I had just hopped off the BART train at Oakland’s MacArthur station, weaving through a seething mass of bodies on the platform to make my way downstairs, through the turnstiles, and out to the sunshine. I was running late. I was thinking about the place I needed to be next, the people I was going to meet, whether or not I should text to tell them I was running behind. I was thinking about groceries to pick up later, and whether I left enough milk for my baby at home. I was there, but I wasn’t there—until I saw a heartbreaking array of bouquets, scrawled notes, lit candles, and printed pictures of Nia Wilson’s face where, just days earlier, a white man stabbed a young black woman to death at this very station for no apparent reason except unfathomable racism and malignant hatred. My mind slammed back into my body at warp speed. Bam.
This thing has been happening lately, especially at work—a fist closes over my heart and squeezes with all its might. A shadow passes over me and a cement block sits on my chest all day long and tears sit hot and stinging just behind my eyeballs, but I can’t let it out. This feeling sits with me all day. It doesn’t leave when I log off Slack or stop reading the news. I carry this anxiety in my body. I carry it all day long. On weekends. On vacations. Sometimes it lets go for a while and I let myself forget and enjoy my life and my privilege. Some days it’s inescapable, no matter what I do.
At MacArthur station this weekend, the fist closed over my heart again seeing those two memorials, side by side, and I was shocked to a standstill as I stared at the flickering candles and at the stone-sad expressions of the other people—strangers sharing in this sadness in silence. The cement block, old friend, sat there on my ribcage and made it hard to breathe. I stood with it for a couple minutes. I wanted to stay longer, with the pain, steep in the truth of the hate crime that happened right here under my footsteps, but I started walking, blinking tears away, refusing to break down on a public street. I passed the 57 bus and remembered a hate crime that occurred on that very bus line where a genderqueer person was set on fire. The cement block, it got heavier. It was hard to breathe. I had to stop at a street corner to catch my breath. I kept walking.
Everything ripples. The smallest act of kindness, the cruelest hate crime. They ripple. They ripple even to privileged people like me whose lives are only tangentially connected via the news. I feel guilty, because, as a white woman, what right do I have to feel so sad and so anxious when these things aren’t directly a threat to me? But I can’t help myself. My life is good. I have two small children who are pure sunshine and sweetness. I have everything I need. And Lord, I hurt these days. I hurt.
I’m not alone. Recently I sought new tools for coping with this anxiety from a behavioral therapist. He told me that since Trump was elected in 2016, he and his colleagues have seen a huge rise in people seeking treatment for anxiety. Anecdotally I can tell you that I’ve seen more friends and acquaintances suffer from nervous breakdowns in the past two years than ever before. Turns out it’s not just anecdotal; according to The Hill, therapists all over the place are definitely seeing a rise in anxiety disorders these days, so much so that folks are referring to it now as “Trump Anxiety Disorder.”
Elisabeth LaMotte, the founder of the D.C. Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in Washington, D.C., told CBC that there is a “collective anxiety” among her patients related to President Trump’s rhetoric and policies.
"There is a fear of the world ending," she said. "It's very disorienting and constantly unsettling."
She said that Trump critics whom she treats exhibit similar behavior to patients who have a parent with a personality disorder.
The irony is not lost, of course, that this administration is going to take a toll on our health while doing its damnedest to rob us of proper health care.
Of course, hate crimes, racism, white supremacists, they all existed before Trump. They are part of our unspoken legacy as Americans, one we weren’t necessarily taught in school (and if we were, we learned them most likely as a horrid chapter of our past—slavery, lynching, the eradication of Native Americans—that we’ve supposedly moved on from; never as an ugly part of our present day reality). But there is no denying that hate crimes, bullying, and racism have risen under Trump’s bigoted rhetoric, enabling a sea of red-capped MAGA meatheads and their greedy self-serving overlords to be open about their disdain for people of color, women, immigrants, children, the poor, the disabled, the environment. It’s open season for haters.
According to new data “ hate crime totals for the 10 largest cities rose for four straight years to the highest level in a decade.” The NAACP believes there is a direct relationship between the rise in hate crimes exemplified by the continual #LivingWhileBlack incidents and other reported crimes and President Donald J. Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric and racist policies.
There’s no answer to this. While I’ve learned some breathing exercises and mindfulness tools to get me through the panicky episodes, I and the rest of this country have to learn that there is no easy resolution at hand. If you’re paying attention, you’re probably half-sick half the time. A lot of people I know simply stopped paying attention to the news precisely because of this. But if you’re reading this far, I’m assuming you’re not one of them.
I guess I’m just writing this to say you’re not alone. If you’re one of those people with a cement block sitting on your chest, if you’re one of those people who fights tears to the point that your stomach is sick, if you’re someone who reads the news and lives with the disturbing images and horror stories all day long, if you’re someone who gets scared with an apocalyptic intensity, who overindulges or undernourishes, whose happiness is tinged with guilt because others are so disadvantaged, who is depressed, whose ancient disorders or neuroses haunt you with a newfound intensity, who feels helpless, who a cloud of gloom follows around even in the brightest spots of sunshine … you are not alone. And to realize you’re not alone in something means to be something greater than yourself, which is the very notion of a nation.
In the days after Nia Wilson’s tragic death, there was a tension in the air on BART. It was palpable. We stood there, human cargo packed into train cars, silently scrolling on our devices. When the killer was still at large, I spotted more than one neighbor looking nervously around the train with a picture of the man glowing on their phone. We, strangers, were all awash in the same collective anxiety. There was something simultaneously frightening and comforting in that. One ride, a woman seated next to me breathed a sigh of relief as train doors opened and a man got off our car. She turned to a woman across the aisle, who said, “You were watching him too, weren’t you?”
“Had my mace ready,” the woman replied. “Guy looked sketchy. I’m not about to get myself killed like that poor girl.”
These are dangerous days filled with chest pains and nausea and racing hearts. Everything ripples. And so what ripples am I making? And so what are you? How are you all coping? How do you get up every day in this madness and keep your head up and not just survive but live?
How do you get healthy when your political system is ill?
How do you stay engaged to improve something when it feels like the system you're trying to change is making you sick—and actually killing people you care about?