Somethings Tells Me I’d Better Get Used to Exile

I had the funny experience tonight of being locked out of a post. It wasn’t intentional and I have no reason to believe anything other than crappy Vista is at fault but for the 45 minutes it took for me to get the attention of the usual suspects and bring the Party to the only room I could get to, I felt a little bit panicked and very alone.  Here’s  why:

These last 11 months I’ve dedicated myself pretty solely to one goal and that goal was to see Hillary Rodham Clinton become President of the United States. I don’t need to give you the long narrative. You’ve read it from me once or four times; you could probably ghost-write my story under power of hypnosis. I won’t bore you with that.  I will say what it’s done to me though.

Because of the sheer anxiety of this election, I lost 15 lbs.  Don’t misunderstand me, I was glad to see them go. I’ve been trying to lose weight since I was 5 and this was the first step in a positive direction I’ve ever taken but I don’t think the doctor wanted me to lose them like this.  Any day of the week, these many months you could find me screaming at my television; pacing the length of my hallway; or tapping away at my keyboard for one partisan, single-minded cause.  It was sunrise to sunset to sunrise again. I’ve never had much use for sleep and I learned how to function on even less during the Democratic Primary.

I also learned how to function on high-blood pressure and a racing heart.  Not a day went buy that I wouldn’t sit in my class in abject terror that the election was going to come up. It was all over the radio waves and the television broadcasts. It was all over the internet. There was no escaping it; and who was I to want to escape it? I lived for this election. And yet, at the same time, I dreaded having to face my friends and call them wrong, to face my teachers–some of whom have choice words for me now that they know where I stand–and call them ill-informed, though they were.  I used to shake in my seat like a leaf, or maybe that was just my heart. I knew I was in the minority of my senior class to prefer Hillary and I wasn’t so bothered by that. It was the stories that bothered me, the stories I’d read nationwide over how people had been treated for voicing their decision to support the competent woman over the lackluster man. Maybe I feared that one of those events would befall me. Sometimes, like now, I still do.

And yet, shutting up has never really been a strong suit of mine. I can’t do it. People around me know I can’t do it. In fact, when a subject close to my heart comes up, they seem to freeze up themselves as they as slowly cast their eyes in my direction to see what I will do.  Over the last year, Hillary Clinton has become such a subject.  When the primary was afoot here in Texas, ABC 13 decided to do a special on first-time voters from Houston-Area schools. (I wish the link still worked but unfortunately it seems to have expired.) As a rather outspoken advocate of Hillary’s, I was asked to speak on behalf of my school, along with students from other well-established school here. I spoke at length about how their plans differed, about how the media was biased, about how it mattered who we elected. I got a standing ovation even though I felt like I was going to pass out inside. I thought, here’s my chance to do some of the good that Hillary has done. I can finally start returning a lifetime of favors. If only my gratitude hadn’t ended up on the cutting room floor.

I saw the clips many, many times over the course of the next few weeks. You could say I was something of a celebrity at my school, having made it to network television three times in 4 months.  That was nice, but what wasn’t nice was what was lost in the final edit of my appearance. I was reduced to a “tearful” moment and a rather angry soundbite.  That should have prepared me for an ordeal of lost context, but it didn’t.  I was just glad Hillary won my state anyway. I was there that night, at the caucus, watching abnormalities take place, watching and not f-ing tolerating the bullying that was happening in the sanctuary of a local church. I was sitting next to my father and his new wife, my grandparents were on the other side of them and I just knew that in this place of all places, we were totally alone. It wasn’t a new feeling; even in the familiar halls of my school I was wary of wearing the three or four pins that made my preference clear. The hostility wasn’t outright but it was there.  In the chapel, it wasn’t even stifled.

I further sat and watched as the Precinct Chair was about to let the lot of the group leave without counting out the delegates or verifying a thing. If I hadn’t been there our precinct wouldn’t have gotten any delegates at all because no one knew  how many we were supposed to have. No one knew the math. I did.  They didn’t trust me; I threatened to let them all lose their delegates.  They left me be–for a while. When things got too complex someone tried to give Obama all of 20 delegates from our precinct. I wasn’t having it and neither was my father, who, for once, was actually there to come to my defense.  Hillary walked away with 2 delegates, Barack with 18.  They never let me see the verified registration–which an eight-year old was gleefully assisting in as I was leaving the chapel. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a more acute sense of indignation than I did that night. Old women, hispanic women, middle-aged black men, all 12 of us sat in the choir stands to show our support of Hillary. We didn’t deserve the loathing we had directed at us. We had all come for one purpose and that purpose was not to elect Barack Obama, contrary to what the other 186 folks in attendance seemed to believe.

That wasn’t the worst of what it felt like to be a minor force in the face of something terrible and great in size. Please, don’t ask me about the County Convention at TSU. I don’t ever want to feel that way again. I can’t even think about it without crying.  Never had I watched Democracy be trampled by the very people who claimed to desperately need it–but I got used to watching it, and watching it again.  It got so bad that I literally had to abandon my place with my precinct to get away from the heckling. Adults! were heckling like they’d never had a lesson in good manners in their lives. All they talked about was what Sheila Jackson-Lee needed to do to get back in their good graces, like she’d have them–and like they’d have her if she tried.  They were merciless and it hurt so bad because I knew some of these people. My mother had grown up with them and they’d claimed to know me. That didn’t stop them from insulting her to my face or me.  These were the people we’d struggled alongside, the bastards, and they were drawing their own soup lines.  I’d never felt so lonely in my life…I walked away a County Alternate.

