The Antidote to 2016 — Karen Rose Green

For most of 2016, I felt like I was having a real middle-of-the-road, uninspired, mildly shitty kind of year. Nothing tragic or catastrophic happened, it's just that I entered the second year of a boring but not unbearable office job, I dealt with (yet another) emotionally dizzying breakup, several of my best friends moved to different states, people I love went through hard times, which in turn took a toll on my own mental health, and my cat started vomiting soggy wet hairballs mixed with cat food onto my carpet with such regularity that I suspected she would hit every square inch of my apartment sometime before Christmas.

About halfway through 2016, right around the time when the sun was coming out and I should have been having a grand ol' Portland summer, I fell into a listless depression. It wasn’t a soul-crushing, agonizing, life-threatening kind of depression (so, mom, if you’re reading this, cancel the ambulance). It was just the kind of depression where I would frequently find myself on a Thursday morning pulling into the parking lot at work, substantially late yet again, unshowered for the third day in a row, spilling coffee on my jeans from a black ceramic mug with white letters that read “meh.”

The thing about depression is that it’s not always unbearable. For a while it can be quite comfortable because it allows you to be, just, nothing. And “nothing” is much easier than the crushing sadness that can result from caring about things, from wanting, from trying and failing, from loving and losing, from basically just living. So my 2016 depression was not terrible, it just wasn't really living and eventually that takes a toll.

After so many "meh" days, I could tell that this was about to tip the scales over into the suffocating sadness kind of depression, so I took steps to hold back the wave of misery. I set a vague, sort of far-off goal to travel, I started seeing a counselor, I vowed to stop drinking for a while since it had become just another numbing agent, I considered various volunteer positions without actually committing to anything, and I started brushing my cat daily to remove loose fur before it could be compressed into sodden mangy projectiles. Things seemed moderately better, and even when they didn’t, I figured there was no real rush to start caring about things again. I was still comfy in my little apathy fortress.

Then November 8th happened. That fateful Tuesday I was feeling pretty upbeat. I decided to make an exception to my new no-drinking rule in order to properly celebrate the election of the US’s first female president. I went to a bar with my brother and some friends to watch the election results and ordered a malty amber, proudly sporting a Hillary Clinton t-shirt. All the while I was cheerily thinking, It’s cool that we’re gonna have a lady president soon. The first black president straight into the first female president. Yay, equality! Gosh, America sure is neat-o.

By the time I finished my first beer, there was already an ever reddening glow coming from the giant TV screen on the wall, so I ordered another round and laughed nervously with friends who were growing quiet with fear. One by one, more states turned red for Trump. The crowded bar grew uncharacteristically somber. I finished my second beer and refreshed the NY Times site I’d been periodically checking on my phone all evening. It predicted 95% certainty that Trump would win. My celebratory drinking immediately turned back into the “please make me stop thinking or feeling anything” drinking that I’d diligently avoided for the past several weeks. I ordered a double whiskey and closed out my tab.

Around 10:30pm, once it was abundantly clear that this would not be a night to celebrate, my brother and I stumbled out into the cool November night air and I burst into the kind of loud gasping sobs that I hadn’t let out in months. I went home and drank half a bottle of wine that had been sitting in the fridge for two weeks. I watched old Gilmore Girls episodes to numb the pain and passed out around 3:00am. The next morning I called in sick to work and stayed on the couch all day staring blankly at my Twitter feed and various news sites until my eyes went blurry and my heart felt like it was going to sputter and die. Gone was the easy manageability of my “nothing” depression. It had been replaced with a heavy sense that the world was not the safe and kind place that I had imagined, but an actual immediate threat to myself and people I love. And it was not lost on me that this is how many, many people have always felt in America. It's only by blind luck that I didn't have to feel it until this year.

For weeks after the election, I went about my daily activities just like before, but the struggle to mentally stay afloat turned from calmly doggy paddling on the surface to kicking and sputtering, gasping for air while continually being pulled under by an unseen Jaws-like force. Overnight my daily inner monologue went from “Meh” to:

OH MY GOD WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING DOES HALF OF AMERICA HATE WOMEN AND EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE IS RACIST?!?! OF COURSE EVERYONE IS RACIST HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS BEFORE BECAUSE I’M A WHITE LIBERAL PRIVILEGED IDIOT AND BLACK PEOPLE HAVE KNOWN THIS LITERALLY FOREVER AND NO ONE’S BEEN LISTENING TO THEM INCLUDING ME. I’M A COMPLICIT RACIST! OH GOD, MY GAY FRIENDS MUST BE DEVASTATED! HOLY NUTS SO MANY CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR THAT MONSTER THIS IS BECAUSE EVEN PROGRESSIVE CHURCHES WON’T LET WOMEN BE ACTUAL LEADERS YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! I GUESS I CAN NEVER GET MARRIED NOW BECAUSE MEN ARE TOTALLY STOKED ABOUT MISOGYNY. DUDE, MUSLIMS ARE GONNA GET REGISTERED AND SENT TO INTERNMENT CAMPS AND YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT YOUR DATING LIFE? THAT’S SO SELFISH! I HAVE TO DONATE TO ALL THE CHARITIES! PROTEST ALL THE THINGS! VOLUNTEER! TAKE ACTION! MICROAGGRESSIONS! BENEVOLENT SEXISM! STEVE BANNON! NAZIS! BREITBART! KLEPTOCRACY! THE WALL! GAHHHHHHHHHHH!

