In which I meet myself on Election Day 2016

An exercise in time travel, blissful ignorance, and self-therapy

As I prepared to go to the polls on Tuesday, I wasn’t thinking about Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. I wasn’t thinking about my baby or my grandmother or my friends or my neighbors. I was thinking about the version of myself that jumped out of bed on the morning of Tuesday, November 8, 2016, ready and willing excited to vote for the candidate who I was almost positive would serve as the first woman president of the United States.

Maybe it was wrong to be focused on that person more than anyone in my present-day reality—and maybe HRC was and continues to be flawed, like all of us—but it was that girl I felt for earlier this week. I call her a girl because that’s who she was. She wasn’t dumb and she wasn’t naive, but she had a lot to learn and figure out. In the eight years since, we’ve learned and figured out some of it, but there’s plenty of room to grow.

In November of 2016, that girl quite literally leapt out of bed and promptly began playing “Sister Suffragette” on repeat. She had plans to be at the polls early and to meet up with a friend for the afternoon, which would roll naturally into an evening of Thai takeout and watching the returns as a group. She was from a place where people leaned conservative and didn’t necessarily love Hillary Clinton, but she’d spent all of her adult life in liberal cities and circles, which had reinforced her belief that everything Donald Trump was selling was trash and that most people would feel the same way.

You know how the story ends.

And while I was (sadly) not surprised even in 2016 by how things went with the election, I really like the version of myself that woke up with ample optimism that day. When I rolled out of bed this past Tuesday, I missed her, and I hated that the events of the last eight years have so drastically altered my perspective.

Yet again, you know how the story ends.

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Currently Reading: Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi

I had high hopes that I’d be getting a lot of reading done this week, but alas, that has not been the case. I’ve declared tonight a screen-free evening in hopes of getting into a better flow with Little Rot, though, because it’s beautifully written and a total departure from what’s happening IRL.

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As I continue to process where we’ve landed as a country after a major (and majorly scary) crossroads, I think there is plenty to grieve. I grieve the trust that many of us had in our national systems and in our peers, and I especially grieve for people less privileged than I who will more directly bear the weight of these results. I also grieve all over again for that twenty-six-year-old in her tiny Brooklyn apartment, prancing around and singing her heart out to an old Mary Poppins number.

And so, I turn to a little slice of therapy methodology that I’ve actually never tried before (though it’s been suggested by my therapist a number of times): a writing exercise in which I pretend that the me of today can be in conversation with the me of Election Day 2016. I’m not quite sure where we’ll end up, but let’s give it a try. As with everything else, we’re in it together.

Let’s do some time travel, shall we? It’s 6:00 a.m. on the first Tuesday in November of 2016. The apartment smells like summer rolls and boba tea from the restaurant downstairs. The vibes are immaculate, even though we’re not talking about vibes very much yet. Let’s meet that girl.

(Maybe she looks a little something like you in 2016?)

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Alli, 2016: It’s the day we’ve been waiting for! It’s here! We’ve gotta put on our best oversized sunglasses and Chucks and ELECT OUR FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT!

Alli, 2024: You seem pretty confident. Are you that confident?

2016: I mean, not as confident as a lot of our New York friends. We know how it is back home. But there’s no way people are actually going to take him seriously.

2024: Since when are you such a fan of Hillary?