House of Cards

On the last day of my outpatient program, ICE began to carry out raids in our city of Los Angeles. It had everyone in the room feeling some type of way, and we sat together in our orange chairs in a silent, mopey circle—unsure of how to feel, what to say, how to carry on with the day. At this moment in time, it’s dangerous territory to discuss politics. Trump has created an administration that you cannot ignore, one that is touching everyone’s lives in such a dramatic, jarring way that he seeps into your conversations with everyone you know and has everyone unfriending people on social media.

“How is everyone feeling about what’s happening?” Inga, our psychiatrist, asked us.

We waited out the silence: me staring into the blank page of my notebook as if an answer would appear, others crossing their hands over their chests, giving themselves a hug, others studying the ugly carpet like they would be tested on it later. Amy, who is very well versed in politics, broke the silence with, “I feel sad. And scared. And helpless.”

Yes, I thought, my worried eyes catching hers, the look between us gathering more worried eyes. Collectively, we were all sad and scared and felt helpless.

“My nephew from Mexico is here staying with me,” Lisa blurted into the circle. Lisa is one of my favorites in our group. She rarely comes, but when she does, she truly makes an impact. “He’s in big trouble because he looks like someone who would get taken. I mean, hell, if I were ICE, I would probably take ’em.”

She chuckled to herself while Inga’s face turned panicky. The temperature in the room rose; the silence turned from a collective sadness to a hardened, sharp tension.

I have a very dark sense of humor. I understood Lisa was making light of something serious, that she was not actually going to call ICE on her nephew, who was Mexican and now seemingly being profiled by Aunt Lisa. I understand sometimes humor is really the only way to survive, but it may have been too soon. We needed to be sad and helpless together for a few more minutes before everyone got their knives out.

Amy looked like she had just eaten something sour. “How can you say that?” she spat.

Lisa looked surprised, as all people do when their joke doesn’t land and actually deeply offends its audience and turns you into a racist member of ICE.

“It was just a joke,” she tried to offer Amy, but Amy needed her to know how unfunny and serious her “joke” was. This invited everyone to begin piling on. Inga was tight-lipped. She now was a mediator of a conversation that she most likely did not want to lead.

Lisa began to cry. She felt terrible. “I don’t want my nephew to be taken. I don’t want anyone to,” she said, sobbing as I passed her tissues.

“Can you see how insensitive that was?” someone else chimed in.

I always tend to place myself alongside whoever the underdog is, and in this case Lisa and I were both feeling punished. We were witches about to be hanged while the townspeople cheered.

Why is it that when the silence is broken with a feeling of sadness, we all sit quiet, leaving the speaker alone in their grief, but when the silence is broken with anger, suddenly everyone is brave enough to jump in and fight?

I was wondering if I should interject this thought into the tornado that was growing, giving Inga a lifeline to catch and pull us all back into psychology.

“Yes! Sadness and grief—our old friends. Let’s get back to why you are all here. Why are you all depressed?”

But then, as I listened to everyone spitting opinions and facts they’ve gathered from different sources, everyone had a fact to contradict someone else’s fact, I realized maybe this was why we are here.

This was depressing as hell.

The America we live in present day is a nightmare. A plot in a dystopian film. A dark, sensationalized political drama people love to watch for an hour and then turn off and return to reality. But now… our reality is worse than the script. The actors aren’t acting—they are real people.

And they had somehow, unwelcomed, joined our sacred circle of trust and acceptance. Our safe space had been infiltrated, and now I was angry.

“Jennifer, you’ve been quiet. How does all this make you feel?” Inga asked me with eager eyes, like she was hoping maybe I could be the one to steer us a different way. The lifeline.

I sighed.

“This is exactly what Trump wants.”

Everyone was now attentively staring at me. I was about to stand up to all of this in the only way I knew how at that moment.

“I have been with you all for two months. Each of you has been nothing but supportive, caring, and kindhearted to me. I have shared some of my most private fears with you, and you protected me. You handled my fragility with sensitivity. You all accepted me, and as a result I’m leaving stronger—that’s because of all of you. I think of you all as angels. I always will.”

