Election Day

I have been promising myself for weeks that I would stay off Facebook entirely on Election Day, for obvious reasons. However, I am a masochist who doesn't listen to reason and who does apparently love a nice shivery dose of nerves at 6:30 in the morning, which is when I broke my little promise to myself and logged on only to find, at the top of my news feed, a status update referring to "that Muslim."

I'm pretty proactive about blocking people who would write this kind of thing; normally, my "friends" are a pretty civilized and thoughtful group, even when they disagree with me and with each other. (I've blocked several friends of friends, though, because I don't need to read their vitriolic comments. I don't need everyone to see the world the way I do; I do need to trust that I won't read the N-word on my Facebook "friends" page. Seriously, some of y'all have really classy friends.)

Anyway, maybe I just need to grow a thicker skin, but seeing that on my page really discouraged me. And this is the second person I've taken off of my own friends list in as many weeks. Because how am I ever going to have a rational conversation with someone who refers to the president as "that Muslim"?

So, banned, blocked, whatever, but since then I've found myself unable to stop reading, and I'm seriously just the biggest ball of anxiety ever right now. Because this. This is where we are.

I was thinking today about the first election in which I was old enough to vote, in 2000, my senior year of college. I voted for Al Gore, in case anyone cares. And I was voting as a citizen of Montana, so it's not like it really mattered -- but it mattered to me, even though Gore ran such a disappointingly uninteresting campaign. I remember listening to NPR constantly, following local elections (in Minnesota and North Dakota, that is; even though I couldn't vote there, I loved learning about the things that would affect people who did). I loved filling out my ballot, even if I told myself that my teeny-tiny little vote didn't matter. I understand why people feel that way; I'm feeling frightened and disillusioned tonight in a way that I didn't when I was 21 years old. But still. Still. We're all really fortunate that we get to do it at all.

I've seen people who are voting for Obama and people who are voting for Romney post such sentiments today and I'm clinging to the desperate, shaky little hope that maybe -- maybe? -- sometime after tomorrow, we can remember what we like about each other. We can remember that people who are nasty on Facebook (did someone seriously call me a "libtard"? Why yes, someone did) are people who, face to face, would still stop and help us out of a ditch if we happened to drive our cars into one.

I don't know. I don't know.

I'm anxious in ways that I wasn't in 2000. And it's not even that I'm just scared of the possibility of living right smack in the middle of a Margaret Atwood novel; I'm also scared of what tomorrow will feel like. No matter what, a lot of people are going to be angry and heartbroken tomorrow. Obviously, I want my candidate to win. And I want the vote to go the way I cast it on my ballot for a handful of local issues that I care about very much. But even if that happens, I'm scared of the widening gulf between the people who voted one way and people who voted another. (The snarky Facebook cartoons that Make a Big Fat Point really help.)

I just hate feeling so angry and scared and helpless. But I also love the energy of the grassroots work carried out by passionate volunteers, and I love those who remind me that my civic duty certainly isn't fulfilled by voting, as if it's something you can check off. I love -- and need -- the reminder that it's important not to grow complacent, that even if our people win, we are going to need to roll up our sleeves and work hard and keep on fighting for the light with empathy and compassion.

At any rate, that's what I'll tell myself tomorrow. Tonight -- I'll be honest -- I'm just drinking wine. Because I've been a huge quivering ball of anxiety today, and because instead of distracting myself with the work of teaching I spent it at the doctor's office with my daughter. (We think it's a UTI; the last day or so has been sort of traumatic but she'll be fine.) Because if I'm home I'm pacing around my house and reading horrible things on the Internet and I can't seem to stop, so even though Suzannah had a "sick" day that involved a drive to the clinic in Tacoma, I haven't let us stop moving for longer than the time it took to eat lunch. We ran errands. We spontaneously decided to get our hair cut together. (Rather, I decided we needed that and proposed the idea, to which Suzannah agreed right away and suggested we add a treat at Starbucks to the outing.) I graded zero papers, I read three pages of a novel, I flitted restlessly around the house, I thought of things we needed to do, I fretted about the fact that we didn't get to see Suzannah's regular pediatrician (who always makes me feel a little calmer, and every time we have to see someone else I'm reminded of how much I love him). We went to the library. We went to Target.

Last night, in a fit of pre-election anxiety, I washed all the wood floors. Tonight I'm about to attack all the surfaces with Lemon Pledge and a dust rag. I may have suggested to Matt that I wouldn't complain if he picked up a bottle of gin on the way home from work.

I am going to breathe in and and breathe out and remind myself that every single one of us is a child of God, even the people who vote for (or against) things I just cannot fathom, and I am going to have a gin and tonic, and I am going to make dinner for my family, and probably just revert to the prayer I used to whisper in the night for years, as a child, as teenager, as a young adult when I couldn't find any other words: Please just let everything be okay.