Today, in America, we vote.
Until about 6pm Central Time, my social media feeds are the joyful arrival of folks to a great party that will feed and succor them. And then the returns will start coming in and then everything will be terrible until everything isn't terrible any more. No matter who wins.
Except that it matters very much who wins. The stakes have been getting higher and higher with every presidential election in my lifetime. This year is no different. I am worried.
I spent the morning at my polling place and then at breakfast with my roommate. I went to the library to work on my NaNo novel, and then strolled home in the rain to be greeted by the cat who had just woken up and now is sitting on my desk contemplating stealing my lap.
What a lovely lovely day, I thought as I walked in the door. And how fragile it is.
Not simply the weather, which is intensely fragile and which we are consistently not caring for. Not simply the domesticated critters who we deny are complex living beings and treat as toys or trophies or props. Not simply the privilege to take time off of full-time work to pursue the being of me for a living.
My roommate and I are single women, both college-educated, both hard-working and both with no plans to become parents. Our friends are mostly single women, and of our coupled friends, only one has become a parent. Outside of St. Louis, most of my friends are married people, and only one of those couples has children, although I know that that may change. Among my friends from the various schools I've attended over the years, a huge percentage of us are either childless or single or both.
And we live in a lovely apartment, in an exciting and weird neighborhood. We are not hassled by our neighbors or set up by our acquaintance. No one in our immediate circles shames us for our lives and our choices. In fact, many of my acquaintances are equally uninterested in pursuing any relationship that ends with them not being single. We get served in restaurants. We get left alone when we go as a group to bars. My life-bro and I are frequently mistaken for a couple and seated at nicer tables and treated really kindly by waitstaff.
So life is possible. The anxieties of marriage, childbearing and family duty are not added to the anxieties of living in the world as a person just trying to live. We struggle as whole people. We succeed as whole people.
It is terrifying to look at the record of the GOP's candidate for Vice President and consider what that could mean for our ability to continue living our lives. Our otherwise inoffensive and mostly delightful lives. Our healthcare (which is already compromised as we live in a country where healthcare must be earned not assured) is likely to become even more a minefield of gaslighting and mis-diagnosis. And we're both cis-gendered ladies with no specific health issues or long-term diseases (that we know of) living in a city close to a clinic.
Violence against women has long been men's outlet for everything. What happens if someone for whom that kind of violence isn't violence at all is the person "leading" the country?
Violence against non-whites has long been white people's outlet for everything. What happens if someone for whom that kind of violence isn't violence at all is the person in The White House, leading the armed forces, responding in times of crisis and emergency?
Because to him, to his running mate, to his supporters and to many people drowning in their own concerns, the kinds of violence that marginalized people encounter on a daily basis do not count as violence.
This apartment is so quiet today. The rain makes a kind of distant waterfall effect and cards splash their way through the alley. My lap is warmer because the cat has decided to loaf on it, and these words were given expression.
There shouldn't be anything special about this experience. But there is. It shouldn't be any more fragile than any beautiful natural thing. But it is. This ought to be an available norm, and it isn't.
Many people will be the victims of violence today. Many will stand together and many will make sure that everyone's voices are heard. We will have to address the toll that centuries of oppression and environmental devastation have taken on our land, on our country, on people all around the world. Today's vote will not change that.
It will change how much quiet there is for all of us to sit, to be warm and to heal before the next round.
Vote.
Be aware.
Do better.
This circus is on us. We made it. We need to unmake it. People are dying.
No comments:
Post a Comment