I Hate Donald Trump & How He Is Helping Me

UGHH, but first can we just start by agreeing Donald Trump is the worst, all partisanship aside?  I actually feel kind of bad for regular run-of-the-mill conservative-ish moderates who simply want to be staid and boring and semi-selfish on their own time. I mean, they have no options right now.  They’re just sitting there, trying to blend in and have a drink, while their party is deeply ruined by an embarrassing drunk trashing the place to high hell, and everyone’s looking at them, like, aren’t you going to do something - don’t you know that guy? Aren’t you with him? And they’re like, I know, but they don’t want to make it worse, so they sort of mumble something trailing off and clench up and look into their drink and shuffle their feet, waiting for it to be over.  But enough about them.  This is about what the worst president ever has made me see.  In this one small but mighty way, he has truly been a gift. 

 I’m as surprised as you.  See what you think. 

Okay, so I once went through a painful, very enduring ending of an also-too-long-endured romantic relationship, one that I tragically treasured and deeply wanted to salvage, but for some dumpster fire events of which I could scarcely conceive, all the while trying to stay clear of the flames, go to work every day, have a little fun somewhere in there, and establish a healthy grounded grip on reality despite my secret life in Crazytown. That ingenious bit of acrobat-meets-contortionist, that wildly effortful combination of my own chosen actions, is no doubt a large part of what made all of it so excruciatingly painful, I admit. (Well... okay, that, but also the cheating, the lies, abandonment in the worst hours a woman can imagine, a charming narcissistic combo of sneaky and overt manipulation, coupled with the most poignant love story ever told (just as soon as things level out <weak laugh>) and raw passion everywhere you look, it was enough back and forth to potentially provide new fuel sources for the Green New Deal. Just doing my part to help us move forward as a planet.)  Ah, those were the days, good times.  No, but there really were some, and then there were the worst of times, and thus started all the uphill battles to try to get it back again.   

As time wore on, as I tried everything to right the ship he repeatedly wrecked (and you know, it’s because I really liked that ship; it had these great original wood floors, vintage everything, naturally, the sweetest little stepson-to-be, a giant fluffy dog son, and ahem - a foxy lady at the helm), while saying things and doubling efforts once/twice/forever times, always spinning spinning, ugh, I found myself noticing that, essentially, I was saying only a few basic things to him. Welllll, ok, actually I was saying so so many words, emoting and conveying in every medium, language, and method of madness, with a focus on really angling in my messaging in brilliant new and novel ways — one lightbulb after another, I tell you — as in, this will finally get him to see!!! Yes!! — you know the feeling, the psycho buoyant energy of a new idea - aha! when you start to resemble one of those animated large-smiled wicked characters in a Disney film. But eventually, with the benefit of time and my good friend fatigue, I really did start to see that beneath the red hot temperatures, the hair tearing, the love notes, the moments of genuine affection, the laughing and all the crying (will I ever fully rehydrate?), in those acres of dialogue, in the lines of endless emails and texts and front porch yelling (yikes, too soon), there was a pared-down, simple loop of a few basic dare-I-say human rights and very reasonable communication requests, as follows:  

Listen to me  (followed by well-articulated facts and clear statements of how I feel)

Stop talking in place of listening to me  (or arguing, threatening, leveraging, etc.)

Reflect on what I said and notice what has happened here  (try to care, give a shit at all, etc.)

Change what you’re doing  (something, anything, Lady Gaga, give me one reason, omg, SOS)

And I mean…. This went on... for years.  Four years.  Each time I would pause and stop the loop, out of breath, my guy didn’t hold the line; it was hopeless.  I would stop, try to catch my breath for a second, and it felt like any progress I’d made just came rushing back on me, back to square one, nothing changed, nothing gained.  I would stop the loop because I was so fucking tired of doing it all by myself, of hearing myself, of the whole mess.  I suppose I just wanted a hug and no more awful and a warm cup of fantasy about how maybe things were improving. That didn’t happen. But it’s very hard to think in an existential wasteland when the guy in charge is promising it’s almost over, there’s nothing wrong, all is well if I would just cheer up and stop taking it all so seriously.  

