Resentments Are Poison

The election. It did not go the way I had hoped.  We are a country divided and the differences are truly irreconcilable.  I am a person who believes the rewards in this life come from the toils of my own labor, from the hours I put in and the ideas I give life to.  I don't believe I am in the minority.  I do believe though that those of us who are of like mind do not mobilize to vote. Are we a large majority? No and probably we are evenly split. Some of us are too busy working to vote and some of us believe in just being left alone. It makes mobilizing a challenge.  The side that wants to maintain the rewards of someone else's hard work is highly motivated and turns out en masse to protect their station.  

I am saddened. I am admittedly angry and I am decidedly scared.  My government is now a monster, feeding and bloated.  My mind pictures Jaba the Hut.

I feel betrayed as well.  I know it is not rational but the feeling is still there.  I shall pray for its release. I shall pray for forgiveness and shall pray for peace, inside and out there. 

My family for the most part is made up of west coast liberals. They run the gamut from millionaires to school teachers to blue collar, all liberal and all products of California and its public school system.  I too am a product of California and have no idea how I am so different.

I read a post of my sister's the day after the election. In it she celebrated her victory and then went on to thank her husband -- my dear brother in law -- for door knocking to mobilize the Obama vote.  He not only knocked on doors of his own state but visited two swing states to aid his cause.  One of them was "my" state.  I had no idea he was in the state at the time. My state went blue.

In the 12 years I have lived here it has gone from firmly RED to a dark purple and now blue.  The influx of residents has changed the fabric of where I live and I resent it. I am a transplant too; I somehow I justify my transplant. When I moved here I was like the majority of those already here, when in Rome. I chose this state for those reasons.  I have to be honest. It isn't an admirable way to feel -- but it is so.  I resent too that people who don't even LIVE here and who don't have any idea of what it is like to live here, cross our state boundary and influence the fabric of our local world.  I know it is a free country and I love that about it -- but with that freedom comes instances like this.  I don't want my state to be like California -- it is in part why I left California.  And now California comes here to knock on doors…  It feels wrong even though I know it is their right.  I know that they had the election in the bag at home, why knock on doors there?  It makes sense for them to do what they did. When they knock on doors to mobilize the vote for their national leader they affect our local elections too.  Then they go home and let us sort it out.

I was hoping to go back to California to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with my family. Everyone is going to be there. I opted not to go.  I simply cannot afford the airline ticket.  I don't make enough money and our grocery bill has doubled.  I am working paycheck to paycheck.  Additionally, I do not want to be around the people I love most in the world when I am still struggling with resentment.  It would not be right to ask them not to be celebratory and it would not be fair to subject me to their celebration while I silently mourned.  It would be wrong to get together and debate about it.  That is not what Thanksgiving is about.

I have not told any family members how I feel.  It might come across as being petty.  But for them that is an easy conclusion.  In the family they are the majority and their majority won.  They cannot know how it feels right now to be me.

So I am back to praying.  I pray for our country.  I pray for the future.  I pray for release from resentment.  Resentments hurt me much more than they hurt anyone or anything I resent.  It is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. This was a devastating loss.  I will mourn. I will process. I will let go. I will pray.