I should also note that there are still two comments on my last post that I want to respond to,
but since I was finding myself a bit distracted, I'm temporarily moving on and hoping to get back to those later.
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| Image credit: Art by I'm Your Pusher on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
A few weeks ago, when I decided to start this little series to work out my feelings around the election, I was feeling crazy. Wanting-to-fix-the-whole-world kind of crazy. Can't-sleep-because-I'm-busy-obsessing kind of crazy. Why-are-people-so-stupid kind of crazy. In short, recognizably-codependent kind of crazy. At least now I do find it recognizable, and when I do recognize it, I go to work on figuring out what's wrong with me rather than trying to change the world to make me happy the way I have in the past.
One of the things that came to me, in the midst of my craziness, was something a dear friend said at the time I had my abortion. She had experienced her own losses and said that there might come a time, years later, when I was feeling lost or anxious or sad or angry for no reason I could pinpoint. And when that happened, she advised me to think about that loss and what significant dates might be happening around it. Of course, it didn't take much thinking at all to see that the upcoming presidential election was triggering thoughts of the last presidential election, which was linked in my mind with both my abortion and my husband's sex addiction. Yay! A perfect recipe for emotional mayhem!
That realization alone was enough to help bring me out of my spinning madness, but I also realized that the candidates themselves were all playing parts in my psychodrama. And that is where I both need to go next and fear to tread.
I am a notorious, true blue, lifelong liberal. And we on the left pride ourselves for our dispassionate view of the candidates, for our ability to analyze the issues and vote based on policy rather than personality. (Yes, go ahead, say it: which is why we pick dull candidates like Kerry. It's true.) We liberals like to say we vote not for the person we'd like to have a beer with, but for the person we'd like to debate foreign policy with, right? At least that's what I always said. And yet, did I really vote that way? Do I really? Or was it just that the candidate I personally and emotionally liked better and trusted more always happened to be the one I agreed with philosophically?
I find that in this particular election, the candidates themselves are stirring up a host of emotions that I have to wade through to get at the issues (and then there are a whole host of other problems when I do get to the issues). Yet admitting that is, well, admitting my own weakness: something I'm not comfortable with. And I'm still less comfortable when my attempts to work through those emotions stir up off the scale reactions of fear and anger and outrage among my liberal friends and relatives. It makes me want to do what I usually do to handle situations full of strong negative emotions: lie and hide to escape them. And given that that's what politicians seem to do too, maybe it's no surprise I'm personally and emotionally drawn to them...
So, up this week (and next): sex addiction, special needs parenting, my psyche and how it all plays into my reactions to the candidates. Deep breath! Ok, I'm good to go.
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