It Counts as Resistance

You are walking around in your chest with this feeling: I should be doing something. But when you make a list of all the things you did this month so far, you’ll see:
You listened to a coworker in the hall talk about feeling lost and worried.
You decided not to give Amazon your money this week, and that is resistance.
You called Target to express your disgust: resistance.
You joined the zoom call of 20,000 other people on a Monday night.
You went to the community meeting.
You took a screenshot of that nonprofit.
You collected a flyer.
You signed up for that email list.
You forwarded the email newsletter that helped you feel focused and brave.
You read the long article about executive power.
You called your senator, fumbling with a long list of things you know are wrong.
You did it, and you’ll do it again.
You texted the friend with the trans daughter and asked how you could help.
You reached out to a friend whose husband is in trouble.
You put the web link on a list to look at later.
You’ve been sending people money from your phone, giving monthly, so much
you probably don’t even remember or give yourself credit for it.
You talked to three friends about things they should read.
You didn’t assume you know the answers.
You are waiting for a movement that looks like America.
You put on the podcast while washing dishes and cried afterward.
You helped your sister carry this massive grief and uncertainty.
You do something every day that is resistance.

They have told you, your whole life, that you’re not doing enough.
They make you do it all while they take your retirement and your paycheck and your health and threaten your family.
They spread their incompetence and arrogance like slime.
They tell you to do more and add a baby to your hip.
They call you names, make you feel like this is not your place, your country.
They have made you feel smaller, feel fear.
They have broken the supports we need to survive.
They ignorantly meddle in things they cannot comprehend for the rush of power.
They think it’s all theirs.
They think they have a right to everything.
They want to control time.
They don’t fucking know.
They will lose, and we will take them down, because there are more of us.

I wrote this poem last week (is it even a poem? I’m not as careful as a poet, and these things feel more like lists of sentences) first to talk myself down from a panicked sadness—the “you” is me. And then I meant to share it here, but so much has been happening that I kind of lost track. We are getting organized at work around the funding freeze, I’ve been in a training, there are campus events this week including a national day of action with labor for higher education.

And I am trying to not feel busy—that rushing, exhausting feeling I don’t like. Much moreso than in earlier decades in my life, I sort of stop drop and roll when I have a pause between events. Those pauses of a few hours used to be for multi-tasking, but now, honestly, I play solitaire on my phone. I waste time. I let my heart rate slow down. None of this, I should point out, is my idea. I’ve been mentored by the writing of Black women as well as people like Tema Okun, who has pointed out how urgency is an element of White supremacy.

Oh and developing chronic pain. That certainly underlined things in a visceral way: if you keep taking life at a breakneck speed, you will get sick and feel worse.

I used to go around in the world castigating myself for every schedule mistake—and there are a LOT of them, because I have a weird semi-calendar-blindness/undiagnosed something that means that the more important a number is, and the more I pay attention to writing it down correctly, the more likely I am to mess it up. So there’s a lot of scheduling chaos. But now, instead of urgency, I am just thinking about keeping the balls spinning as if they were balloons….I just tap each of them to keep them aloft until future-me has to worry about them again.

Anyway, my point I guess lines up with the list-poem above: we are doing our best, and we are a million chaotic points of motion that is helping to move something big. I hope you are doing okay, given all of this destruction, and that you are taking care of your heart as best you can.