Longing for Safe Places in a Broken Nation

​This morning as I awoke to the new snow on the ground, I had a vision of me sitting with my Gramsy - one of the safest places in the world for me growing up and probably would still be today. It brought tears to my eyes, thinking of the safety and security her and my Gramps brought to my little confusing world. 
 
Gramsy and I would watch TV shows like Columbo and eat frozen chocolate covered peanuts and just be with each other. Gramps and I would convene in his den to watch sports with the TV sound off because he didn’t hear that well and often the commentators weren’t very good according to him. Their house was my safe house, my cocoon, my place to breathe. I never doubted their love or support for me nor their desire to keep me safe. 
 
I grew up in the 70s and 80s and it surely wasn’t perfect then and there were trying times: crises like the gas shortage and the housing market collapse, and being a latchkey kid because both my parents had to work in order for us to have food, a place to live, water, and electricity. I remember the tensions of then, but they felt nothing like now. Oh, to go back to those days of Gramps and Gramsy’s house. The feeling of safety and being fed in many ways – good Polish food, homemade chicken noodle soup and bread, protection, laughter, and safety. I wish I was there now. But, alas, I am not. None of us are. ​
 
Where are we now? We are in an abusive relationship with those who are supposed to protect us, watch out for us, care for us. A narcissistic-sociopathic abusive relationship and it will only escalate. 

• In these relationships there are scapegoats (think those from other countries, people of color, women, and the LGTBQ+ community). 
• There are those that in order to keep themselves safe, become co-conspirators (think the Republican party and those that voted for them). 
• There are those that fight back and get beaten and their lives threatened and even killed at the hand of those in “power” (think those that speak out like Bishop Budde and many who have come before her). 
• There are those that are silent and watch in horror, frozen from trauma.
•  And there are those that leave in a number of ways (think leaving the country, hiding from the world, just go about their business like nothing is happening, dying, and taking their own lives).  

 
We have been holding our breath, a collective breath, since before the elections in 2024 in hopes that this clearly couldn’t happen. That enough people couldn’t be snowed by the narcissistic ramblings and behaviors and blatant lies but alas, here we are. 
 
The snow is being plowed, and the road is dirty, filled with perpetual potholes of lies and tank traps of now truths, landmines of poverty and discrimination, the messy mud trapping people, and soon to be blood of innocents and those wanting to do good in the world. 
 
This is now the United States of America. I was born an optimistic person but that has shifted as hopelessness flies in like the Concord. Watching what I was seemingly building, striving, and working for sift through my hands. I pray I can find my courage and optimism again; I need it. Our country needs it. The world needs it. 
 
My calling was/is to be in service and now I feel I must be in service to myself and my family first and foremost. Does that make me selfish? Heartless? Maybe and to be honest I don’t care what you’d like to label it because to serve others I must be in a healthy state myself. I have served in the mental health realm for over 15 years and have seen and heard some terrible, horrible, and inhumane things, which is why I know how what we are going through now is narcissistic sociopathic abuse on a country level. I have also seen people rise up and choose themselves despite obstacles, disbelievers, gas lighters, and abusers. May those people inspire us. 
 
Personally, I am tired and weary of living in survival mode. This is why I was trying to make a life for myself and my family. Something to be proud of and that would keep us safe and out of survival mode but here we are with a narcissistic sociopathic country filled with many cowardly, insecure, soul-selling people. This is why I am writing this finally using my voice. 
 
What is the antidote you ask? Is it people banning together like the French revolution? Who will organize it before this gets too far and it becomes a police state or caste system? (Although I am not sure the police, if they choose to do the right thing, will obey the orders of a fascist dictator oligarch who shows no support of them.)
 
They are currently using fear and division to get everyone in line, in order. They are using “god” as a weapon - don’t even get me started on that hypocrisy. I don’t want to buy into the hopelessness, I really don’t. And at the same time, I have no clue as to what can be done. 
 
But we were warned over and over before the election that this would all happen. I hope those that voted for the “economy” and were snowed by him now realize what has been done.

You sold your vote and Soul really (we knew he was never telling the truth about helping and making things better) and those of your wives, daughters, sisters, aunts, friends, children, immigrants, minorities, ironically the economy, freedom, etc. for lies. LIES. LIES AND GREED. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness seemingly has packed her bags.

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