I have not played the fiddle at all, but I have danced to fiddle music and am trying to learn the guitar better. In the new year, I want to do more than just breathe. I will start running again. I have to get over the fear of meeting a bear on the trail, which I finally admitted to myself is a thing now after I met one in our yard this year and our gaze at each other petrified me. But physically I am okay again for running. I just feel like I need to not just sleep. I need to wake up. I need to run free and be able to look down a bear and not run away. I need to look at the world and not run away.
Featured image: prints I bought today for framing and reminding myself to wake up. Thank you, art.
