Malice (noun): 1) desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another, 2) intent to commit an unlawful act or cause harm without legal justification or excuse.
I know, intimately, the suffocating press of malice. During those latchkey years of the late 70s and early 80s, the endless hours between the end of the school day and when our parents returned home were prime time for my brother, David’s, persistent malice to permeate the air, a choking fog that kept my breaths shallow and short to prevent its intrusion. But inevitably I would startle or cry, unable to keep from sucking in its seeping poison reflexively through my teeth and up my nose, so it felt like drowning while bone dry.
Depending on the day, and if I was lucky, David would retreat to his room and ignore me while I curled up on the couch and watched TV until someone else got home. If I weren’t lucky, he would decide he needed me for attention, stimulation, or entertainment. Entertainment for David involved standing in the corner next to the TV shelf, changing the channel over and over again while I pleaded for him to leave me alone, punching and shoving me, spitting in my food, and once, appearing in the living room stark naked. Then he put a sleeping bag over his head and chased me– terrified, choked, and sobbing– around the house until he tired of it all and collapsed atop me, screamed in my face, and then wandered away cackling.
His malevolence was able to persist for years (decades, in the end) because it was ignored, denied, downplayed, or excused. Also, I was very good at hiding behind a screen of academic achievement and participation– choir, sports, theater, dance, religious youth group, and, later, an afterschool job– the extent to which my nervous system was constantly jacked up. Keep it moving seemed to be the family rule. So, I kept it moving, my mouth firmly shut.
Adulthood has been a long exercise in disentangling myself from any and all relationships and situations where malice persists and festers. It’s been harder than I imagined it would be when I ran from home. Malice never felt like love, but it did feel like family, or at least an inevitable part of the bargain of choosing family. When it seeped in the cracks I barely noticed, it was so familiar, until before I knew it, it was just the breath in my lungs again.
Luckily, I got divorced. Eventually left toxic jobs. Finally, my brother died. I thought, At last, I am free of it. Then Donald Trump got elected– not once, but twice, riding high on the necessary denials and excuses. The GOP willingly submitted itself to MAGA, and it all came crashing back in.
I work in the office that handles immigration support for thousands of international students, scholars, faculty, alumni, and their families at an Ivy League university. Technically, my job is with the study abroad program, but I cover reception in the International Services office regularly, and when the phones get busy, they spill over to me. For the last four months since the inauguration, they haven’t been spilling over as much as they have rolled over us like a flood, the original glass long since broken in the deluge. All day long, I answer calls from panicked immigrants trying to navigate systems that are increasingly hostile to them, and, by and large, I cannot help them. Because the malice they are being subjected to, for no other reason than wanting to receive an education, do research, or teach here, even though they were born somewhere else, is purposeful and inescapable.
I didn’t realize how deeply jacked up my nervous system had become in the midst of all this until last week, when the news broke that the administration was rescinding Harvard University’s certification to host international students. I don’t work at Harvard, but it felt like staring at one of those competitive domino videos in slow-mo, waiting for the first tile to go, rippling out first to all the Ivy League universities and then, eventually, to every college and university everywhere. The panicked calls increased from a flood to a tsunami within a matter of hours, and I fell over the edge.
In other words, I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week, but I was clinging to the cliff face, trying not to tumble down into an endless hole.
The first sign that I was over the edge? Every time I read anything it wouldn’t stay in my head. It was simply droning, white noise. Then, I started feeling my heart race anytime I opened Substack, whether it was to read news or anything else. When intrusive thoughts cast me back to my high school years, though, I knew I was just barely holding on.
Back in those days, I became obsessed with books about young girls who went crazy enough to be institutionalized. Their ability to let go and fall into nothingness, to release the mundane entirely and descend, filled me with envy. Despite the descriptions of institutional horror, I yearned to be fed and housed with no responsibility for moving anything forward. To scream endlessly how utterly horrifying the world is until my voice gave out.
I can’t release my grip now, though, anymore than I could then, so I wept spontaneously on and off through most of the weekend. Slogged through work on my house and woke in the night, fighting off panic attacks. This unchecked malice will bury me, I thought. It will bury us all. While we go through the daily motions, acting surprised it has come to this.
Am I supposed to tell you it’s all going to be okay? Offer solutions, actions, and assurances that we can hold back this tide? I’m sorry, but I can’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what will be left under the rubble once the current administration has finished its malicious demolition campaign.
But I do know I will be here, with occasional and unscheduled interruptions when it all becomes too much. The administration announced yesterday that it was canceling all student visa appointments at foreign consulates so it can institute “tighter vetting” of applicants’ social media, looking for anything it can use to keep people out. Then, it announced it would aggressively block student visas for Chinese nationals, as well as students from Hong Kong— the second largest international student population in the U.S. Those calls started rolling in today.
I’ll keep doing what I can to get by. Protecting my sleep by staying sober. Trying to eat real food rather than whatever easily shoves in my mouth. Leaning into the friendship and community that buoys me, like the annual, townie, freak flag flying parade last night that you’ll see in the pictures below.
Rest and creativity are also essential, so I will sit on my catio watching the world go by. Continue working on my book. Instinct is telling me to keep myself low to the ground and let all of it flow through me into the Earth instead of holding my breath and letting the malice accumulate in my lungs. But jobs must be worked and things must get done, so I’ll keep walking a lot to stay grounded.
I’ll survive, in other words. Work with everything I have to alchemize this despair into something beautiful. Eventually. Maybe? Hopefully.
Oh, friend, I didn't realize you worked with international students. I'm a professor with a 30% administrative appointment, and for the past four months that 30% has ballooned as we try to keep abreast of all of this madness. I'm struggling to emotionally support the handful of affected grad students and staff in my orbit, so I can't imagine how difficult is it for you. Thank you for the work you do, and consider this a reminder that others see it, appreciate it, and can empathize! The Harvard ruling stopped me cold... here's hoping we don't suffer the same level of ire (though what we're seeing already is quite enough!)
Oh wow. I am so sorry. I know it, this visceral stress. I work in a nonprofit in government grants, and while it hasn't been as bad as universities are experiencing, it's ongoing and hinting of worse to come all the time.
My upper abdomen has been in knots since November, and in April and May I had my appendix out, my gallbladder removed, and a stent put in my bile duct. The body does indeed keep the score. It's tied up with my kids as well, who will all be on campuses in the fall. And I missed the oldest's college graduation.
I appreciate your cool community and I'm impressed with your self-care, and am trying to take it as an example. Thank you for sharing this and be well (non-ironically). <3