Double Negatives: When Nothing's OK

So, in case you haven't noticed, things haven't been making no sense lately.

Or maybe they've been making so much sense that they seem nonsensical even when they aren't. Either way, I know that at the end of the day, when I turn off the lights and pull the covers up to my chin, I'm pervaded by a strange new feeling about the future that I can't remember having before:

Everything's either going to be fabulous or it's going to be a disaster.

Ever since Trum became President, the world that exists between something fabulous and a disaster – also known as the "OK" world – seems to have gone bye-bye in my mind and in the words and expressions of many people around me.

What ever happened to OK?

I call him Trum because I once heard a third grader utter his name loudly and courageously without the "p" at the end. Some kids seem to love Trum, probably for the same reason that they appreciate many of their favorite cartoon characters: He's colorful, he makes faces at people and he's not boring, so they can relate to him even if they can't spell his name.

Besides, the "p'" too closely resembles the emoticon that people text to each other when they're being cheeky, so anytime I see his full name, I can't help wondering if it's a subtle political strategy of sticking out one's tongue.

I realize it's not kind to poke fun at the P, and besides, he's not the subject of this blog, anyway. The subject is double negatives and what can be learned from nothing being not OK. I mean, OK.

Anyhoo, back to it. What is a double negative? Here are some examples I found:

I don't feel like going nowhere.

I can't get no satisfaction.

When someone sends me a text message that says "I'm not here," and then I delete their phone number.

Pandas on my shoulder: Which one's good and which one's bad?

People who know me know that I've suffered from anxiety and a lifelong struggle with mild – and sometimes not so mild – manic depression, a.k.a. bipolar disorder. As people with the same problem have told me, it's a hell of a time waking up feeling calm and relaxed and not knowing if you won't become a maniac in a few hours.

But in time, I've learned to deal. One of my coping mechanisms is the realization that suffering from the lifelong anxiety that comes with the disorder makes it easy to help people when they panic.

It took me a while to learn that what I once considered a weakness actually embodies the secret strength to comfort others. Sort of like what Trum has done for religious fundamentalists who want their own TV shows about their home in the middle of the woods where they live with their eight children. It's a hopeful thing that their dreams, too, could one day become a reality.

Now, make no mistake: The road from vicious, self-defeating paranoia to earnest helper-in-chief has not come without effort. Case in point: A couple days ago, I was pumping gas and staring off into space when the video screen above the pump suddenly came to life.

It appeared that someone – or something – had installed a new service for customers: The ability to learn a new word while trying to satisfy their vehicle's endless thirst for fuel. And that wasn't all. This particular word didn't seem to be any word, but my word, as if it were chosen just for me.

The word was "tarantism," and the screen quickly displayed the definition as "an extreme urge to dance resulting from the bite of a spider."

Well, I hadn't made it halfway through reading the message before I was shaking in my boots. I became instantly paranoid, worried that someone was watching me from inside the station, or, even worse, a secret agent of the government in some remote control room had beamed in from the station headquarters to confide in me one of my deepest, darkest secrets.

But then I did what smart, rational people tell me to do when I'm feeling upset: I started taking really, really deep breaths. Soon, my heartbeat returned to normal. I replaced the dispenser on the handle, returned to my car and drove home to look up the word online for a more thorough definition.

Since then, I've pondered a potential career as a roadside helper. Sort of like a roadside mechanic, but for people who are having nervous breakdowns instead of car problems.

I realize it's awful to think this way – that I might capitalize on other people's suffering. But shouldn't it be considered positive thinking that if something bad's happened to everyone, we're at least all in it together? I think the common idiom is "Misery Loves Company."

Our cat: Not worried about Trum.

Somehow, though, I don't find it so comforting. It seems that Trum's inflamed rhetoric has somehow turned this once-reassuring aphorism into a double negative of its own. Much to my chagrin, not only are people miserable, they don't seem to be finding solace in the same ways.

Me, either. I find myself constantly on edge, drawn to the news like it's a drug, afraid of reading, but even more terrified to look away. I'm left with a pervasive feeling of alienation, and in its aftermath, the odd sensation that Trum is somehow my friend, that I should do what John F. Kennedy once encouraged his fellow citizens to do: Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

So, the time has come, I've decided, to be a better person, to do, as President Kennedy once said, not what's easy, but what's hard. I am going to write Trum a letter, if for no other reason than to reassure him that nothing's going to be OK.

If you're reading this, you might be interested to know that thinking philosophically is not just a fun pastime for me. It's also a way to try to understand the world and make some sense of things that don't. If everything really is as it appears and the President of the United States is a figurehead who presents a face of the U.S. to the rest of the world, then how bad can things really be?

Well, pretty bad. But my cat reads the news, too, and she doesn't seem overly concerned.