The only thing “normal” about the “new normal” is it isn’t new

I’m a high school teacher. I keep thinking: “God, I can’t imagine what it must feel like to grow up through this.” The insanity and cravenness of our politics. The drumbeat of daily disaster. The unraveling of social ties. 

Tonight I realized: Someone thought that about me. 

They must have. 

I’m the 9-11 generation. 

That was my first week of high school. 

The mother of one of my volleyball teammates knew one of the flight attendants who died. I remember thinking how unreal it must feel to be personally connected to a disaster like that.

To know one of the bodies.  

That disaster seemed too big, too profound, too far beyond every rule of civil society we thought existed. 

Two years later, I sat in journalism class listening to my peers cheer as the bombs hit Baghdad, and I fought with my friends who wanted to go off to war, and I felt as if the entire government had personally betrayed me. 

I couldn’t believe that our country was going to war. Again. 

I kept waiting to wake up.

I kept thinking: We don’t do this. We don’t invade countries who do not attack us. 

I was young. 

Vietnam was just a page in the history textbook.

This was my war. Our war. 

It’s still happening. 

And we don’t talk about it. 

We’ve never really talked about it. 

But I saw it. 

I saw friends and family come home with TBIs and PTSD. 

I knew the death toll didn’t contain the damage. 

Four years in, I thought: This is it. Surely, everyone must see now. 

But they didn’t.

My friends kept telling me we shouldn’t change generals in the middle of a war. 

I wrote crude satire about how the President couldn’t pronounce “nuclear,” and I fought with everyone who was willing to defend him.

I was so sure. So indignant and angry and sure. 

Sure I knew the root of the problem. 

I remembered an election that didn’t end on Election Day. 

I remembered weeks and weeks of arguments about hanging chads. 

I remembered the Supreme Court deciding that we were done. 

Today I worry about crazy people with guns and a grudge. 

Maybe I’ve forgotten how to worry about lawyers. 

Maybe I’ve forgotten that when the world turns upside down you don’t fall, you just have a new sky. 

Did I “turn out OK”?

I don’t know. 

I grew up. 

I learned how to bury pain and how to unearth it.

I figured out how to say “depression” and “PTSD” without flinching. 

I got better, and then I got worse, and then I got better again. 

I don’t expect to have a job. 

Why would I?

2009 wasn’t exactly a fantastic time to be entering the job market. 

I expect the labor market to be unfair. 

I expect dreams to turn into opportunities that vanish. 

I figured out how to have new dreams. 

Sometimes I feel numb. 

Like it was oddly too easy to accept a world in which you can’t leave your house without risking a deadly infection. 

There is something so eerily familiar about it all. 

Trusted government officials being co-opted into spinning a fantasy so that a corrupt Commander-in-Chief can declare victory?

Dr. Birx, meet Colin Powell. 

An American President so eager for good news they simply announce it; facts be damned?

Sure, “Mission Accomplished.”

I’ve seen this briefing before. 

Did we “come out of it OK”?

I don’t know. 

2004 turned into 2008 turned into 2012. 

If you closed your eyes, you could pretend we were on stable ground. 

If you closed your eyes, you didn’t have to see Trayvon. Or Jordan. Or Michael. Or Tamir. 

If you stopped listening, you couldn’t hear the bullets. 

No Charleston. No Orlando. No Parkland. 

A lot of people heard what they wanted to hear. 

And when 2016 came, they told the story they wanted to tell. 

Until they couldn’t anymore. 

And we all woke up to a new reality with a new star. 

So, are the kids alright?

I don’t know. 

But I know this isn’t new.

We built this. 

Our fear and our failures and our hatred built this. 

And we wonder why so many young people want to tear it down. 

How did this story not end in flames?

Maybe the fire started in the jungle. 

Maybe it started in 1619. 

How much light do you have to throw to see the darkness?

There have always been screams in the night. 

The kids are alright. 

They aren’t kids anymore. 

We grew up. 

And we learned how to say “racist” and “me too” without flinching. 

We got better, and then we got worse, and maybe we’ll get better again. 

Just because it isn’t new doesn’t mean it’s normal. 

As long as we can still say that two plus two equals four, we have a chance. 

Some of us might even take it.