This is my contribution to Project I'm Speaking, created by @MossIsQueer. https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/35895086/ My father says my mother pulled me into the booth in 2016. She said “I’m voting for the first female president of the United States.” I can picture her wide smile and the sparkle in her eyes. The next morning, the tiny glimmer of hope must have been snuffed out. Dousing a candle with water, telling it when it can burn when all it wants is to dance freely, to roar back after defeat. “Did she win?” “No. Donald Trump won.” It wasn’t until seven or eight years later that I took a bigger interest in the election, a vague understanding in my mind of abortion rights. When the election talk started, I began to dig into the internet, uncovering articles focused on women and the man set to appear on the ballot. My disgust deepened as I watched two old white men on opposite sides of a stage. Lies and insults flew across it, back and forth. And slowly anger turned to fear. Days passed, replacement on everyone’s minds. I ended up effectively driving away from the politics and to a sleepaway camp, where girls told others, “Biden dropped out.” “Kamala Harris for president!” And there was more discussion. Homophobia. “I don’t want to be illegal,” said one lesbian girl. Two weeks passed. By then, we had a new candidate. I knew what was within reach eight years ago. What was within reach even then. But it fell out of our grasp again. One of my teachers spoke often of a bucket of crabs, where they climb over each other to reach the top, almost make it out, but are pulled down. That’s half of America filling in that circle. Some unknowingly, some not. The news was accompanied by a numb sense of loss. Two women lost. 2016, 2024. I attended school as usual. A girl I didn’t know confided about moving to Canada. Not a joke, an actual action her mother was planning to take. “I just want to be in charge of my own body…” She, and so many others, shouldn’t have that feeling, the feeling that your country is no longer yours, that you can’t stay in it. Terror shouldn’t grip them, terror of being forced to leave, unfairly hated. But this is what America is becoming. And we need to stick together and support each other so we can stop it.
@MossIsQueer Does anyone have any title ideas?