I started more closely examining my part, how I would plea from inside, achingly, heavenward, “Could he please see how I am hurting?  I’m pointing to how and why what he did hurts, look, and if he could just not do that?  Just… be kind?  Stop lying?  Care about things?  Stay?” etc.  And then I realized this:  if he could — if he were the type of man who could be kind, caring, and so on — if he could pause in his mayhem and consider anything, anything at all, before, say, he called the woman he adored fat and ugly to my face in a moment of absolutely unrelated rage, and then, declaring himself victimized and mistreated by my subsequent withdrawal, demand I have sex with him right away or else he’ll leave me for the real or imagined other woman of the moment — if he could, then all of this awful would not have occurred in the first place.  If he possessed the materials to be able to see, he would be capable of change. If he could do or be any of those things, any one of them, these results would have been different.  For one thing, if he could, I could make him - somehow, I could.  If he could stop or change any of it, even one part, he would not continue it on repeat, if just so that I would shut up and sit down. So, I was quietly forced to the logical conclusion endpoint — that, in fact, he could not.  This truth aided me many times over the last several rounds in the ring, even if I didn’t always remember it right off the bat.  Whenever I would walk down those same familiar stair steps of “if this, then that” logic-based thread of sanity — there it was, each time, ultimately: “No, he can’t.”

Therefore, if we use this blunt logical wisdom and apply its basis to our lives, it holds that all pieces of the game touching the “can’t” reality must necessarily also be can’ts.  Shitty but true.  (And listen, you can argue and tangle with this if you want to — I get it, I’m an old pro, been there zillions of times myself, no judgment here — but it’s like a drop of food coloring in a clear glass of water.  Eventually the whole glass is tainted, as it slowly unfurls and dissipates color tendrils everywhere, and I can slowly watch this to come to pass, fingers crossed, ah! new ideas again!, but then the end of Romeo and Juliet is the same every time, goddamnit…. or I can skip to the end.)  He can’t.  So.  The life I wanted with him: can’t happen.  The working on me while I try to get through to him: can’t be successful.  The efforts to maneuver myself so his can’t doesn’t hurt me: can’t solve it.  The focus on my career: for sure can’t happen.  Doing therapy with someone who can’t:  cannot be done.  

Once again, fatigue.  But this time, it’s more of an uncle moment of surrender.  White flag, man. Me and the answer, sitting together, face to face, quietly.  I’m me, he’s him, and the two of us comprise the we.  We, by definition, requires both of us.  So if he can’t, then I guess we can’t.  It’s somehow not about blame, either, it’s cleaner than that.  It’s not accusatory, it’s just a relative assessment of items, a linear observation.  It’s just… math.  You know?  

A friend of mine - a whip smart, no mincing of words, politico Twitter type - who has long held a pithy shorthand that Republicans are just dumber than other people — said to me recently (almost musingly, except that she doesn’t talk that way, but stated factually and without charge) that anyone who likes Donald Trump is an abuse victim.  “Maybe I’m just saying that because it gives me some amount of compassion for them,” she said.  “It’s better than thinking they’re all stupid and mean.”

We were both, like everyone, positively reeling from that first debate when she said this, so I didn’t fully absorb it at first.  Like the rest of the world, I was triggered as fuck after the first debate, blitzed and hung over from being horrified, so like, yeah, I could identify that he was nuclear hatred and toxic slime in human form, and that I felt it in my own tender sliced-open heart when Joe Biden’s face computed what he’d actually heard that terrible made-up fake human say out loud, and all that... but it was also a big huge expanse of a nameless, spiraling sort of mosquito net feeling that I didn’t fully realize I was caught up in until it passed a day or two later.  Recounting it all with her, she said again, “what we saw onstage was abusive behavior.”  And that time, I heard it, loud and clear.  It was!  

Any mental health professional out there working in 2020 already knows - pssh all too well - that Trump triggers people, and I have no doubt that there are many differing explanations and reasons and why and how for everyone.  I’ve heard of this from different people, and while I believe it’s true, I’d never really tried to identify the specifics of why it is all so hard for me.  I thought at first maybe it’s that he actually sounds like my basis-of-years-in-therapy dad when he talks.  Like so much so, in his tone and turn of phrase and intonation, all of that, and so maybe that’s what it is that lights up scary electrical currents in my heart, because I seriously don't want to hate my father the way I hate this man. Or hey, I thought maybe it was the broad-sweeping agenda of hating and killing non-white, non-straight, non-rich people I love and admire, individually and categorically.  I mean, that would be enough, right? 

Then something happened, and I got it.  I get it — completely, clearly, lucidly — now, and this is the freaking diamond at the end of that horrible coal squeeze prison of lunacy from hell we’re all ready to escape from for forever. 