America was and still is in a similar tizzy about what happened, why it happened, and what to do next. There is no end to the analysis, diagnosing, prognostication, and panic. The more I read and evaluate, the more I realize that no one has definitive answers. For every level-headed, thoughtful hypothesis and solution, there’s another one to oppose it. For every call to action there’s a counter argument about why it’s useless or insufficient. For every worthy fight, there seems to be another one that is more pressing. It’s enough to turn your brain into squishy wet partially digested cat food.

Once again I tried taking little steps towards holding back the wave of hopelessness: For real not drinking this time. No more looking at the internet ever again, I guess? Calling my representatives which sounds scary, but apparently it's the only way to get anything done. It all sounded like too much and not enough at the same time. And then it hit me - I've been going about everything all wrong this year. I’ve been sad all year and my only tactic to push back against that sadness has been, basically, to be less sad. Well now that myself and half of America has tipped over the edge into panic and misery, I realize that “be less sad” will still put me squarely in the range of pretty dang sad, and useless to boot. I’ve been fighting the symptoms instead of the disease (kind of like America, no?). Heaping more rules and negatives, more obligation and drudgery onto my already heavy shoulders is just going to result in defeat. The only antidote to sadness is, and has always been, joy. Even if I can’t choose all the exact right or most effective ways to make myself or the world better, I can at least start with things that make me happy. It's weird how that sounds selfish, right? As if you're only allowed to be somber and downtrodden while trying to make the world a better place.

Well, at the tail end of this remarkably shitty year, in an effort to push back a hell of a lot harder against the forces that try to keep me, and all of us, stagnant, bleary-eyed, apathetic, scared, and hopeless, I’ve chosen a few ways to act that not only help fight against the scary forces in America right now, but that also actually bring joy to my life in the hope that it's contagious.

First up, I donated to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. Whether or not he actually gets the message, the idea of sticking it to that guy made me giggle with delight. Not to mention the fact that Planned Parenthood is a wonderful organization where you can go if (just as an example) you're young and dumb and you’ve just moved to a new city and you’re only working part time and can barely afford to feed yourself let alone buy health insurance and you think you’ve found a lump in your breast and for two weeks you’ve been too scared and worried about money to find a medical office so you’ve just been Googling symptoms of breast cancer and crying alone in your room every night and then you finally discover that there’s a Planned Parenthood right by your house and that they charge on a sliding scale and after just one appointment they assure you that the lump is totally benign and you’re not going to die or go broke from medical expenses and that you can come back anytime for an affordable price should those fears ever arise again. So yeah, everyone should have that same comfort and I will joyfully continue to donate now and in the future.

Along the same lines, I stopped into a local bookstore near my house that was holding a bake sale with all profits going to the ACLU. Another worthy organization and an event that provided obvious joy in the form of double chocolate chunk cookies. Who says that justice can't also be delicious?

Next, I’d been wanting to volunteer somewhere for all of 2016, but I could never decide which issue I cared about most or which organization most needed my time, plus I was too lethargic to actually do anything. I always put off the decision and felt vaguely guilty about it. Now that the need to help is more pressing, I chose to finally commit and signed up to be a mentor and teach after school classes for Girls Inc. There are so many worthy organizations, but hanging out with a group of girls after school and helping them to be the bold, courageous bad asses that they are sounded like an absolute blast. Here’s hoping it puts a smile on everyone’s face.

And finally (for now), I’ve committed to show up and march with other women in my community because nothing sounds more joyous than coming together with strong, beautiful, hilarious, passionate friends to cause a ruckus (a peaceful ruckus, mom, so cancel the ambulance again). Perhaps I will squeeze even more joy from the event by coming up with a pithy protest sign written in glitter. I can’t wait.

I know that all these things are not enough. I know that fighting for justice cannot always be fun and easy, but I also know how daunting the fight can be if it's presenting only as endless drudgery. So, this is a start and a start is better than nothing. It’s not that I have Donald Trump to thank for pulling me out of the stagnant malaise of 2016, because I will never thank that regurgitated misogyny hairball for anything, but in some ways I am thankful for the sense of urgency that his election has created for privileged dummies like me. It’s marked an end to the apathetic comfort I’d been wallowing in for so long. It’s marked an end to the naive idea that everything will just fix itself, but it hasn’t eroded the hope that things can be changed for the better. It’s just going to take some radical joy, love, and community to get things back on the right track. Lucky for me and for America, those are things we can all get excited about.