The Path of Most Resistance

This past year has left many of us in ruins. The unluckiest have said premature goodbyes to loved ones. Others have lost jobs, homes, businesses, and financial independence. Those of us who’ve escaped these casualties have suffered in different ways – fear and frustration over continued racial injustice, crumbling mental health, longing for community, warring with family and friends over politics. No one has made it through these last twelve months without a few scars, and many of us still have open wounds.

As we drive through our neighborhoods and on backroads between towns, we see the wallpaper of this past year slowly disintegrating across the frozen landscape. Trump signs linger, painted plywood and weathered blue placards dot the ditches throughout the county and beyond, though nature is slowly stepping in to tear down the divisions between us. Names have already been taken, though, and mental notes made. We all know who belongs to which side, and these things are not easily forgotten, not after the year we’ve had.

Silences linger between family members, and there are pauses in friendships we have now grown accustomed to. This year has revealed more honest versions of ourselves, but this revelation has yet to prove helpful or harmful.

I think back to March when the worry set in, and I began to hold my children just a bit tighter. I remember May and June, the rising racial tensions and righteous anger fueling protests. My husband and I lingered on the brink of something ugly, threatening to split us down the middle if we could not find common ground on how to lead this transracial family of ours. Arguments rolled long into the night, and neither of us knew if we would ever find our way out.

I remember late summer when a traffic ticket led me into a conversation with a local police officer. He wanted to ensure I knew all about the “China virus” and the litany of conspiracies he heralded as facts. Inside the county courthouse, he sat uniformed and smiling, glistening really in his authority and privilege. “My wife, she plays along, but me? I never wear this thing,” he bragged, pulling at the mask laying limp around his neck.

September came and swept my kids up in its undertow as they sobbed onto the kitchen table, missing friends and classrooms they wouldn’t get to see. I excused myself to the pantry to hide my tears behind a closed door, questioning the choice we had made. I remember wondering which onlookers thought we had overreacted.

Then came October and November and December – the longest election of our lives. Those of us who’d made it through the previous months without weeding our gardens were soon covered in dirt, ripping out the creeping thistle we always thought was a flower. There were phone calls with parents that ended in blank stares, confusion over the lessons of our youth. The people who raised us, who taught us to be kind and respectful, were now explaining that Christian principles and “traditional values” were really the thing at stake here – and somehow the adulterous, race-baiting, bully was our best option to keep those traditions alive.

Enter January. Enter a rash of paranoia and petulance. Enter late-night texts from concerned relatives who may or may not take up arms if necessary. Enter Facebook feuds and good old boys and girls coming out of the woodwork worried about the constitution. These same folks lost no sleep back in February and March and May when Americans’ constitutional rights were shown to mean absolutely nothing.

So how do we move on? What do we do with the knowledge gained, the secret things we’ve now seen in our friends and family, neighbors and co-workers, that we cannot unsee? How do we pretend we don’t know what we now know so deep in the center of our beings?

For some of us, the path back will be easy. If we haven’t stared into the sores festering all across this nation, then any old band-aid will do. A little time, a few of our favorite distractions; it won’t take much to patch the scrapes we’ve gained since last March. For others, the healing will take longer. The wounds go way down. The blood has not yet dried. Too many things have been said or have gone unsaid; now amends must be made, action must be taken. And for still others, atonement may never come.

My hope is that we find ourselves in the middle of these extremes – to heal too quickly is to have learned nothing and to never find reconnection is to have lost an opportunity for growth, as well. It’s easy to race back in, pretending everything is fine. It’s even easier to walk away completely.

What is hardest and most worthwhile is to choose to sit in the pain and frustration until we can name its roots. I hope we choose this path. I hope we challenge ourselves and the people we love, the ones we have missed so desperately throughout the trials of this past year. I hope we choose to look deep into the wounds we have felt and the ones we have created and decide we can do better than a band-aid. I hope we choose the path of most resistance this time. It is the only road worth taking, the only road that leads us forward.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage