I’m not gonna lie, the past few weeks have been tough.
My part-time salon job fell through and I’ve been both looking for another one and fretting over how I’m going to pay the bills. My cyclical depression was in its “on” cycle and taking its toll. I found a weird mole growth and have been dealing with the anxiety over that (while yes, also asking my primary care doctor for a referral to a dermatologist like a grownup). Before the end of my job, I was worn out working 6 days a week between my internship and paid work, but even after leaving the job, I still didn’t feel rested. The weather for most of July was oppressively hot - making it harder to enjoy the outdoors, leading me to question why I left DC if the CT summers would be just as bad, and provoking yet more anxiety about climate change.
And an ever-present layer on top of this was the news. A series of horrible Supreme Court decisions stripped away the ability of the government to function and set regulations while giving presidents immunity for crimes under the flimsiest reasoning. The presidential debate in late June filled me with dread about President Biden and whether he could win in November. For weeks after, the steady drumbeat of stories about Biden’s age followed and the polls looked dire.
At first, I was hesitant about Biden dropping out, especially as some of the loudest voices calling for change on the ticket were major donors. I was worried that Biden dropping out would lead to chaos just months from the election and possibly wealthy donors pushing for a candidate who wouldn’t be as aggressive as President Biden has been on issues like labor and antitrust law. But I saw the polls, and I watched him speak at events where, even though he didn’t struggle as much as he did during the debate, he just couldn’t quite put my fears or those of others to bed. I started to worry that there might not be any good options - either that Biden would stay in and lose, or that he would drop out and Democrats would tear each other apart in the chaos.
One of the things that makes anxiety particularly hard is that it can be difficult to tell what is a real threat that I can and should take action on now, what is a serious situation that I can’t actually control, and what isn’t a real threat. Our bodies don’t know the difference and any of the three can provoke an anxiety reaction. Anxiety evolved as a response to “holy crap, you need to run right now or you’ll be eaten by that lion” even though sometimes the lion was actually just a weird-looking plant. So it goes in the modern day too. And one of the downsides of working in politics for so long is that it gave me the feeling of being able to control, or at least help, a major system that could do so much good or so much harm. This summer, on the outside, I felt immense relief at not having to deal with the day-to-day drama of “will Biden drop out or not?” but also helpless to do anything at all to ease the anxiety.
I was drafting this piece in my head for a little while, and before last Sunday, it was going to be about trying to at least set aside the anxiety for a little while and find joy in other things. And after too long wallowing in that anxiety and “doomscrolling” (a useful term a journalist coined during COVID to describe spending too much time on social media looking at bad news and other people’s fear), I did find a few ways to do so. A dinner out with my dad and sister. A float tank visit for a break from the stress and my phone. A Zoom call with a beloved professor and hearing his stories of fighting the good fight in equally dire circumstances long ago. My internship supervisors telling me I was doing a good job. A prospect for a new part-time job that pays even better than the salon with potentially better hours. Hiking in Lovers Leap State Park with my little buddy during a rare temperate July day.
And then on Sunday, July 21, I was lying around watching YouTube when I got a text from my friend Laura: President Biden was dropping out of the race. Not long after, she texted again that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.
I was stunned and overjoyed to see the rush of enthusiasm for VP Harris, and I felt it too. My worst fears about replacing Biden hadn’t come to pass at all, and instead it was the best possible outcome. A younger, more energetic nominee who shares the values that makes Biden a good President and could do a better job of telling the public all about it. A former prosecutor ready to go up against a man convicted of 34 felonies and counting. A woman who understands the importance of protecting the right to choose and who could finally break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, the one we thought we’d break in 2016.
I’ve had about a week now to look at the polls, and it’s a very closely contested race. Most polls previously showed Biden losing but are now just about tied, well within the margin of error, nationally and in the most important swing states. That’s nervewracking, and even if the polls get better, I’ll be nervous until Election Day. (I lived through 2016, it’s in my bones now.) But tied isn’t a loss. Tied is in the fight. Tied is the possibility of future events (like, say, Trump chickening out of the debate or being sentenced to actual prison time) pushing a tie to a win. Tied means it’ll really matter when one campaign is a well-oiled machine and the other is a slush fund for the candidate’s many legal bills. Tied is “let’s go knock doors, make calls, talk to our friends and neighbors, get out the vote, and make sure we win.”
And that leads me to a different conclusion than the one I thought I was finding before last Sunday, the one about finding joy in other areas of life. It’s that despair is the enemy.
A sentiment I’ve shared with others a couple of times recently is that thinking things can’t get any worse is usually a failure of imagination. And that’s true, as things like Trump’s Gaza “policy” and the Supreme Court are seemingly hellbent on proving. But for a little while this July, I’d forgotten that the opposite is true too. Thinking things can’t get any better is also a failure of imagination. They can and do. Not often enough, but it happens.
And for those of us who care about building a better world not just for ourselves but for those who come after us - the political practitioners, the labor lawyers, the childless cat ladies who still love their families’ and friends’ children, whoever we may be - we have to do what we can to make things better. And when things get better without us, we have to be ready to seize the moment and do everything we can to build on it.
So I donated a few bucks to Kamala’s campaign. (Only $10, but seriously, I’m still unemployed for now.) I joined a national organizing call with Women for Harris to learn more about what I could do. And I’m going to fulfill my 34 by 35 goal of sending 35 pieces of mail by sending postcards to voters in swing states reminding them to get out and vote.
For better and for worse, the work to make a better world is never done. This week, that’s for the better. Let’s keep going. Love to you all.