The Last Rallying Cry of 2016
I think it’s safe to say that 2016 sucked. It was a dumpster fire year of broken hearts and violated trust. My grandmother voted Leave and my country voted Trump. My feet still hurt from standing for seven hours at the Javits Center on election night, and New Yorkers confess how they feel on Post-It notes as they commute to work. We are tired, we are angry and we are scared…and I’m more than a little bitter. I’m trying to salvage some lessons from 2016, but it takes decades to make sea glass out of a broken window.
It’s easy to think of this as a year of so many endings, a lifetime of progressive hopes snuffed out at the shocking climax of a long election cycle. Any last vestiges of my privileged innocence got left behind on the L train like a forgotten bodega umbrella, which probably needed to happen anyway. But this year was full of beginnings too. This was the year I started therapy, went on anti-anxiety medication, purged the last remaining frat boys from my social life and got a short story published in an actual book, which will be sold in actual bookstores. I even earned myself a headline on InfoWars. But most importantly, most surprisingly, I came out of the closet after years of being told I wasn’t really bisexual by everyone I knew, including myself.
(In a few years I won’t remember that I didn’t make the decision to come out, so much as I was pushed from the closet by a stranger who outed me to my co-workers via mass email. To add insult to injury, the email called me a “FAKE BISEXUAL” in all caps, whatever that means. That part already feels more like a strange plotline in a Lifetime movie than an act of humiliating violence. We can call it I’m With Her, and Also Him: The Punishment of a Queer Hillary Volunteer.)
When I look back on this year, I hope I remember how good it felt to stand on the stage during an office open mic and talk about my ever-twisting kaleidoscopic identity. It was the first time I ever called myself bisexual in front of an audience, and, knowing me, probably not the last. At the end of my two-minute ramble, I squeaked “Make America gay again!” to the delight of the interns sitting in the back row.
And I hope I will remember having brunch with my mother and telling her about how I asked a girl out for the first time in nearly a decade. The conversation was weird but accepted, and more than a little drunk, as most brunches with parents at the midtown Five Napkin Burger are. My mom demanded to know what this girl had said, and if she clutched her drink a little tightly waiting for my answer, I can’t blame her. Surprise: the girl wound up being a nineteen-year-old, and the date never happened. But hey, I tried!
It isn’t lost on me that coming out as bisexual in the midst of Trump’s victory is a strange accident of timing. I like girls as well as boys and I’ve been drafted into the anti-fascist resistance.
I’ve never been more aware of my role as a community leader too. I wish I had a pep talk for the weirdos with herpes and the young feminists who don’t know how to explain to their conservative parents why they are so angry and afraid. If you are looking to your role models for guidance, don’t be afraid when they look back at you for the same.
By the time midnight rolled around at Hillary’s party at the Javits Center, we were all sitting on the hard carpet in horrified silence. I’d brought my manager as my plus one because I wanted to share Hillary’s victory with her, and I rubbed her back when we slowly lost hope and cried. Hillary Clinton wasn’t perfect, but she was the most qualified person to ever run for President. Her defeat felt like a warning that no, women can’t succeed in this world yet. It’s not allowed. That night my mentor’s heart broke, but I looked at her and saw a path for me to follow. The revolution will come in our offices and city halls and Slack channels. The fight goes on. If we are to make it through the years ahead, we must pool our strength.
My original plan was to let this year go in a last gasp of quiet. Even now, I’ve never had this much difficulty knitting sentences together. These few paragraphs are taking me days: it feels like I’m pouring disinfectant on a wound. There will be plenty of thinkpieces about what lessons we should take with us into 2017. And besides, no one needs to hear what an upper-middle class white girl from Connecticut has to say right now. Currently, my most useful contributions to the discourse are angry Hillary Clinton memes.
But while it’s hard to reflect on a year that doesn’t make sense yet, it would be wrong not to. What I’m feeling is too big for a Post-It note on the wall of the 6th Avenue tunnel. I’m scared. I’m also ready. I’m ready to make noise, to bleed a little, to write what needs writing and heavily utilize my Twitter block button. I find hope in my growing desire to fuck shit up: it means my complacency is over. That’s when the real progress happens. It’s time to get to work.
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