The Stillness After Impact
When I was 4 years old, I went through the windshield of a car.
People have asked me what it felt like, and the truth is, it didn’t feel like anything. I remember that there was a numbness, a stillness. Then it felt like a bucket of ice had been poured over my head. And then, stillness again. A bone-deep exhaustion. I wanted to put my head in my mother’s lap, and I did.
The passing of this Brutal Bill reminds me of that.
The impact of this Bill — like the impact of my accident — will tear through our physical selves and ripple through our lives in profound, possibly irreversible ways. And yet, here in the moment, it just feels still. Numb. I feel the urge to rest my head in my mother’s lap again and believe, just for a moment, that everything will be okay, that this will be undone, that it’s all just a bad dream.
Thinking of this, I get lost in my head, wondering, but is it going to be okay? Will it ever be okay? How could it be okay? At what link in the chain of decisions made did this start, and would fixing that make it all okay?
I’ve lived, worked and studied in other countries for many years. I’m aware of how different a reality can be. Other places prioritize care. Other places think they deserve care. I wonder: is that the root of the issue? Do we Americans fundamentally think we don’t deserve care? Do we think we need to earn care, the way we need to earn love? That it’s not our right?
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I think the truth of this has many threads. And while my brain wants to follow those threads and figure this out – make meaning of this, make sense of it, understand WHY, understand HOW this could happen, I’m also feeling that numbness and stillness inside.
I am forcing myself sit with the feeling and be with my heart and not escape to my head.
So I do.
And maybe that’s the best response I can offer now. To sit with the stillness. To not rush towards action right now but just take a minute to sit with the stillness and care for our own hearts.
And maybe, somewhere in that stillness, the spark of courage will ignite, and fan the flames of wisdom, persistence, unity and all of the other virtues that we will surely need to create the change that dares to center collective care and justice.
