La and I just went and voted at our new polling precinct! We recently moved from downtown to the almost barely suburbs, which means we are in a county and congressional district where our votes might actually make a difference in electing more progressive folk. Exciting! Of course, we are also 'blessed' to live in a swing state and have seen every commercial either the Romney or Obama campaigns ever produced. Last week I got more phone calls from Obama for America and national polling firms than I got from everyone else I know in the last month combined.
And now I'm going to sit at work and be totally distracted by anxiety! Really I know I am kind of a drama queen but usually I am well armed with some healthy cynicism about the role of big politics that I can blow this shit off. We survived Bush (sort of) so I guess we could potentially survive Romney. But maybe its my age, or the idea of having a child, or just being more necessarily involved with the kinds of systems that more readily intersect with the mainstream political world, but I am fucking scared. It feels like we have made some really incredible strides in the last few years, and I can't shrug the feeling that if the big R gets into office, its all down the shitter.
I'm white, and was raised in a middle class family and, while my income (plus my partners) do not put my family in a middle class tax bracket quite yet, we are well educated and decently privileged. I get that my ability to get (legally) married to my boo and have her on the birth certificate for the child we bear is like, at least halfway down the list of shitty things in America. Probably closer to the bottom quarter. So I don't want to be a single issue voter and I don't necessarily want to make my family into single issue voters either but, you know what, it still matters. It does. Life is hard enough without all of us trying to make it suck more for each other.
My best friend since high school, J, called me last night. We've been friends for 16 years and lived in different states for 10 of those, and still we have this thread of love and intimacy that just carries us through and wraps us up. I am super grateful for this gift of his friendship. He and his wife are 20 weeks pregnant, which is what he called to tell me. They are having a girl, which I am excited about because he is such a good dude - not in the 'oh he'll take care of his princess' good dude; no, J is going to fight to ensure his daughter has access to education and resources and is a total badass. I'm so incredibly psyched for him to be a dad.
More and more of my friends are having babies. On this day, I am both excited and terrified by that. Today, it seems, our nation is making a decision that could really, truly, deeply impact the lives of J's badass daughter and H's little unidentified banjo and maybe the baby that La and I have. I'm so glad that wonderful people are going to be raising wonderful babies. But I'm also terrified about what kind of a world we will be raising them in.
And now I'm going to sit at work and be totally distracted by anxiety! Really I know I am kind of a drama queen but usually I am well armed with some healthy cynicism about the role of big politics that I can blow this shit off. We survived Bush (sort of) so I guess we could potentially survive Romney. But maybe its my age, or the idea of having a child, or just being more necessarily involved with the kinds of systems that more readily intersect with the mainstream political world, but I am fucking scared. It feels like we have made some really incredible strides in the last few years, and I can't shrug the feeling that if the big R gets into office, its all down the shitter.
I'm white, and was raised in a middle class family and, while my income (plus my partners) do not put my family in a middle class tax bracket quite yet, we are well educated and decently privileged. I get that my ability to get (legally) married to my boo and have her on the birth certificate for the child we bear is like, at least halfway down the list of shitty things in America. Probably closer to the bottom quarter. So I don't want to be a single issue voter and I don't necessarily want to make my family into single issue voters either but, you know what, it still matters. It does. Life is hard enough without all of us trying to make it suck more for each other.
My best friend since high school, J, called me last night. We've been friends for 16 years and lived in different states for 10 of those, and still we have this thread of love and intimacy that just carries us through and wraps us up. I am super grateful for this gift of his friendship. He and his wife are 20 weeks pregnant, which is what he called to tell me. They are having a girl, which I am excited about because he is such a good dude - not in the 'oh he'll take care of his princess' good dude; no, J is going to fight to ensure his daughter has access to education and resources and is a total badass. I'm so incredibly psyched for him to be a dad.
More and more of my friends are having babies. On this day, I am both excited and terrified by that. Today, it seems, our nation is making a decision that could really, truly, deeply impact the lives of J's badass daughter and H's little unidentified banjo and maybe the baby that La and I have. I'm so glad that wonderful people are going to be raising wonderful babies. But I'm also terrified about what kind of a world we will be raising them in.
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