Election, Rejection, Resurrection

This image, as is becoming tradition with my pieces, was scrawled hastily by me, the author, as I wrote.

I hope you’ve never had the feeling I’m about to describe. The feeling when you’re about to take a test, or make a presentation, or tell a girl you like her, and you feel… not just feel… KNOW that it’s going to go poorly.

You don’t just sense it, you are 100% sure you’re going to crash and burn.

It’s too late to turn back, it’s going to happen, and you stare it in the face and welcome it. Not out of some sense of instant karma, or belief that the world will even itself out, but because you want it to be over, and you’d rather let the awful eventuality of life wash over you than to continue to be at the mercy of the anxiety that’s filling your head and your stomach in equal measure. Mind you, the outcome will be monumentally unpleasant, but with it comes a sense of finality or completeness — relief.

The ability to process.

The chance to put one foot in front of the other.

The opportunity to begin to move forward.

That was the feeling that I had this week. Not Tuesday Night, or even in the “wee hours” of Wednesday morning. This was the feeling I could no longer contain on Wednesday afternoon.

I initially tried to turn this concept into a recorded piece for the Comatose Podcast. But the final version ended up just being me screaming “Fuck.” A lot. More times than I’m proud of, if I’m honest.

I’ve made no secret of my Politics.

I didn’t just support Hillary, I really thought she was going to win. I wasn’t the only one. In fact most of my friends on both sides of the aisle thought she would, whether they liked it or not.

I’ve been following the election obsessively, reading FiveThirtyEight, listening to the NPR politics podcast every day, MSNBC always on in the office, the CNN app blowing up my phone — although to be fair I’ve had a long-standing and very public opposition to the number of CNN alerts, and would love to give them a piece of my mind about things that do and don’t constitute “breaking news.”

But, as usual, I digress…

I had not only not given serious thought to the possibility of Trump winning, I hadn’t given it any thought. So when it started to look like maybe it could happen, my brain broke down. The logical part of my brain knew he could win, but the emotional part couldn’t accept it. The logical part knew that if he did win, the world wouldn’t catch on fire and end that very night, but the emotional one took me shattering my iPad the night before the election, and the weird power-outage that happened Tuesday as the results started to come in, as omens that the world would in fact reject the outcome and cease to exist.

I know, only slightly alarmist.

I couldn’t make sense of it, and that’s what bothered me the most.

So, I was watching the returns on Tuesday with a friend and at some point between ten and eleven o clock, I decided that it was time to stop. The New York Times predictor graph/speedometer had fluctuated wildly… like over 100 point swings wildly.

Clinton was beating her predictions, then she wasn’t, then she was, then she was coming back. Before they called Florida or Michigan, before it was over by any means, I decided to stop. I went home, I turned off my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, turned the WiFi off on my computers, locked myself in the apartment unable to find out the results unconsciously, took some ZzzQuil and went to sleep.

I woke up and did what I would have on any other day.

• I got out of bed
• I put one foot in front of the other
• I breathed in and out
• I fed my cat
• I took a shower

I was sure the election was over, but I didn’t know who won. I didn’t want to know, because at the point I stopped watching the night before, I did so not only because I thought Trump could or would win, but because I had lost hope.

I had lost hope that Hillary would win. I lost hope that the next four years would continue the policies of my main man, Barrack Obama. I lost hope that our country wouldn’t elect this kind of person.

I lost hope in our country.

And when I looked at the results, it wasn’t because I hoped Hillary had pulled it out, because I didn’t think she had. I had lost that hope. When I looked at the results, it was because the anxiety had finally reached the level I couldn’t deal with.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t sit comfortably.

I had to know.

At that moment I’d rather the awful eventuality of life wash over me than to be at the mercy of my anxiety. And the outcome was monumentally unpleasant. But it did come with a sense of relief.

Let me be clear, I am a straight, white, heterosexual, cisgendered, able bodied man with two degrees. I personally stand to lose almost nothing from this presidency, save a bit of national pride. But I feared for others. And my fears were almost instantly confirmed, as I read online of hateful language and racial or religiously motivated assaults and harassment that were taking place all over the country.

And then I walked into the class I teach and found one of my students in tears. She is a black student, and on the way to class a stranger had called her the n word. On my campus, at my school, the school where I live and work, a student called another student the n word. This would have, SHOULD have upset me, but I was already without hope, and so it simply confirmed what I already believed.

But that moment was a turning point. Because without my intervention my class of all first-year students began to grieve with this affected student. They told her how sorry they were. They told her how awful it was, and how they could make sure that they wouldn’t create an atmosphere where that kind of language or action was condoned.

I got a little bit of my hope back.

Then I saw on Facebook that my friends, all of them with varying levels of privilege, were engaging in discussions. While they (we) did not always agree, the discussion was civil. Then I saw some of my friends attending protests. Then the protests got bigger. And after a brief and totally expected bout of “Trump-ism,” President Elect Trump said that he was happy to see passionate citizens standing up for what they believe.

Did he really believe that? I don’t know… but I had gotten a little bit of my hope back, so it wasn’t dismissed immediately and out of hand. And he’s appointed some truly awful people to his transition team, but he’s also walked back some of his most hateful rhetoric.

Is this for real? I hope so…

As a side note, that is the first time I wrote “President Elect Trump” and I can confirm that I did throw up in my mouth a little.

Then, last night I watched one of my comedy heroes Dave Chapelle give what was maybe the best SNL Monologue I’ve ever witnessed. He made me laugh… about Trump — something I wasn’t sure I could ever do. I had laughed about Bush, but this was different… wasn’t it?

It had to be! could I laugh at trump? I hoped so… and then I did.

Dave’s closing words resinated with me:

“I saw how happy these people who had been historically disenfranchised were. It made me feel hopeful and it made me feel proud to be an American and it made me very happy about the prospects of our country. So I’m wishing Donald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too.”

After a divisive, disruptive, unprecedented, violent, hard fought election, SNL did what it always has, it made fun of the president. For as villainous as Trump is, and for as afraid as I was of this eventuality, I laughed at the monologue making fun of him.

The emotional part of my brain caught up.

The world didn’t end. And I woke up on Thursday. And I breathed in and out. And I did the same thing Friday. And yesterday. And today. And all signs point to the fact that I’ll wake up tomorrow too.

Make no mistake, the next four years may very well suck. And they may very likely suck substantially more for a bunch of other people worse off than me. The next four years will be a fight. And I, and hopefully others, will spend them volunteering, and planning, and influencing policy, and voting in the midterms, and writing letters, and voicing our opinions.

Yes, maybe even picketing and protesting and being afraid for ourselves and our friends and family.

BUT… despite all the warnings in my head assuring me of the contrary, the next four years will happen. Who the president will be for the next four years has already been decided. But how We, The People respond to that decision, has not. It will be decided in coffee shops and in classrooms. It will be decided by each of us individually, and all of us together.

So if you also wept angrily, swore loudly, and spent a somber day in your apartment moaning and playing vintage video games because of the results of this election, I know your pain. But remember that the world isn’t over. Have hope, because life is miserable without it. You’re still here. Put one foot in front of the other.

Breathe in and out.

Listen to Episode 123 — Internet, Lincoln, and Election:

Written by Louis Reich of Comatose.

Comatose is a weekly series of amusing anecdotes, insightful commentary, and pithy stories. Every week three contributors are featured in short segments. The segments, though often unrelated, are tied together using music and narration to set the scene. Relax and enjoy the ride while listening to topics as varied as love, birthdays, and reciprocity.

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