Thank you, Hillary.
There is no denying this is a terrible time and a time of grief. Wednesday morning around one thirty a.m. the election had not yet been called but there was also seemingly no way for Hillary to win. At this time Adam and I left Beast of Bourbon - the barbecue restaurant where we'd imagined celebrating with friends hours earlier - back across the street to our apartment. While the mood at the restaurant was somber when we left, heads low, eyes on iPhone, looks to one another of disbelief - it was not until we entered our building, walked onto our floor that I began to shake. And then, when we entered our apartment and it was just to two of us I fully gave into what I was feeling and sobbed and raged and called my mother to sob and rage some more. I felt like a child. I wanted to be comforted and supported but also I felt intense guilt and rage at myself - for being so naïve in my privileged, liberal bubble and for not doing more supporting of others who needed it before the election, and in my entire life.
I think the loss of this election will be a defining moment for my generation, specifically for my peer group. We had so many wins under Obama. When he won in 2008, my roommates and I stormed the streets and danced on top of newspaper boxes on Bedford Ave. But what did I do after that? I celebrated when marriage equality was passed, I cried from the safety of my home and my whiteness when black men and women were killed for no reason, I signed petitions on facebook and donated money to a few charities around the holidays. The weekend before the election I spent one day knocking on doors for Hillary. ONE DAY. I am a writer. I make my own hours. I have more free time than almost anyone I know. One day. I am ashamed of myself.
In the past two days, I have seen, sent and received countless messages from friends about rising up, about fighting this. Had Hillary won - we'd be celebrating. We would have learned nothing. We would have let her take care of us the way we let Obama take care of us. We would have felt proud of our country and our leader and used it as an excuse to do nothing. I am vowing to be different. If I don't allow this to change me, it's my fault. I know better. The intensity of my emotions on election night broke something in me. But now I am realizing it didn't just break it, it broke it open. My biggest fear for myself and my friends is that we are so sad now, we are so angry now, we are ready to fight now - but what will happen when things normalize? What if when the grief passes, we forget how we felt on Tuesday. Again, we are protected by our circumstances. We will not be the ones affected by this and so we must brace ourselves for the normalization. We must know that it's coming and stay fired up after the period of grief passes. We have to do the work.
The only way I know how to do this is to start small. If volunteering within my community becomes not something I talk about, but something I do, then hopefully I will become a member of my community - not my peer group, my community. I have to participate to change, I have to know people different than I am to listen to them.
That's part one of my plan: volunteer, form relationships, listen.
Part two: I still need to live my life.
This week, I've still had to go to meetings, and work on projects and meet deadlines. It can feel selfish - this artist's life. There's a movie I've been wanting to write. I was so excited about it before the election. It's about my fears of aging, of having children - it's personal and honest but also comedic and broad - it's me and it's not me. I am writing it so I can direct it myself. After Trump won I thought - who cares? What a waste of time. What a navel-gazing exercise. My petty fears don't matter. Why should I write this movie? Why should I direct this movie. No one needs this movie.
Then three things happened.
1. Two of my students reached out to me to see how I was doing post election because they knew how excited I was and knew how hard I would take it. They are both women of color. They are both scared but they are also smart and empathetic and full of love. One of them told me how sad she was because she admired Hillary Clinton so much. She also told me that she admires me and I realized something I forget - I am a young woman with a hispanic last name, the great-granddaughter of immigrants (one of which whom, as my sister reminded me, was deported and came back!), I was raised by parents who were the first in their families to go to college and I am now a working writer in Hollywood. I am a teacher with a diverse group of students who see in me that my evolution is possible. That their voices can (and will) be part of the mix. I am more of a role model than I think.
2. I talked to my film agent. A powerful woman I respect immensely. While we weren't talking about this movie specifically, we were talking about the need to keep going. She reminded me that we do work in a medium that matters. That movies, but specifically big movies, movies that play in theaters all across the country, have the power of influence. She said it was important to make "popcorn movies with a cause." That's a tall order. But she's right and it's a challenge I am well positioned to take up.
3. I read this passage from my hero Doris Lessing -
"At last I understood that the way over, or through, this dilemma, the unease at writing about "petty personal problems," was to recognize that nothing is personal in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions--and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas--can't be yours alone. The way to deal with the problem of "subjectivity," that shocking business of being preoccupied with the tiny individual who is at the same time caught up in such an explosion of terrible and marvelous possibilities, is to see him as a microcosm and in this way to break through the personal, the subjective, making the personal general, as indeed life always does, transforming a private experience--or so you think of it when still a child, "I am falling in love," "I am feeling this or that emotion, or thinking that or the other thought"-- into something much larger: growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares."
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