Agency Inside the Anger

Being inexhaustible was probably a genetic fluke, at best, and a trauma coping mechanism, at worst — right?

Monday afternoon I found myself sitting in my living room, clutching 20 reusable grocery bags in my hands, glaring out the window, jaw clenched, absolutely seething.

I was thinking about the day in high school when I signed a scholarship to go to a small college about 90 minutes from my hometown to play basketball. I was thinking about how my high school coach told my college coach that if he ever wanted to teach me a lesson, and somehow that lesson involved physical punishment, like running sprints or jumping rope or doing push-ups or something like that, he'd need to rethink his tactics.

"She'll run until she pukes and falls over and then she'll get up and run some more," is what my old coach said. He'd also been my cross-country coach in high school and my gym teacher in elementary school. He was deeply acquainted with my inability to be disciplined and also my inability to be stopped. Which is to say he'd spent ten years watching me wipe my mouth after vomiting and then jog away from pile after pile of gassed teammates without even a hint of an apology on my face.

My new coach didn't believe him, until six months later when he and I were staring at each other over yet another fallen jumble of my teammates on the gym floor. I'd challenged the moral authority of the Bible in debate class, at a private Christian college in rural Georgia, and we were all paying the price for my blasphemy, in the form of line drills.

"Lesson learned?" he asked me, as our point guard clutched at her side, whimpered, buckled, and joined the rest of our team on the floor. "They've had enough. Have you?"

I flicked my eyes down at them, smiled up at him, said, "Nope. I'll run it again."

Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, before my first-wave case of "mild" COVID-19 became Long COVID, I remained, as my high school basketball coach prophesied, inexhaustible. I was in my early 40s in 2020, no longer a competitive athlete or anything like that, but I could still make my body do anything I wanted it to do. I could push it past pain, panic, fatigue, and all sense of reason — and wake up the next day ready to do it all over again.

I was thinking about my coach's warning yesterday because of the 20 reusable grocery bags. Because I'd been collecting them for my local food pantry, and they'd posted a note on Instagram that they were in dire need of them last night, for the 6pm shift, and so could anyone please drop some off ASAP?

I had the bags they needed in my grip. The food pantry is only 1.2 miles from my house. The implementation of fascism is in full force all around me; the identities of nearly everyone I love are being scrubbed from government websites, national monuments, and museums; federal funding is being pulled from everything that matters to me; racism and transphobia and misogyny and every kind of evil is growing and flourishing, being cultivated and nurtured at the highest levels; and almost all companies and government officials and powerful people are rolling over and getting in line and following orders in a pathetic and heinous attempt to get richer, when they already have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. And I could actually do something helpful for people in need yesterday. I had 20 grocery bags that could be stuffed with food and diapers and toothpaste and handed out to my community. But my body wasn't capable of getting them to the food pantry.

I stood up a few times, just to check, but things can get really weak and wobbly for me in the later part of the day — and it was one of those days. I could have made it to the food pantry, maybe, but there's no way I could have walked back. And even the one-way trip was enough to knock me into bed for a few days after. I could just tell.

Most days, I'm okay. Not cured of Long COVID, or even particularly healthy. Not "better." I can run errands a few times a week. I can work part-time. My brain goes so much slower than it used to, and I make mental mistakes I never would have done before I got sick. I lose stuff and I forget stuff, including words I've known since I could talk and the names of people who've been in my world for decades. I sleep so much. So, so much. But I'm still full of life and wonder and silliness, with my brilliant and hilarious wife always by my side, doing important work I care about deeply, and enjoying days full of books and cat cuddles and writing and drawing and raising blue chickens in Stardew Valley. It is easy to be grateful when there's so much goodness in my world.

But god, sometimes I am so full of outrage about what happened to me that I want to scream. And punch stuff. And kick stuff. And scream some more. Even still. Even after all this time. I'm never going to get used to not being okay, not really. I feel it most acutely when even the small ways I can help people get cut off from me. I was so proud to be the person my high school basketball coach warned other coaches about, the insufferable, self-righteous little shit who could run until she puked, and then keep running.

How can it be that I’m still not sure exactly who I am when I’m not her?

One thing I know for sure is that Trump and everyone who helps him keep power wants me to feel helpless, powerless, immobilized, and defeated. Even subtle forms of powerlessness wear people down, filling us with pessimism and hopelessness, a sense that resistance is an exercise in impotence and futility. I'll never be one of those people who buries my head in the sand and pretends bad stuff isn't happening — but maybe I can appreciate the other things that are also true? I still have choices. I can still influence outcomes. I couldn't take the grocery bags to the food pantry on Monday evening, but I can probably take them today, on Wednesday morning.

I'll never smirk at a person in authority and say, "Nope. I'll run it again" to them, not even metaphorically. It makes me furious to know that's true. Maybe the move is to learn to stop overvaluing what I'm not anymore and undervaluing what I am now, to be as proud of my resilience as I was about my inability to be fatigued. Being inexhaustible was probably a genetic fluke, at best, and a trauma coping mechanism, at worst — right? Maybe I'll just take my naps (my many, many naps) and drink my electrolytes, and walk it again, slowly.

I'm so angry. I am so, so angry. Maybe the move, in 2025, is to find the agency inside the anger.