What Has Trump Done to Us?

Will we ever get over it?

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

I take personally what Donald Trump has done to us, and I know I’m not alone. He has wormed his way into our lives in ways that terrify me. I know the difference between right and wrong, and yet wrong is winning. I feel unnerved and out of sorts. Breathless and waiting. What am I missing? How can this be? What’s next?

There are times when, for my own sanity, I have to force myself not to say or write anything about him. He lives in a part of me that is still vulnerable, after all these years, and I hate that I have no control over what he has done and will do—to me and to those others I care about.

The people Donald Trump hurts are often total strangers but I know them by the things he does to them. I know how hurt they are, how mystified at being his target, how hopeless they feel each time he gets away with it.

I’ve written about Trump many times as an observer, a chronicler, a witness to some of our worst moments because of him. I hit that ‘publish’ button and I feel better. Nearly every time. I admit I find healing in my own words, as if my having exposed him for what he is will surely add to bringing this nightmare to an end.

And then that moment is gone. He carries on. He’s oblivious. I can’t count the number of times I’ve howled into the wind, hoping this time the wind will pick it up and carry it and things will happen and he will finally be out of our lives. Out of my life.

I’ll never learn, it seems, that wind-howling is temporary catharsis, meant only for my own comfort. The positive feedback I seek and might well get is temporary—a lift, a rush, a moment. And then it’s gone.

Unlike Donald Trump. He is never gone. Even when I think he’s at his lowest moment, that he’s floundering, that he’s done—he isn’t. People far wiser and more eloquent dazzle me when it comes to dissecting this madman who refuses to be denied access to our lives.

My God, of course!

And they, too, fail.

His predictable downfall never happens. Every day when I wake up, every night when I lay my head down, I think how terrible it is that he has invaded us in such a way that we’re beside ourselves with worry, with fear, with rage, with sorrow. And the next day it starts all over again.

One man has done this. One man so unworthy we’ve run out of words to describe how worthless he is. Someone else tries and fails to bring him down, and I feel for them. I take it personally. I wonder how anybody couldn’t take it personally. It affects us all, and it’s not going away.

We have an election coming up—maybe the most important of our lives—and that man, that terrible man, is still in the running, still in the headlines, still a major threat.

I’m at a loss. I’m tired of scratching my head. I’m sick to death of Donald Trump.

He has invaded my life in so many ways, for so many years, and I still don’t know how to handle it. He has disgusted me, insulted me, terrified me, and made me question my own ability to reason.

He is the bully resurrected, that bully I feared in my young life when I didn’t yet know how to handle bullies or how to deal with their efforts to bring me down. To make me feel like the lowest creature on earth. That bully I thought I could leave behind.

It’s obvious I can’t. Because here I am, still writing about him. And I don’t know what to do about it.