R E S I S T A N C E

I am a bold faced resister. I march for human rights. I stand for anti-war, anti-violence, the right to choose, equal rights. I push back against cruelty, abuse of power, bullying, senior care, poverty, and injustice of all kinds. Resistance is in my DNA. I am proud to take a stand for the principles I live by.

There is however another kind of resistance. It’s the one that lives inside me and it is far less admirable. This resistance is the kind that doesn’t stand up but rather slinks around the dark corners of my psyche. It creeps to the forefront when it brushes up against all the things I don’t like or understand. Things I am clueless about routinely get shoved deep into a dark, cobwebby part of my brain. If I can’t easily dismantle a problem and Google has failed to illuminate me, I shut down. I feel that resistance creep up my spine into my head and virtually turn off the lights, leaving me so in the dark that the problem can no longer be seen. These problems are never moral matters. They are often the most basic of needs that elude me. A fuse goes out. I am inept at locating which one therefore I sit in the dark until the cavalry arrives. Christmas lights that have become impossibly tangled causing me to fling them across the room, inevitably breaking them beyond repair. Computer issues that create head banging frustration. Being kept on hold, only to be disconnected and thrown back into the loop owned by the most evil of dark lords leaves me close to weeping. Bills mounted up that have taken up residence in a drawer of denial. - A metaphor for passivity, bordering on coma-like resistance.  

It’s in those times that I pray for a brawl between two six years olds that I can insert myself into, or catching an irate driver unjustly picking on a defenseless crossing guard for slowing down his commute to let an old woman make her way across the street. That’s the resistance that calls out to me…

Monica Parker