Okay, so here’s the story.  My birthday is a big deal.  It’s in October, I love it, it’s a whole thing.  Literally anyone who knows me in any form or from any distance is aware of this very genuine heartfelt fact.  My previously mentioned relationship, covered in battle wounds and somehow still crawling around like a killer in a horror movie who simply will not die and leave us in peace, had been put on ice by my “can’t” math equation over the summer.  Yay.  Further, with the strange virtue of COVID’s personal space requirement and the whole world closed up and in lockdown, we hadn’t talked to or seen each other in months, and he couldn’t come over or try to pressure me in the same ways he had before. It was like the social distancing and masks were somehow a personal insult to him, so he stayed away, and that was a relief.  Even in moments when I’d miss the nice parts of him, which I did — hello, extra time on our hands — the stress of the whole was still a clear no.  I have to say, the math formula was really holding down the fort in a time of so much uncertainty and family loss and health crises and police killings and white nationalists and oh, always ever more Donald Trump madness unleashed into the world.  So anyway, my birthday came and went, and it was a truly lovely affair, simple and safe, a few close friends hanging outside, and there was a tulle skirt and twinkle lights and loads of wine involved, so I was happy.  There was also endless mirth and hilarious witty banter about how TRUMP GOT COVID JUST IN TIME FOR MY BIRTHDAY, hahaha - e.g., what it all would mean, memes for days, all the jokes, constant refreshing of the twitter feed, you know — it was good stuff.  Happy birthday to me. 

So you can imagine my surprise, along with the rest of the nation, when, several weeks later, Trump and all his cronies he infected, well, they’d healed up just fine, don’t you know, continued to make no plans to deal with the pandemic, kept on being a calamitous network of truly heinous crimes against humanity, and — on the night of the second debate — I got an Instagram friend request and a couple of niceties in my DMs from, you guessed it, him. 

First of all, Instagram.  You might be thinking, a relationship of that magnitude, that’s his chosen medium?  An over 40-year-old, really, to reach out that way? I get it, and I agree, what a dipshit.  But yes, and I’m not surprised.  He has always been highly obsessed with social media because he cares very very much about his image and likes and pretend comradery and how much strangers think of him and his posts.  He can’t sustain real depth or actual valuable personal relationships, but he can be very prolific online. I know, it’s gross. (Sound familiar at all?) 

Second of all, the timing of it.  The fact that it was a few weeks after my birthday and the day after the second debate was at first not something I noticed, but it makes total sense as well.  He has done this before, where he’ll blow up a huge bomb (like, idk, have an affair or cancel a trip or just disappear entirely) just before a holiday or event of any significance to me so that he can dodge it all, hurt me in that very special place you can’t reach in any other way than ruining beautiful plans for no reason at the last second so that I have to cry and either do them alone or not at all, and then come back later, after I’ve healed and finally started walking again, emotionally. However, I digress; the part about it being just after the second debate is really more of what I want to focus on for the moment.  

I did things differently for the second debate after the massacre of the first one. (I know!  Growth, people!)  For one thing, I went and cast my vote in advance of the second debate. That was helpful. Go Joe. Kamala Harris went ahead and kept on being a dream, a gem, a warrior for all that is good in the interim, and that was a beautiful shot in the arm as well. I was more intentional about my health choices, too, after months of wine administered so consistently it could've been intravenous and a constant degree of internal tension that was quite actually tearing me down inside, and so, I did a few things.  First, I took the time to actually decide whether I wanted to watch the debate (rather than the typical of course I will/ suffering is love/ Pied Piper thing), and when I decided that I did, to do so while making a relatively fancy (for me) dinner to have something wholesome and normal to focus on and not mainlining wine for the sole purpose of managing my nail-biting wall-crawling panic like last time. All of these things helped. Plus, the mute button addition - that did, too. When he started out with slightly less crazy right out in front, I was unfooled. I knew it was only a matter of time.  I know his kind. Give them only a few minutes, if you must; they will blow. And so, right on time, there he went, first leaking then full blast with the lies and distraction and whining. 

I’ve gotten so clear on why I voted for Joe Biden (even in a red state that stands no chance at contributing to his electoral count) - namely, to eradicate Donald Trump from my public sector - that the homina-homina frenzy exploding from his ugly orange face shifted into a new pace.  A loud, slow final count, each moment serving as one more steady pound of more, and then more, satisfyingly solid nails in his coffin.  It solidified.  A direct message that I’m done here.  It wasn’t a deluge of swirly fear, ear-splitting insanity with no end.  It was nails.  Nailed in.  Bam. <calmly lowers hammer, dusts off palms of hands, job well done style, puts on sunglasses, goes about business>