I paused.

“You were all strangers just two months ago.”

I thought saying this I would burst into tears, which is quite common for me to do these days, especially in this circle, but my sentiments came out fiercely—with conviction.

Love is stronger than anger and fear.

“Lisa, I know you would not deport your nephew,” I said to her.

The silence broke with laughter. Why is it funny now? I thought.

“I don’t think you are a bad person,” I told her, turning toward her (she was sitting right next to me) and looking her straight in the eyes. “You are not a bad person. What you just said now doesn’t change my opinion of you. Also, I appreciate your dark humor… I too am incredibly unhinged,” I smiled at her.

Lisa laugh-cried and took my hand, her nose all runny, her eyes watery. She seemed deflated, weary.

Amy now looked remorseful, and I turned to her (she was across from me in the circle). “Amy, you are so smart and have the biggest heart. I know this is affecting you deeply, and I share the same feelings of sadness, of anger, of feeling the strong urge to speak up and make right what you feel so deeply in your heart is wrong. To protect people. You are not a bad person for that.”

The silence had returned, shaky and unstable, like it was a piece of thin plywood with too many bricks piled on it, about to snap from the pressure.

“We’re not standing up for anyone if it means tearing someone else down—we’re all human,” I said sadly, reminding us of the most obvious thing connecting us all. The thing we’ve all seemed to have forgotten.

I say all this as a white woman. I know all this sounds exactly like the idealism of a pathetic white woman who has never experienced adversity. Let’s all love each other like the world loves white pretty women!

But I’m not checked out. I have empathy for other human beings whom I’m here with. I am not afraid of people. I will ask them, I will listen.

I have faith. In something bigger.

I am confused by this judgment of others for being different or for veering off the “right” way. For cooking that judgment in a pressure cooker only to serve hate toward others who are walking different paths, who are different. For even making a “right” way to begin with. And I am very confused how all this is acceptable under the veil of a loving God, in Jesus’s name.

I think He’d be pissed.

I grew up Catholic. I spent Sundays in a long white robe lighting candles and ringing bells during Mass. Sitting in a wooden box confessing sins I made up (because I was too afraid to confess real ones) to a strange old man, all in the fear of being sent to hell. I have my thoughts on religion. But I know in my bones, Jesus wouldn’t be a hater.

Jesus would be friends with the drag queens. He would be celebrating the love between two women or two men. His tribe would include all the “outcasts,” the “freaks.” He would love them just as they are. All would be welcome in society, all would be protected, all would feel safe to be themselves. He would follow Buddha and Allah and sheikhs and rabbis on Instagram. They would all be friends on Facebook. Faith isn’t supposed to be an exclusive club. It’s, in fact, supposed to be the opposite—is it not?

There is not a “right” way to be human, in which to live a life. In no way should we all be exactly the same. That’s fear talking. That’s cowardice.

It’s true that if I start to see people’s posts in support of Trump and his administration online, posts idolizing Charlie Kirk as a martyr, my stomach turns because I am afraid. I am afraid of these people’s judgments, of disagreeing with them, of what they would think of me, a never-married single mom who believes in free healthcare for everyone. They may think I’m the antichrist.

But I’m more than willing to try. I’m more than willing to not judge them right away for their banner of Trump with his fist raised, blood spattered on one side of his head. I am willing to not write them off immediately. A mother is a mother—unmarried or not. A woman is a woman. A man is a man, Black or not, brown or not. A parent is a parent, whether it’s a mom and a dad or two moms or two dads. I’m willing to ask about other people’s experiences. I’m willing to sincerely listen to them.

I can always find things that connect us.

But you have to look.

We have to try.

I was heartbroken when Melissa and Mark Horton (and their pup) died. I was heartbroken when Charlie Kirk died.

Put all the politics aside.

Enter humanity.

Two sets of children lost their parents. Two sets of parents lost their children and their lives. Senselessly. We can try to make sense of all this, but it is tragic and senseless—it just is.

Life is fragile. It is short. It’s too short for this.