What's Your F@*king Problem (WYFP) is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
We Americans are supposed to be an optimistic bunch. That's the myth we're told from childhood, part and parcel of the notion of American exceptionalism. Everything is bigger, better, more easily achievable than anywhere else on earth. Riches and joy will be showered down upon you if you just tend your very own money tree and live your life. We sleep the sleep of the just and kind, and our dreams are peaceful and sweet. So we should relax and stop worrying, because we're Americans, we're all good people, the entire country of us, and bad things don't happen to good people. Right?
Right???
Bull. /snort
I don't want to be too specific about my work. It's not that I care so much what people will think, or even really care about my anonymity so much anymore. It's just that my current situation is a temporary one, and I'm still looking for a permanent position. So discretion is still the better part of valor. But the things I see, the personal stories I hear are deeply disturbing. So disturbing that what little faith I had left in human nature after a family trauma earlier this year has been absolutely demolished.
I hear stories from people whose hopes, dreams, and long-term plans have been demolished by the selfish, foolish – even possibly illegal – actions of a far-more-highly-placed few. Every day, it is the same story. Every single thing they've worked for their entire adult lives is at risk. Their old age is not secure, they cannot fulfill the promises they made on behalf of their children when they were small, and their anxiety levels are correspondingly high. This is all par for the course in my normal day. I get boatloads of this sort of mail.
The days when I want to cry but can't are becoming much too frequent. It is unbearable to witness, but someone has to bear witness for them. Somebody has to care, and guess what? I'm it. By virtue of my work, I'm the witness to the destruction of their hopes and dreams. And the hell of it is, these people didn't do a damn thing wrong.
And now it is showing up in my dreams. Actually, "nightmares" is the term that feels more apropos, come to think of it. Tuesday night (actually, more like the wee hours of Wednesday morning) I dreamed a fawn walked into my house, up to my bed, begged me to protect it after it had been abandoned by the humans who had previously fed it, and then crawled onto my bed and lay down on top of me. And it wept. Now, in my dream, I had to get up. But this creature was ten times the size of my cat, and I was mostly pinned. I eventually manage to wriggle free, and banished it to an outside shed area while I tended to the other chores at hand. But that poor little thing kept coming up, standing up to the window, and when I went outside, it stood up at me, like some dogs will do, with its hooves on my shoulders, crying. I gave up and let him back in, with the stern caveat that I had other things I had to get done. Other tasks, and other abandoned innocents, needed my attention. And at that moment I woke to a sadness I can't even begin to describe. I lay in bed, feeling emotionally battered, my bones literally aching despite the warm comforter on top of me, then rolled over and fell back asleep.
This hasn't been the first nightmare I've had the last several weeks. Most of them I can't remember. But I wake in the middle of the night almost every night, feeling deeply unsettled, perhaps even a bit frightened or desolate. I just lay there for a few moments, roll over and go back to sleep... to dream even more. And so the cycle goes.
The first of these was the dream of crawling through the nastiest basement/cellar you can imagine, pushing my way through filth, wearing my best navy blue suit, a pristine white blouse, and trying very, very hard not to get the dirt, the grime and the slime anywhere on me. That was a few weeks ago. They are getting stranger... at least, I think they are because my mental discomfort after one of these grows weekly, sometimes nightly. Early Thursday morning's was very telling. I found myself in a room of a house where lots of partying was going on. Some guy's junk was everywhere – dirty clothes, old pizza boxes and fast food containers, including leftovers, empty beer can and liquor bottles. Under that detritus was an absolutely filthy piece of patchworked cloth. It was the US flag, the original one from the Revolution. In my dream, I pulled it out, gathered it up, and got out of there. As I ran across a parking lot, I heard the sound of angry yelling, and I knew that the guys who had been using it as a cleaning rag were coming after me. So I ran faster, because there was nowhere safe to hide nearby. And then, I woke up.
I think I know what my nightmares are telling me – that I am too sensitive, too empathetic to do easily the sort of work I am doing, and yet they are also telling me I cannot stop. The stories are getting to me, yes. But here is where our typical American values kick in: I know what happened to these people was wrong. It adhered to the letter of the law while violating the spirit of the law, hewed strictly to the regulations while allowing those rules to be twisted around to damage the very people who made the entity work. In a word, it was unjust. And we are supposed to be a people who abhor injustice, who will work tirelessly, endlessly to make a fairer nation. I believe in that. And I cannot, must not look away for a second, even as it batters my spirit.
So, why am I so worn and so despairing? I think my FP is this: my belief in the articles of democratic faith is no longer enough to sustain me. Misty dreams of fairness and lofty ideals of constitutional justice only go so far if they are not shared across the nation and its government. Our principles come to nothing if the real power of the people is undermined by an informal "empire", that shadowy government of body shops which dares to wield power across the globe and does so much to corrupt those who tread too blithely, taking its potential threat to the nation's integrity too lightly. And it is all too clear to me, that in our current milieu, the only "principle", if one can even call it that, is the one that inspired the phrase "to the victor go the spoils." It is enough to make us all weep. If only our tears could wash this filth away.
And so, in this somber season one year before next year's crucial Presidential election, I find myself thinking often of all the shit the next President and the 111th Congress-to-be must clean up before they can even repair this nation's hurts. I look at the size of the task, and I wonder how long it will take, and in my worst moments even wonder if it can be done. While I have a plethora of doubts about the possibilities, I know, still, that it must be done, because we have no choice but to step into this fray. And so I expect the nightmares to continue.
But enough of my whining. So tell me, my friends, what are your fucking problems?