It’s Not Grief, It’s Whattheeverlovingfuck?

At first I thought this was grief I was feeling. I’ve seen a ton of articles trying to apply the Kübler-Ross stages of grief to the End of Days brought about by the 2016 election. But we’ve got the stages all wrong for this. We’re not truly experiencing grief and loss, we’re experiencing a never-ending spin cycle of Whatheeverlovingfuck?

Deep down I’m a shallow gal. I don’t like to spend my days worrying about politics, civil rights, and political correctness. I like taking shit for granted. I prefer for my biggest worry to be “Do I look fat in lycra?” and all my crazy to come from Kanye West. Let’s be practical I’ve made it to 50 without a single fucking wrinkle on my face. I really don’t want them to come from this shit. I certainly don’t want to have Breitbart headlines swirling around in my already weirdass dreams about ways to induce miscarriages by bingeing on dark chocolate so no one knows you’re getting an abortion. (Copyright claim right here if I’m right about that shit btw.)

And I love you like Kanye loves Kanye

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) March 31, 2016

But, instead, we have this constant swinging of the mood pendulum that ranges from “This isn’t going to be so bad.” to “FUCK! We’re all gonna die.” I woke up at 3AM the other day to the sounds of sirens wailing for what turned out to be a shopping center on fire, but my first thought was “WOLVERINES!”

I know smart, rational, well-educated people, who are freaking the fuck out. I have a friend who is in an interracial relationship who is pretty sure the old white guy who lives down the street from her house has started staring at her in a malevolent way since Wednesday. Another friend, who lives deep in the red south wakes up in a cold sweat worrying about the physical safety of her gay son and young daughters. Are they paranoid? That’s as may be, but it doesn’t diminish the experience.  They are on edge and it’s making daily life a challenge. They are suffering from Whattheeverlovingfuck?

The Four Stages of Whattheeverlovingfuck?

Denial

Tuesday night we all sat around staring in disbelief at our TV screens as the Plague of Angry White Men spread red across the map of the States.  We swore this wasn’t happening, many went to bed praying that when they woke up Anderson Cooper was going to tell us it was all going to be okay. We pinched ourselves bruised on Wednesday to make sure we were really awake.

Depression

This set in when we all watched Hillary give her concession speech, and we realized that while we’d put a major crack in the glass ceiling we weren’t going to have our first female president in 2016. It got worse when we realized that what this loss really meant to those of us who believe in marriage equality, reproductive rights, racial equality, etc… was that we’re about to get ass-fucked without Astroglide or a condom. We’re replaying Kate McKinnon’s Hallelujah video over and over again like teenagers who got dumped on prom nite until we don’t have any snot left.

Bargaining

Scrambling to make sense and meaning out of the chaos of terror, sadness, and our Facebook feed we’ve started signing every petition that comes through. Abolish the Electoral College, Appoint Merrick Garland, 4.3 million of us have begged the Electoral College to honor the popular vote, and for good measure we’re pressuring In-N-Out to get a veggie burger.  We’re clicking all the click-bait we can click in the hopes that something, anything, will get us off the Wheel of Death. But it still keeps spinning.

Disbelief

For the foreseeable future, we’re on this perpetual roller coaster ride. One minute were all thinking  “Bernie’s got our backs. It’s all going to be okay.” And next thing we know Trump has appointed a white supremacist as his top strategist. Obama has tried to make sure we don’t think he’s scared shitless of handing over the keys to the nuclear football to a hot head. We all try to keep our spirits up with Obama/Biden memes, until we find out that Trump wants top-secret security clearances for his smug-as-fuck children.  Even if it is just so they can pee in the West Wing’s bathrooms that sends a resounding shiver down our collective spines. Whattheeverlovingfuck?

And here we sit, mired deeper and deeper in disbelief as the lists of the cabinet appointees swirl through the news cycles. Having conversations we were tired of having before we started having them. Giving each other civics lessons while we wait for the other shoe to drop. If this sounds like you, then yup, you’re in the stages of Whattheverlovingfuck? And in case it skipped your notice, there’s no final stage of acceptance.  It just starts all over again. Like Groundhog Day.