I didn’t make it to Austin and with they had Chelsea saying by then, I’m glad I didn’t.  I was heartsick for a number of reasons. I didn’t need to see one up close.  We all know what happened in Denver.  And where was I? My first night in my dorm away from home, reading up on everything that was happening, trying very hard not feel like every dream I’d had over those prior months was a cruel trick being played by some bastardly higher  power.  There she went again–Democracy on Vacation.

In the days that followed, I couldn’t hide from Election Coverage no matter how I tried. Boy, did I try! I hid in my dorm and refused most invitations to go out. I couldn’t bear to see the Party’s “nominee” splashed over every surface, tasteful and otherwise. There it was, that same old tension from High School. I felt the election all around my like an airborne plague, and the only possible cure had been sent to the incinerator.  I felt burned and burned out. I didn’t want to talk about that and that was all that anyone seemed to talk about. I didn’t go a week without outing myself as an Obama opponent in a study group. For my effort, I learned that Sarah Palin was “domineering”–bad in a woman, commanding in a man!–and that Hillary Clinton was a “psycho bitch.” Unsurprisingly enough, I didn’t learn why.  Democrats good, Republicans bad; I learned that, too.  Mainly, I learned that, in my generation, we learn what our parents teach us, but that sometimes our teachers are idiots.

Means the outcome shouldn’t be so surprising to me. Sigh. Sometimes I just can’t stop hoping that we’ll wake up. We have a certain cruelty to our age that chills me. We talk about about John McCain’s facial scars with such a cutting casualty that I wonder exactly who we are when we’re not mocking him.  He dares to smile and we pointedly grimace as if his bouts with war, fire, and cancer have exempted him from the right to show joy.  Who are we between moments like that? I don’t know but I keep daring to ask in the expectation that someone will finally have to ask himself or herself that same question.

It came up in class just last week. It was Thursday, the day after the debate. The class was Human Situation and our rather politically-incorrect teacher had to ask. The fairly handsome Latino fellow to my right made a mocking remark about how McCain seemed hurt that Obama didn’t defend him against Lewis’ off-color remarks equating his campaign with something George Wallace would partake in. All the weeks of me saying nothing when the topic of demagogues and democracies in name only came to a head and I just could not stop it. I could not take one more moment of the bullshit talking point that every and all persons must defend Barack Obama but cannot be defended in turn. I raised my voice, I lost my temper, I wagged my finger. I said what I needed to. They were silent when I was done.  The man sitting beside me had this to say, “But he doesn’t work for Obama, right, because that’s what he said.” And me, I scoffed and told him that it was the same damned excuse, different damned perpetrator.  The professor said, let’s move on, and we did.

I have no regrets about speaking my mind then or on any other occasion where I might have the chance. I’ll take the increased respiration, the cold sweats. I don’t mind that in spite of my discomfort.  The sign on my window that says “Hillary for President” went up yesterday.  She’s my choice whoever I pick next. My McPalin t-shirt arrived at home today along with the buttons I ordered. I imagine it won’t be long before they join my “Women for Hillary” and “Clinton-Gore for New Leadership” pins on my backpack.  This place is Obama Central, and admittedly I live in fear and anticipation of the day someone says something to me about the decision I’ve so clearly made.  Will I choke and shrug like I’ve never had an original thought in my life? Will I invoke the Wonk I know so well and tell them why they have no right to question me any more than Barack Obama has the right to be President?

I don’t know what I will do, only what I’ve done. I still spend countless nights tossing and turning over what should’ve been. I confess that I still cry.  I still hide from the television in the dining hall that blares CNN at all hours of the day. I haven’t got the stomach for it or the stomach for what the others have to say. I don’t have the stomach for so many people to be so blithely wrong. I run down, pack my meal, and run back to my dorm where it’s safe.  Here, I don’t have to risk talking about it anymore. Here, I don’t have to make excuses for why Barack Obama is not the man he swears he is and why he really is not the same as Hillary on anything.  Here, I can just wait on pins-and-needles on my own for November 4th to come and go. I’ve hardly made a friend since I got here; I’m too afraid I’ll start to despise them if they’re on the other side or that they’ll start to despise me.  Caring that much is exhausting.  Seclusion is lonely as hell but at least I can say what I want to the people I do talk to. It’s not insanity yet.  But if the November 5th sun rises to the worst of all possibilities, I don’t think it’ll take long.

I miss being who I was: friendly, outspoken, outgoing. I miss caring about other things. I miss being able to attend lectures about Greek Classics without going stiff at the word “politics.”  I miss being able to go outdoors without seeing the “inevitable” Barack “Jesus Christ” Obama emblazoned on every chest and backpack I see.  God, I miss breathing deeply because I just don’t anymore.  It’s insane to be that involved, to care that much, but I do.  This election matters and I just can’t be silent.  And if that’s not healthy, if that’s not safe, I’d rather be neither seen nor heard, if it will really make no difference.

I have a lifetime of debt to repay and I start every day by snapping on a button.

~ by Regency on October 22, 2008.