Every day for the past month or so, I have noticed an ‘I voted’ sticker plastered to the sidewalk on my path to work. I think I first saw it on Election Day, but it wasn’t until the Wednesday after that I really started thinking about it.
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I didn’t have my morning class, which in hindsight was a relief. I had to do an NBN Instagram takeover, and I had been planning on taking the Red Line down to my favorite Rogers Park coffee shop. Even when I had gone to bed on Tuesday night, or really Wednesday morning around 2 a.m., I could already feel that trip wouldn’t be happening.
I got dressed slowly, the morning after. Favorite sweater, new jeans, mascara, earrings, rings. Instagram takeover. Talk about why I love journalism, why I want to do this after I graduate, will I even graduate? Will we even make it that long? It felt futile, filming and refilming videos. I felt narcissistic.
My aunt sent me $20. I bought myself coffee. I went to Main. I tried to do work. I felt lost.
Somehow, I found myself with a friend in the office of a beloved professor. He told us he was wearing all black, in mourning. We talked about how scared we were, for ourselves and for those at higher risk. He told us about a teacher friend whose high school student asked if their school would follow the rules if it became illegal to be gay. I almost cried. He did. He gave us sour candy. I felt hopeless.
People kept asking, ‘How are you?’ I think we all were at a loss for what to say. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I kept doing an Instagram takeover.
It feels strange to have those random moments documented, now. It’s that classic conundrum of the digital age — how much is too much? Will you look back and be glad that you took that photo, filmed that video?
I sat with my friends in Kresge. We all did the same silent assessment of each other that I had been exchanging with people all day. A friend came by, and I told him I got into a travel abroad program. He gave me a high five, and I felt like I was grounded and actually alive for the first time all day. It felt wrong.
Another friend invited me over to their apartment before class. We sat on the floor of their living room and ate stale chips and reheated queso. The conversation kept coming back to That Thing That Happened (to steal another friend’s phrase), and we kept trying to not talk about it again.
We walked to class together. My poetry professor asked us if we wanted to cancel class, talk about what happened or just do poems. We all sat in silence until someone said ‘poems’ and a murmur of agreement echoed around the basement of Harris. We did our poem workshop. I talked about my travel program, and my friend told me about his research conference. It felt like a bubble of OK-ness.
I went to Pono Ono for dinner. It felt like one of the few things I could do for myself at that moment. I saw that ‘I voted’ sticker on the sidewalk on the way there. I contemplated peeling it up, but I didn’t. I was still doing my Instagram takeover. It still felt wrong.
NBN mag had its regularly scheduled meeting for creative critiques. We talked about what we’re grateful for. Someone said me. Someone else said the collective nature of grief. I said these people. We took a minute to just sit in that, and then the meeting went on. There was something blessedly futile about the inability to take a break in the time-crunched process of putting together a magazine.
I walked home in the dark, wondering why the time change had to happen now of all weeks. I got home before I realized I forgot my headphones across campus. I called my parents on the walk back to get them. I don’t remember what we discussed, or who was more concerned for who.
When I got back from my headphone retrieval, I went downstairs to my friend’s apartment to watch a movie, like I did the night before. Her roommate asked if we wanted him to make us chai. We sat in the kitchen, the three of us, drinking chai with a tub of cookie dough on the table. And then I went up to bed. Even that felt strange.
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In truth, I tried to write this the day after. I felt the overwhelming need to write, to create something that would stand in the face of how I felt, to prove that nothing had changed because I was still writing.
I remember telling my dad that I wanted to write about it. He asked me who it was for. I didn’t know the answer. I started writing and didn’t get much further than a couple of bullet points. I think it felt too raw, then. I’m not sure I feel much different now.
Some days, continuing normalcy after the election feels like Band Aid-over-bullet-wound levels of futile. Other days, I almost forget about the result. Most days, it’s like a bruise that won’t go away.
I walk down Orrington nearly every day. The sticker is still there. It’s a bit battered, worn down by shoes (mine included), rain and now snow, and the indescribable weight of Nov. 5’s decision. But it’s a declaration of something. And I’m holding out hope that it’s enough.