In Which Sandy Learns to Hate

Sorry, folks, this one starts out good, but it ends on kind of a downer. But I had to get it off my chest.

This morning I woke up in a world very different from the one I woke up in yesterday morning. It is a world where an African American child now has proof that he or she can grow up to become President. It is a world where we as Americans have once again stood up against the forces of hatred and division, against those who would control us with fear and suspicion, to show the world a way forward. Many have fought, bled and died along the road to this day, and part of me still cannot believe it has happened. Perhaps it was last night that MLK saw when we went to the mountaintop:



It is also, however, a world that is minus one person who, up until yesterday afternoon, I cherished dearly, someone who, in the just-over-a-year I have known him had become a dear friend, even something of a big brother. That all changed yesterday when he took his own life. In the moment we found out, I realized that I have never before felt anger or hate. In the moments since, I have called him every name imaginable, and I admit that most of the tears I have shed have been tears of frustration that I cannot pummel him senseless for what he has done to his wife, his children, his family, his friends, and the church that now has come to grips with why their pastor came to this. Not to mention that I have watched the love of my life beat herself up with guilt over not seeing this coming and not stopping it.

I know that hate and anger will eventually subside, and I will grieve to loss of a cherished friend and the unspoken pain that led him to take such drastic action. I will probably one day even forgive him for what he's done. But right now, I am left to wonder at my unrealized power for hate.

For now and forever my supreme joy at watching a nation, THIS nation, elect a black man president is co-mingled with anger that someone could be so selfish and cowardly.