Sometimes you don’t notice attrition when it happens.

When you lose elemental parts of yourself, they don’t all depart at once, and since you’re sustaining the daily woundings of this life from the inside, you may not be aware of the thousands of tiny cuts at the time. You may not notice the lifeblood slowly draining from your spirit.

In fact, you might believe you’re who you’ve always been, until something reminds you of the you you used to be.

No Kings Day reminded me.

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece as Saturday approached, questioning the ultimate merits of the rally in helping us avoid an inexorable slide into fascism. Some suggested that I’d become more negative and fatalistic, that they missed the me they'd encountered a few years ago.

While not completely agreeing with them, I couldn’t ignore the fatigue of the last decade; the collective sorrows accumulated along the way, the sad deja vu of, for at least the 30th time, heading out into a beautiful day to confront the very leaders entrusted with protecting our Republic and its people.

I may not have been despondent, but I’ve certainly been feeling the wear and tear of the draining dog years of this regime.

But, yesterday, as I stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of similarly exhausted, equally disheartened, but still not ready to call it a day human beings lining the streets of our little North Carolina town, I found a few things I hadn’t even realized I’d lost.

I found joy.

There is a silent toll that witnessing so much suffering takes on compassionate people, especially when you work so hard to remain awake and aware. Being reminded every day of just how many human beings are experiencing such wasteful brutality can gradually suffocate the spirit, rendering us joyless. One of the first sounds I noticed as I found myself within the pulsating mass of humanity on that highway was the sound of laughter, and it was my own. I realized it had been a while since I’d heard it like this: easy, constant, booming. The joy was medicinal. It was infectious. This was not a dour, dismal acknowledgement of defeat, as much as it was a joyfully defiant dance party of pissed-off people who haven’t let a minority movement of misery make them incapable of restorative jubilation.

I found hope.

One of the goals of authoritarian regimes is to extinguish the lightness from people; to inundate them with a legion of emergencies and nightmares that require so much energy to confront that they begin to lose the ability to see anything ahead worth pursuing. When optimism dries up, the future becomes a bleak foregone conclusion. I hadn’t realized I had been chronically emotionally dehydrated. That is, until once surrounded by a swirling technicolor sea of activists, fighters, healers, helpers, and dreamers in the rising North Carolina sun, I could feel hope returning within me: not a naive one that denies the gravity of the moment or the reality of the threats, but a hope that refuses to give this ugliness the last word.

I found another America.

There’s been a story that’s made headlines in my head lately: the one of this nation’s certain demise; the one where fascism’s presence will be permanent; the one where we are now hopelessly overrun in both the government and our electorate with violent, hateful, cruel people who find joy in the suffering of others. And while there’s no debating that a sizable segment of America certainly fits that description, the vast majority here (those who made their presence unmistakable felt throughout this nation yesterday by the millions) is comprised of beautiful, loving, patriotic human beings who don’t just believe in the idea of America, they embody it. I remembered that throughout its nearly quarter of a millennium history, this place has always been inside the crucible of conflict, because the country we aspire to be cannot be incarnated without it.

I found a bit of myself.

One of the greatest tragedies of the last decade is how wasteful it’s all been: the unnecessary emergencies generated by those in power, the unrelenting assaults on vulnerable people, the never-ending constitutional crises, the stupefying cruelty, and the collateral damage of trying to hold and attend to all of it.

I’m not who I was ten years ago, and some of that is a good thing. But for a couple of hours in the streets of our town that seems to finally be waking up, I was able to clarify what matters to me, the things and the people worth fighting for, and the kind of human being I want to show up in the world as.

Yesterday won’t magically rewind the clock pre-election and let us have a do-over. It doesn’t suddenly erase the unprecedented damage to our systems and safeguards. It alone can’t bend the arc of the moral universe away from fascism. That will require a sustained and organized presence, political engagement leading into the midterms like we’ve never seen, and very likely, a general strike.

But No Kings Day was a glorious reminder of how vital joy, hope, diversity, and our collective efforts are in resisting this Renaissance of hatred.

Our Republic is still in great peril, but we, its fierce caretakers who number in the tens of millions, are still not ready to consent to defeat.

With all we’ve had thrown at us for ten years by this batshit wanna be despot, his morally bankrupt accomplices, and his cultic disciples, that, in itself, is a victory.Share your feelings and experiences from No Kings Day in the comments.

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