I gave my life to this election. Are you ready for November 3rd? [View All]

I started writing about politics during the impeachment. At the time, I was working as a paralegal somewhere...I don't even remember where. By 2000 I was a teacher. I remember sitting in my basement apartment in Brookiline, an off-season warm wind billowing in through the porthole window, on Election Day, 2000. I took it all in for a couple of weeks and then wrote this:

"I will not be a part of that national amnesia. I will not forget what has happened these last few weeks, and I do not accept George W. Bush as my President. He is a fraud and a pretender, and he lost the election. I will pay my taxes, and if I am called upon to protect my country in a military crisis I will serve, because thankfully George W. Bush is not America. But he is not my leader, and I will spend the next four years resisting him and his work. There is a long road ahead of us. Those of us who love our country and dread what this process has done to the people's ability to determine their political fate must remain vigilant and angry for four long years. I am here, and I am ready. It has been said that America works best when we have a common enemy. For years we had the Soviet Union. If the Republican party warmasters and the arms-dealing corporations they serve have their way, we might soon have China. My enemy is George W. Bush, and I am not alone. Keep the faith. Tend the flame. Never forgive, and never forget. There will be a reckoning."

I kept my promise. I gave my life to this election. Almost 1,500 days of reading, writing, marching, speaking, thinking, planning, worrying, fearing...everything I had to give and more. My health is less than it was. My friends, the people I grew up with, have all gotten married and moved away. I had a thought about calling an old friend, any old friend, for a beer tonight, and realized after a bit that I didn't have one available.

Promises kept.

17 More days. 17 days out of almost 1,500. I'll be honest. There's a part of me that wants to quit. There's a part of me that says, whatever happens on November 2nd, I have done my share, I have bled my required quart, I started this fight in a lush life full of love and friendship and am greeting this last slog in the lonliest place I have ever known in my life, and the attention I gave to this fight is a large amount of the reason why I am where I am.

I fought a scorched earth campaign within my own crops. So it goes. Every day. Waking to sleeping. That's what the country needed, that's what the situation asked for, that is what was required. To repeat the answer I gave whenever anyone asked why I do it: "Somebody has to."

I am going to get up tomorrow and do it again. I will find that place within that demands obedience to the necessity and to the fight.

If we win on November 2nd, I will roar and bellow and leap, and then remember that we have won nothing but an opening towards the possibility of real victory, perhaps in my lifetime but no matter regardless. I will be here on November 3rd.

If we lose on November 2nd, I will weep, and sleep, and be here for whatever is required in the service of my country. I will be here on November 3rd.

I will be here on November 3rd. Will you?

On edit: I'm not asking for thank yous. I'm asking a question.