Author Porochista Khakpour: ‘Dear Me On Election Day…’

by Porochista Khakpour

Porochista Khakpour—Novelist and Essayist
Sons and Other Flammable Objects, The Last Illusion

Dear Me on Election Day: I hope you have good news today. I hope it all worked out. I hope it was in the bag. I hope it was obvious long before today that the 45th president of the United States would be Hillary Rodham Clinton. I hope I am either drunk or hungover, in a good way. I hope I no longer have to wake up in the mornings, from terrible sleep full of nightmares from all the traumas of this election, in a sweat, entering TRUMP into a Twitter searchbar, to see, What did he do now? I hope I no longer have to fight old acquaintances on Facebook. I hope I no longer have to block a half dozen trolls on Twitter daily. I hope all the little girls on Earth are thinking they can be president one day, and all the old ladies are amazed they lived to see this. I hope the Bernie bros are past their ire and the Trump supporters have snapped out of their insanity. I hope the media can focus on other things. I hope the world feels a few breaths calmer. I hope we never have to think about Donald Trump again.

I am full of hopes because today, I am not happy. I’m writing this on the afternoon that Trump brayed, “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks! Although the Second Amendment people…maybe there is.” It has been a season of never-ending attacks, mainly misogynistic in nature, but stopping at nothing. The traumas have felt endless.

But, Dear Me on Election Day: for the next four—or hopefully eight—years, I will know it was worth it. Because all the greatest battles on Earth were hard-won, every revolution met with resistance, every movement unleashed tremors. I hope you are having a great day and resting easy for once—because like her, you earned it. I hope and trust we won—and that She’s With Us.

 


This article originally appeared in the October/November 2016 print edition of BUST Magazine. Subscribe today!

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