Evergreen Lee's Blog

My husband strongly disagrees with the idea that I should sever relationships with Trump supporters (which, sadly, include most of his family), so this is my attempt to explain why I feel that I have to take so extreme a measure.

I’ve been mostly off of Facebook for months because it was too depressing (literally). Too many stories about horrible things happening to women, to minorities, to the LGBT. Can’t read the comments section of any article, about anything, without seeing tons of venomous comments about women, or Muslims, or whatever the hate of the week is. I got tired of it all, so I shut it off. I also have already removed one toxic family member and one toxic in-law from my life, for reasons unrelated and prior to the election, and it’s been a great relief.

However, going backwards in time, on March 12th, 2015, Terry Pratchett died. This wasn’t why I sank into a deep depression, but it was the last straw on a mountain of straws, and even as I was tumbling ever downwards, I was cognizant of this fact.

I’ve been depressed before. During elementary school I seriously considered killing myself, but I didn’t, largely because of my cat, who wouldn’t eat any time I was away from home. Later I realized that suicide is a selfish choice, and I stopped considering it, but often, I would *wish*, fervently, to die, or wish that the pain I was in meant that I was dying, at last.

I’m telling you this, so when I explain that last year I was in one of the worst depressions I can remember, you have some context. There’s a very long story about how I got out of that depression, and I’ll tell you that later, but a couple months ago, I finally started feeling better and have been working on trying to put my life back together.

And then one my horses died, for reasons that are still unclear, despite a necropsy. And then our roof started leaking, and no one wants to fix it. And then the hurricane hit, and my other horse got sick, and still isn’t totally better, and I still don’t know if she might end up dying from what killed the other one. She’s a lot younger, and, frankly, a much nicer horse. The kind that loves people and anyone can ride. I’ve spent five times what I paid for her (he was free) on vets and I’m worried about how I’m going to pay the credit card bills. And a bunch of other things have been going wrong. I broke my computer. Twice. I broke my phone. Twice. And the screen is currently unreadable, covered in weird purple splotches (started when voting ended – coincidence?).

I tell you all of that to give you the context that I have been on the razor’s edge of falling back into that dark, deep hole of depression. I recently described myself to my husband as feeling like I was about to disintegrate and just shatter into a million pieces.

(And I know that other people have things a lot worse, but that isn’t relevant to this story)

One of the things I learned when I was recovering, is that I have a limited number of spoons. I have fewer than most other people, so I have to be careful how I spend them. Someone with more spoons than me can try to reason with those who can’t be reasoned with. Someone with more spoons than me can try to understand them, or whatever. But my spoons are precious, and I’d rather spend them on people who deserve it. I just don’t have the spoons to deal with bad people. I don’t have enough energy to endure them. I don’t have enough joy to overcome their toxicity. I don’t want to go back to that dark hole, though it may happen anyways. And so I’m done with them.

Life is too short short for me to waste it on those who won’t appreciate my effort.