I was sitting on the couch in my Williamsburg apartment, bundled in blankets used as security, bodega wine poured into a cheap glass, starring at dumbfounded faces of analysts on the TV, watching an election turnout no one anticipated. A neighborhood where every night seemed like a Saturday night felt quiet and still, empty and void less, as many were doing just the same. Drowning their sorrows in their spirit of choice, using anything around them as security, holding on to the last moments of hope as a nation.
Across town, I knew of election parties with the purpose of celebrating the first female president elected in the United States. Down south, I knew of women co-hosting Pro-Trump election night parties.
The country, and many people who made up my life, started to look very different than I thought they did, as this monumental night become realer and realer.
Around 10, my mind could no longer convince my gut that things would turn around, so I went to bed. Around 3, I woke up only to google, “who won the election,” and saw a picture of a man with fake gold hair and the wrong color foundation staring back at me. I knew what I was going to see, but I still held out hope to see the confident, while not perfect, first female president of the United States. I went back to sleep in a state of shock and woke up hours later to a type of pain I’ve never felt before spread throughout my body. The pain wasn’t an ache, nor soreness. I wasn’t nausea in my stomach or tension in my muscles, It was a pain caused by tremendous sadness intertwined with immense terror and loss, a realization of what had just been done.
At the time, I was working for a company whose offices were in the new World Trade Center building downtown. I remember texting my coworker and dear friend to decide if we felt safe enough to go in. Neither of us expected a country led by Donald Trump becoming a reality and stepping into one of our nation’s most historically vulnerable buildings seemed scary.
Nonetheless, I knew I needed to attempt to go about my day as usual, for the sake of myself and the kindness I owed my blossoming ambitions. When I got to work, the office was fairly empty besides myself and my office neighbor.
I had spent my two-line subway journey holding back tears while staring at people in suits who I could assume voted for Trump. Others carried artwork and other assets who I assumed did not. I saw people of color not look up from the ground one time. There was a grim, lethargic tone in the air that would follow New Yorkers around for a long time.
When I sat down at my desk, I looked over to my coworker to wish her a good morning. I was met with tears in her eyes and a terrified look on her face.
She was Hispanic, coming here as a child in search of a better life, the American dream. She found it. She was reworded by the values we once had in this country when we accepted different types of people who wanted to create a better life than they once had. She educated herself, worked a well-paying job for a very successful hospitality company, and created a new reality that allowed her to get married, raise kids, and indulge in a full-filled life here in America. She was everything we once prided ourselves on and she used the America she thought would always protect her, the one we used to preach would do so, as a way of creating better than she had, until the day Donald Trump got elected.
She looked at me with sorrow in her heart and tears in her eyes and asked, “what am I going to do?” I related to the pain she was expressing, but I knew the actual implications of this new presidency were going to affect her much greater than myself.
That moment, while we shared so many of the same emotions, was one of the first real indicators of my own privilege in this country, and it was the exact moment I decided not to lay down and die. It was the exact moment where I said I am going to fight harder, stronger, and eventually be part of a movement that represented larger numbers than anyone who Donald Trump represents. I was going to fight for my co-worker, her family, and anyone who can relate to her story. I was going to fight for the American dream.
Growing up in a New York household, we were no strangers to Donald Trump. In fact, to New Yorkers, he has never been the do-no-wrong king his supporters think he is. To us, Trump was always a racist, sexist businessman who has spent his life filing multiple bankruptcies, not paying his employees, and creating fake schools and fraudulent charities. He was a man who devoted his time not to activism and change, but to the sentencing of innocent black men. He was a pig who thought only with his second head, having multiple affairs, 3 wives, and 26 sexual assault charges hanging over his shoulders, one from a 13-year-old girl. He was no savior, no preacher, no symbol of hope or picture of hard work. He was a privileged prick who used whatever power he had to hurt as many people as possible. Spineless, and completely vacant of any moral and spiritual high ground.
It wasn’t until the prep of the 2016 election did people outside of New York see Donald Trump for exactly what he was, and it wasn’t until that same moment did we realize that many people in this country were just like him.
My parents have always been fairly political. They would tell me stories of their hippy days protesting the Vietnam war, fighting on the side of flowers and peace against the unlawful and unnecessary deaths of American citizens. It wasn’t until Obama was elected in 2008 though, did I realize the prevalent political side of them. They were enthused by Obama, brought back to life by his vibrant personality, hope of the future, and the possibility that he would lead a country of lasting impact that truly represented their values and the policies they stood for. I remember them requiring me to watch his inauguration in 2008, something that felt more like an assignment, but looking back was the peak of democracy in my lifetime.
Although I knew of my parents own political histories, I always saw them as open-minded, kind people. In the midst of raising a child on the autism spectrum while living in an affluent community of who has what and who is who, my parents always taught us the importance of caring for others and accepting people no matter what. And even though their vote almost always reflected left-wing ideologies, the only time they displayed any form of bias was when my dad would say to me, more times than I can count,
“I don’t care who you marry. I don’t care if they’re black, white, brown, republican, democrat, American, immigrant, as long as they’re not a Yankee fan.”
