I'm So Tired

HAVING HOPE IS exhausting. Hope is more exhausting than hatred, because at least vitriol is a feeling that is often rooted in an objective thing or person. Hope is more exhausting than sadness, because sorrow is the feeling that succeeds unfulfilled hope or ignorance. Sadness is a reality check, an unwanted confrontation that one's desires and needs will not be met, and more so, that those same desires and needs will be actively put down and infringed upon.  

I had hoped that the next four years in this country would be of mending some form of normalcy, that it would be an ushering in of new ideas and a more relevant, tapped in perspective from younger leaders. I had hope that, despite all of the hateful rhetoric, all of the blatant misinformation, all of the ugliness that came from Trump and the Republican Party, that, like in 2020, the American people would choose sanity over MAGA. I was clearly wrong. I underestimated the American people and I particularly underestimated Gen-Z men. I didn't underestimate them because they, in the end, chose to do the right thing. No, I underestimated their ability to consistently make the wrong decisions, to strip away women's rights, to deport countless families, to support a convicted felon, to back a predator, to idolize a rapist, to look their own mothers, daughters, and sisters in the eyes and confidently say they voted for Donald Trump, a man who will do everything in his power to make sure that all of his supporters look like fools in the end, because that's exactly what will happen. Everyone who voted for him thinking that he will make your life better, that taxes will go down and that the economy will boom, you are all sorely mistaken. Trump will make a mockery of you because he knows how naive, brainwashed, and impressionable you all are, and when he proves to you that he does not, in fact, support the American people, but instead supports himself and the obscenely wealthy, I hope that you won't be too proud to realize that you were wrong, that you were wrong this entire time, that you are responsible for all the terrible things that will come to fruition very soon. 

I wish I could say I’ll feel some satisfaction from watching him ruin your lives, but even my own pettiness won’t let me do so. The repercussions of this election are too great to feel anything other than profound fear. Project 2025 was never a joke or a fleeting thought. Everything that was said, everything that was put to text, everything that is now marked on our phones and laptops and TV screens, all of it will happen because Donald Trump just needed one more win, one more term to lay out the foundations of bringing down Democracy. I know there are a lot of people who think it’s hyperbole to say that Trump will be a dictator. I wish it was hyperbole, I wish it was an unwarranted panic, but it’s not. This isn’t speculation, these are things the man has said himself, things that are in the public domain, a simple Google search away. What scares me more than anything, however, isn’t that there are a good portion of voters who don’t believe he will do the terrible things he said he’ll do, but that there are even more voters who want him to do those things. 

So, hope is exhausting. I’m tired of being hopeful. I’m tired of waiting for a future that keeps being pushed back by my neighbors and peers. I’m tired of looking people in the eyes and wondering if they voted for a man who hates me simply because I exist. I’m tired of being so disappointed and so scared for my future, the futures of the women in my life, and the future of this country. To remain hopeful is to live every day like we will come out the other side better than we were before, regardless of what we are going through right now. That level of hope borders on blissful naivety, but there’s nothing else I can do. I refuse to accept this as our country’s conclusive downfall, even if all signs point to that being the case. I refuse to believe it because, despite how exhausting hope is, life would be so dreadful without it.