Addendum.

Like has so often happened in my life, something unexpected occurs to me very very suddenly and it just feels right and I do it, and only later do I reason through the emotional logic and see why something felt so right in the moment.

With reaching out to try to mend 3 broken relationships in the immediate aftermath of the election, basically I had realized much much earlier in time that stuff was broken, but it was too close in time then, and then later I was in a good place and I had distance and I had some deeper regrets, but since I was in a good place, I also didn't want to open up an emotional can of worms and disturb my hard-won equanimity.

So, with the election results, I made the immediate decision to try to reconnect, and only later did I figure out it was because not only was it something positive that I could do right then that was in my control, but also because I was like, "Well, this is f*cked and I'm emotionally raw, so why not reach out, it's not like I can get any more emotionally raw right now."