Waiting to Exhale

Breaking up with an abusive ex-president hurts so good

It doesn’t feel real.

I’m not talking about the new president, rather the previous one.

It feels like a fever dream. Like a lousy action movie where the writers couldn’t figure out how to wrap up the slow-motion trainwreck so they just slapped on a St. Elsewhere-style ending.

You know the way your extremities feel when you’re thawing after a cold walk? That’s how this feels. The warmth is painfully relieving.

We are feeling the sunshine peeking out from the dark scary clouds and we’re hoping for rainbows. There are still thunderclaps and downpours, but at least we know there will be sunnier days ahead.

I can see the emotional wreckage in my face, can you?
The weight of stress eating pulls me to the ground like an anvil.
The barrage of grey hairs combined with the well-hewn no fucks given will soon result in a new purple hairdo to offset the endless days of stretchy pants.

Watching him leave with that shit-eating grin and his hollow wife reminded me of the feeling when an abusive ex picks up the last of their belongings at your place. The wave of relief as you close the door behind you, only to lock it and collapse into tears, unable to move after years of being emotionally slapped around.
Our collective WHAT. THE. FUCK.

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life, and we’re feeling good.
But the pain will not end here. The trauma will only now start to sink in.
We, the hostages, have been released.
It will be a long time before we feel safe.
Our souls are battered, but the bruises will heal, as long as we break the cycle.

If you think you understood precisely how awful it all was and how terrorized you were, think again. It’s only in the aftermath that time passes and you peel back the layers. The waves he created when he cannonballed into the pool will leave us thrashing in the water for a long time to come. At least now we have some floaties.

Some days it will hit you like a gut punch, and that mental bruise will blacken all over again. But take solace — those moments will become less frequent and you will equalize yourself. This time, right after the breakup, is our most fruitful moment for envisioning the future you want to live in and how to get there.

This is what abusers do. They disorient you, wear you down, haunt you even when they’re not around. They call you names and tell the world that you’re the fucked up person, not them. If you call them out, they deflect, unable to humble themselves.

We have been living like an astronaut spinning out of control, unable to find which way is up, lost in the vastness of truths and untruths. Choosing Tom Hanks to host the evening inaugural presentation was the tether we needed from the wholesome movie hero we know and love.

With so much normalcy again (however flawed it is), how could we possibly believe that this national nightmare actually just happened? A real actual press conference with real actual facts? Real actual gravitas? Real actual experience? Real actual actionable policies?
Real actual human decency?
What is this???
— wearily rubbing eyes —

Can we exhale now? Dare we?

How jarring it is to see this quasi-normal, but most definitely NOT normal event take place. The masks…I will never get used to seeing them. We are literally muzzled.

At least now we can see a day when this will no longer be.

Today is euphoric.
The trajectory is up and over the treetops.

But prepare yourself…there will be turbulence. It takes a while to exorcise a shitty ex from your psyche. We’re gonna need a whole field of sage bushes to cleanse these demons.

Too many of us have lived this horror all along. They kept trying to tell us, but our virtual reality seemed so real and it was more palatable than the hellscape we were really living in. The fear, panic, rage, and resentment won’t end here, and it most definitely shouldn’t. The gaslighting has weakened us and we will question our worth for years to come.

Our asses got grabbed and handed to us by your neighborhood sleazeballs.

Who are we now?
Well…we are who we’ve always been, except now we’re out of the closet, alarmingly naked.

The further we get from the last four years, the more deeply it will sink in that we have just experienced a collective trauma that many foresaw, many thought impossible, many relished, and the undeservingly powerful few inflicted.

Who knew that Back to the Future II would be the most accurate and horrifying depiction of the 2010s?
(If you’re feeling depressed, I recommend NOT looking up “2010s” on Wikipedia)

If you don’t know the definition of C-PTSD, you’re about to find out.
The stinging grief of wasted time will never go away. For all of us in our own ways, our best years have been stolen from us and now we must recalibrate. Let us savor this moment of finally seeing a chance to be happy so it lights our way out of the tunnel.

Your baseline for happiness will change. Those fleeting moments that felt good during the last four years will be dwarfed by the feeling of a million McDonalds burgers on gold platters being lifted off your chest.

But we have far too many difficult days ahead of us, and we are living in the emotional rubble of the all-too-American perch we had put ourselves on. Just because you have a bad day, doesn’t mean all the days will be. At least not anymore. At least not if we choose a forward path.

Humans aren’t so great at the old “slow and steady wins the race.” And no one fails at this more than Americans. We are adept at running ourselves into the ground with great fanfare.

Right now, in this extremely disorienting moment, we are suspended. Is the other shoe mid-drop? Or perhaps we got new shoes that don’t fall off so easily? Let’s sit down and figure that out.

Like a woman who has been degraded for so long she doesn’t believe why anyone would love her, it will be a long road of growth and heartbreak before we find the Wizard of Oz.

Our grief will spread like airborne droplets, within us and outside us.

But rest assured, we will get to the “eating ice cream for dinner in our underwear because we can” part of this breakup, and we will never want to go back.

We can never rebuild like before, nor should anyone want to.
Rather than cutting each other with our jagged pieces, let us discard the ones that are too broken to mend, and form a beautiful new bowl to hold each other. Let’s melt into the gold that will glue us back together, more beautiful than before.

Let authenticity be our North Star.

The future is you, me, and everyone we know.