In my household, there was tolerance of different life choices and intolerance of sports team affiliations.
I am going to admit, like many other Americans who did not vote or did not vote for Trump, (I voted for Hillary in the state of California where I was registered) I still felt a sense of hope that it wasn’t going to be as bad as we thought. I still believed that a lot of the rhetoric we were seeing and the discrimination that Trump and his supporters possessed was an act to create a base of people that would love him more than anything else in the world, something a narcissist needs to survive. I carried that hope little by little each day until I realized it had completely run out and it was only going to get worse. And every day, more realizations of grab her by the pussy remarks and making fun of American citizens with disabilities, was really our new normal. I realized this was not only the end of democracy, it was the end of kindness and empathy being displayed at the highest level in our country.
Four years later and we have the most overwhelming civil unrest in our country. Racial justice has become a question, not a given. Our country is a place where white supremacists lead the way while LGBTQ+, minorities and people with differing religions are scared to leave their homes. We have violence in communities which once had peace, police brutality against black men at an all-time high, children dead from school shootings by right-wing worshippers, and the fate of women’s rights only on the ballot to decide if we should be responsible for our own bodies. We, as a nation, have lost whatever underlying values we once had.
I look to Trump supporters and people who plan to vote for him today to answer this question for me: How do you look your children and the young people around you in the eyes and teach our current climate as right not wrong? How do you look at your daughters and tell them to support people who think they deserve to be treated less than, make less than, and function in society less than? How do you tell your sons it’s okay to use vulgar language and comment on a women’s body far more than you comment on anything else? How do you tell your wives that you vowed to always love and support that their place is exactly that, a wife, and be okay with it? I ask these questions because this is what I always go back to, motherhood and the idea of teaching future generations right versus wrong. The idea of country over party in our own homes, our own lives, and our own hearts.
I ask this because I am struggling to look my daughter in the eye and promise her a future where anything is possible. The love I have for her has not wavered; it grows stronger every waking moment I’m alive. But the hope I had for her future diminishes each and every passing day. The truth is, it is getting exceedingly harder for me to promise her that everything is going to be okay. That she is valued and can be whatever she wants to be. That she is in control of her life, her body, her future. That I brought her into a world that would fight to protect her, fight for her, and give her every opportunity she deserves. I am struggling to look her in the eye and feel her future is filled with amazing possibilities, when there could be laws ensuring it won’t.
Our family has been crippled by the effects of COVID. The life I once thought I would’ve created for her has been put on hold as the people put in power to help us continuously turn their backs on us and the reality that we are not alone.
I consider us a hard-working American family, my husband being a student of our nation’s greatest pastime. We pay our taxes, our debts, and we don’t make excuses. Yet, I am left wondering why we should be okay raising our daughter in a country that is led by individuals who do not honor the same systems we are told we have to? And why are we still being sold the American dream that the Trump administration has abandoned?
They have abandoned you and I, but what they have not abandoned is cult worshipping, divisiveness, and a national rhetoric that harms more people than it helps. They have failed to reach across the aisle, use science-based decision making, and have policies and plans in place to help Americans.
At this current moment, our democracy is dead. But we have a very good chance of resurrecting it if and only if we vote for Joe Biden in mass numbers. If we use our constitutional right to be heard, to have a voice, to choose the candidate that best reflects the majority in this country, not the minority.
Today I told myself no rules. No rules for myself or for the people around me. I am not promising to stay off social media or that my mental health will be my priority. I am giving myself no boundaries or expectations. I am simply going to let myself get through the day, moment by moment, with whatever feels right. I pledged not to be super mom today, but to set the standard of letting ourselves feel whatever we need to feel.
I’ve seen people taking to social media preaching acceptance no matter what happens. I’ve seen people say they’re logging off until after the election is over. I see cities boarding up buildings and families figuring out their escape plans. I see chaos. I feel chaos. And the only way through it is through it. I’m not telling anyone to be kind to others, I am preaching kindness to myself. I am not sharing non-partisan Instagram posts expressing the idea that we need to move on after the election ends, I am preparing myself to fight harder. I am not focusing on what I can do to love my neighbor at the end of this, I am still hung up on the fact that my neighbor voted for so many things that could hurt me. I am simply doing what I can to make sense of this situation and how we got here because at its surface level and its core, nothing makes fucking sense.
Although I might be writing this as a last plea to anyone still on the fence before they head to the polls, I am also writing this as a personal homage to what is at stake for my family. I believe we begin to understand each other only when we listen to each other’s personal stories, histories, struggles, and triumphs. I hope you can read my words of the future I struggle to see for my daughter and relate to your own children, your own future, and the fight to bring the people of this country together. I hope you can see my hatred of Trump not as blind loyalty to the political party that best represents me, but to my faith in this country and the good that was once found in the systems and people who live here if we vote him out. I hope you can see my dedication to urging everyone to vote for Joe Biden not as cult worship, but as a realistic choice I believe will lead to a better and brighter future.
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