Day of Hope

As I lie here in bed, the night that America has been told there’s a new commander in chief, I cannot help but cry. 

I’m lying in bed watching videos of cities, New York, Philly, Los Angelos, full of life. People coming together, masks and all, to dance, to sing, to celebrate. And most of those people are young. People my age. 

Let’s put politics aside for just a moment. In these last 4 years, the youth of our nation has suffered through relentless dispositions between what we are told is right and just. We’ve seen people killed by those we were told to trust as children. We’ve lost grandparents from a virus we were told to not worry about. We’ve fought for the right to love, to protest, to speak our truth. We grew up thinking these were our freedoms, part of the liberties they taught us in grade school. We’ve felt in the past 4 years, this nation has failed us. 

We grew up reading stories of war, riots, civil unrest. We were assigned book reports on dystopian worlds that too quickly resembled our own truth. We saw on live TV every night the anger and unfairness of the world around us. We noticed it, even when you thought we didn’t. 

So, tonight, to see my generation celebrating something we fought for, is breathtaking. We’ve received backlash for not voting, for not showing up, for being a lazy generation that had everything handed to us. 

I’m proud to have voted. Not so much because of politics, but because for the first time in such a long time, I’m proud to be a young American. I’ve seen my friends come together to have important conversations about voting suppression. I’ve watched videos of celebrities urging voter registration. At the pride parade, at the bars, before COVID, I could feel it brewing. 

The future was ours. 

I haven’t looked at the numbers yet but I know as soon as I see the percent increase in young voters from 2016 to 2020, I will be taken aback. For the first time in what I can remember, my generation fought as hard as we could to prove our voices mattered. 

I’m excited for my generation. We will hold our new head of office accountable. We will stand up to the system if it starts to fail us. And we will do it in our own way.

The youth of this country is the reason why I’m crying tonight. I’ve never felt so inspired. I can only hope that one day the rest of the world will respect my generation like we learned to respect each other.