Showing Up Today

I am sick.

10PM on November 4th saw me preparing for an overnight bus trip to Minnesota. I sent my absentee ballot back on September 27th, it was never received, the trip was doable (10PM-6:20AM-(another bus)11AM-8:55PM). Not having cast a vote that counted just did not feel like an option. I was back at my Chicago apartment by 9:15 last night and already I was choking on anxiety.

Wild thoughts about recounts are still pounding through my head, even though I know it would be a Herculean recount to change this outcome.

Kamala Harris’s policy on Palestine was disturbing and not in any way permissible and not anything short of violent but Trump’s all-out affirmation of Netanyahu is far worse. A ceasefire followed by two-state solution was never going to work or make Palestinian people here and everywhere feel anything but violated and ignored, and I have to say I am positive that a Trump administration’s approach to the genocides in Palestine, Lebanon, and Sudan is going to be worse. I am terrified for my Black and Brown friends. I am terrified for my trans friends. I am terrified for my queer friends. I am terrified for the state of our climate. I am terrified for myself as a woman who relies on birth control and a queer woman and a woman.

This was caused by delusional single-issue voters who would rather have Trump and an abortion ban than recognize the humanity of people who can give birth. Deeply violent people who aren’t prepared to address how deeply violent they are. But they are. Unflinchingly violent. Single-issue voting is inherently violent as well, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t get this. I don’t think anyone does. If radical voting is choosing a president (necessarily an oppositional force) who you feel most equipped to disagree with, to work against, to organize with the idea of changing the world, and destroying the system we have gone wrong. Harris would preserve our right to disagree, to organize, to work. There is nothing romantic about activism under Trump. There is nothing romantic about a president who will do his very best to annihilate all that we hold dear, who is playing an extremist right angle.

I am feeling on a larger scale how I felt when Roe vs Wade was overturned. It’s this feeling of individual humiliation, of knowing that you live in a country where enough people believe that you are nothing more than a birthing unit so your reproductive freedom is threatened and/or completely annihilated. We live in a world that hates so many people enough that Trump is almost definitely taking office again. The pit in my stomach is more of a yawning void right now.

If you voted for Trump knowing any woman, person of color, queer person, or trans person and you think you hold them with any modicum of respect and love, you don’t. Now we’re all reaping your vitriolic, violent stupidity and it is nothing less than that.

None of these sentiments are unique. You’re going to be hearing versions of them all day. I don’t even really know why I am writing this except to not write feels so unalienably wrong and I have no idea what else to do. When all else fails I have my impulse to write and I have to trust that pull right now.

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I think there is going to be something really powerful about showing up today. I think there is going to be something really powerful about feeling sick and nauseous and horrified and paralyzed together. Holding tenderness for each other cannot be taken away from us. I have been breaking down in tears since yesterday in the morning at random intervals. I don’t plan on stopping or bottling this. I don’t think any of you should bottle either. I am ready to hold you. I feel at every second like I could be physically sick. I am sure of nothing at all right now but my love for my people. And for now, that has to be enough.

I am coming at this from a point of extreme privilege and advantage as a white woman, and I cannot speak for others who have been abused by this country every single day of their lives in incredibly tangible ways, and I want everyone to know that no matter who you are, I do not judge what you need to do today. If showing up today is staying in bed and ordering food and crying, then that is showing up today. If showing up today is getting to campus, bumping into a friend, and sitting there crying for hours, then that is showing up today. Pay terrible attention in class. Cry in class. Leave class to throw up. Leave class to go home. Don’t go to class at all. Just call your friends, call your family, double down on your people.

Our communities have never, ever been more important than they are right now. Tell the people you love that you love them. See each other today, tomorrow, this week, this month, this year. See me.

Chicago, there will be a protest today on the Federal Plaza at 6PM. It was scheduled before we knew the outcome which is good and right because it would have been necessary either way. I will be doing my best to be there (I have work shortly after it starts) but I encourage all who feel up to it to attend and to be incredibly safe and aware while attending.

We will find this balance.

I keep going back in my head to the two little kids I saw yesterday at the polls running around in line, screaming each other’s names, throwing themselves into each other’s arms. I did not want this for them. I want them to live in a world that wants them to be the most whole versions of themselves. Trump voters, you have ensured the opposite. I encircle them now with every modicum of strength left in me. They are worthy. They are worth fighting for. We are worth fighting for.

To my community - please reach out to me today if you need me. I am here. I am listening. I love you all.