So when dudeface of my life sent me IG messages, all formal (a chastened churchboy, you understand, imploring energy, you need to believe him) to tell me things like how great I look in my photos, that “42 looks good on me” (barf), how he loves me (ouch - sorry, it’s true), has always loved me, misses me all the time, thinks of me every moment of every day (presumably when not with his harem of always-potentials), homina homina, etc., I felt…. (waiting for the usual apprehension and muddled confusion to hit, that messed up mixture of happiness to see him on one hand, immediately ruined and dragged down by the realization that oh yeah, he skipped out on my BIRTHDAY on purpose, feeling a little sad at that involuntary motor of efficiency kick in from years of constantly sorting bullshit from reality, trying to find some golden thread of truth to save the day, that could make it okay, the fast processing but slow absorption of incredibly obvious lies - hello, sir, um, go look at your own photos on your own account that you asked me to follow at your own request and tell me again how she’s “only a friend” - the mighty pushback in my soul from not going to take it, ugh, rage from just the injustice of it, yet again)....  nothing. 

Donald Trump has so completely laid out the world’s largest points, this guy is now child's play.  

Pieces of all this have been gathering and coming together for a while now, in hindsight:  Michelle and Barack’s speeches, my friend saying the abuse thing, favorite podcasts, personal moments with friends - not to mention the ongoing onslaught of so much bad and wrong and awful from the lack of or outright evil leadership of everyone affiliated with Donald Trump and his ways. But you never do know when that final piece will show up, the one that really lands the plane and brings it all together.  It was this past Sunday night for me, the catching up on loose ends of the week known as DVR night.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was being interviewed on A Late Show, and there it was.  My last piece had arrived — and I was stunned.  As in, I’m tempted to attach video clips of his commentary so you can see what I mean.  Cuomo was asked about Donald Trump and his abject failure with the coronavirus, and you guys, Cuomo lifted exact verbiage, and I mean actual lengthy phrases and sentences, from my furious heartbroken emails and texts and front porch yelling IN HIS ANSWER ON T.V.  *Exact. Verbiage.* Right there in front of me, all the math, all spelled out. This guy quoted my conclusion verbatim, I’m not even kidding, but in short saying <clearing throat, are you even ready>:  if he could do it, if he could have done it, he could have changed everything;  I know, we keep asking, but if he could do it, then he could have done it before, or now - but he can’t.  He can’t.  He can’t, he couldn't, he can’t; and so anything involving him can’t, either.  It can’t.  We can’t. 

It’s done.  Nailed.  Bam. 

The exact methodology of these two men — there it was!  The flow of how and why they react, down to the selection of words or blustery lack thereof, the timing and tactics from A to B to C — I mean, the resemblance is uncanny.  And when I look at myself and people like me, the way we in each case watch and get sucked in and feel insane and don’t know how to stop the madness — there it is.  It looks just like a duck.  It’s walking.  It’s quacking.  It’s like those projector laminated sheets from elementary school, placed just exactly one on top of the other, and the parallels and overlaps in behavior, actions, patterns are evident, blown up so the whole class can see. 

While the degree of obvious simpatico tracking and like-minded thoughts by me and the hunky NY gent does blow my mind, what I’m saying is this:  Donald Trump is so awful, so triggering, so reminiscent of every painful abusive moment any of us have ever had, that the strength and presence of mind — the hallmark first thing to go in abuse and trauma situations — to be done and walk away and say no, I’m out of here, godspeed, and feel peace, that certainty I feel about Donald Trump is helping me use my own math on the other abusive forces in my life.  

The very best part of all is the vibe of the math itself. Oh god, the feeling is enough, on its own! It has a natural effervescence, a clean finish, a tidy impartial mood filled to the brim with grounded logic and authentic predictable good sense. What a kindness, what extravagance, even, it is to have abiding simplicity offered and consistently available, is it not??  The vibe is everything, I tell you.  When my IG inbox was filling up with disinformation and wheedling and out of place outsized compliments, a veritable tide of misdirection, that felt to me precisely like Donald Trump in that second debate. I wasn’t mad or riled up or thrown into a vortex of emotional quicksand. I was like, hmm, what is he saying now, and can he hear himself? but in an unagitated way. I felt like myself. Oh, to breathe a sweet breath of serenity and self fidelity.  The math — as applied and shown to me in very large block letters on a national scale by Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo — makes sense.  It’s not militant, and I don’t hate you anymore, and I’m not upended or disheveled again; it’s simply a no for me.  That’s my vote, plain and simple.  

Now. Am I passionate and outraged at the content and impact of all the lies and terror and criminal activity and apparent ceaseless ignorance with zero effort to be good? Of course. But am I set on fire and run through by all the pain so dear to me?  No.  But I had been. I wondered, why was it so easy to stay clear in a national election when I for so long could not in my own home, when the two ducks walk and quack in exactly the same way??  I believe it comes down to the feeling of safety to speak out, transparency and due process, and most of all, community. In the darkness of at-home domestic disputes, as a child or a woman, if power is wielded and humanity disrespected, the world feels too small and too big, all at the same time. Everything feels dangerous and scary, high stakes, and that's real. This is how the actual world is going now, too, and it’s all too real — but there are so many of us in this home.  No one is alone, and while each voice is part of a much larger whole, each voice matters equally. Form and structure give me a sense of safety, yes, but I needed to feel the trust of shared experience. This is essential. 

I see now that it's the sense of community that has given my math solution a warm heartbeat. Its life force and staying power is the vital energy I needed to lift me out of the cycle.  Because underneath the details of a love life or a federal government, the responsibility to act with care and respect is the same. The support and context and representation of seeing your opinion, your feelings, mobilized in numbers across the nation is really something — and all the voices speaking out against Donald Trump stabilize and clarify my math, in a way that’s not as easy to come by inside my much smaller private life. The sheer numbers help me balance and realign, the loads of perspective and validation and conversation give safety, and I’m not doing it alone.  Community is what counteracts and dismantles that rooted message that his disasters are mine to fix.  Honest discourse, you see, reveals political dogma — um, HI, guys??, the emperor is not wearing any clothes!!!  Hellloooooo!!  Hi there!  Yep, right here!  When applied behind closed doors, though, it gets in, always meant to suppress voter turnout, dodge accountability, and keep us confused and yet someone complicit, invested, on the line — “privacy,” so as to keep those powers in place.  

And as for sadness about all this, if you’re interested, I have noticed this. The thing about the sadness is that it’s only allowed in the spaces right between me setting a boundary and when (not if) he retaliates. Because that intersection of sadness has something to do with hope, that rub of a painful past, a moment to see change, and disappointment. I find it’s the fear of the sad, and the sad itself, that keeps me stuck in that space, but it’s only open until they react.  And they do.  With cruelty, with no love at all.  Then it’s not sad anymore. It turns to pure math, burns to ash, with some sort of ancient wisdom backing it or something.  It’s tragic, but it’s not sad in the same way. There is an alchemy: the fearful feeling of “but I don't know what’s next, what will I do” I said back there in the stuck place, well, post-mathtime, stay with me now, the more times I say “but I don’t know what’s next, what will I do,” what with the math vibes all over it, there’s a shimmery sliver of slippery sparkliness on “what will I do” when I’m mathed up, and it actually makes a different sound attach to those very same words, like, ooh maybe I want to come see, transforming that sentiment before my very eyes, and before I know it, maybe, I don’t know, a tiny soft glimmer of an emerging smile might involuntarily start flickering on the corners of my mouth. Math nerds, let’s go! 

So, I invite you go check out Donald Trump stories in a whole new way.  Get clear on the hell no.  Do the math.  Then, inside that solid place of clarity, just dare a few other whiffs of nonsense to come your way.  It’s kind of fun. 

I swear to God, Donald Trump is curing abuse victims of further involvement in the abuse cycle.  Disengagement is the only actionable solution to abuse, followed by clear decisions, consistent safe leadership, and supported direction with people we trust.  Studies show this; this we know.  And it sounds good, right?  In government and in marriage, what a great plan... just disengage, do it, let’s get this party started, woo yeah, all of it, I know… But if it seems simple, that’s only how it looks from the outside. If walking away in a situation was easy and doable, everyone would do it.  It’s not easy.  The reasons why are many, insidious by design, and they run deep, for me and I’d guess for anyone.  The process to the way out is also very personal, filled with all sorts of holdups, dustups, and complicated twists and turns. Basically… Everything involved is illogical and bafflingly powerful and dangerous and sticky as hell — it gets all over everything.  It’s impossible to know which way is up, no matter what people tell you. 

But you know what?  Donald Trump is so bad, logic is the answer.  He is so bad, banding together broadly and standing with conviction is the only way out.  Finding next right steps, when desperation has reached fever pitch, nationally and internationally, a pandemic, wildfires, a reckoning of the value of the many human lives he’d just as soon dismiss; suddenly the path forward becomes more clear, and then we can show each other, show up and support one another, to get there together.  Maybe a larger than life asshole is here to help us see — this model portrait of everyone’s trauma, all rolled up tight into one impossible worst nightmare of a man who has been placed in charge of ruining absolutely everything. In a way, he’s like a grand equalizer, showing us so much terrible that we just got all we need to see exactly how to get free and clear inside. 

It’s math. 

He can’t.  So we can’t.  

Elect for more.  An act, indeed, of election.  

Go vote.  Vote him out.  

(Because... fuck that guy.  He had every chance.  You know?)