I'm nearing the light at the end of the tunnel. This is my last semester & gods
willing I will have my bachelor's degree by the end of May. I've even signed a
job offer; I'm supposed to fly to the city where company headquarters are
located the day after the commencement ceremony so I can attend an orientation;
hardly sooner than I had signed the documents somebody booked the flights &
hotel room. I feel like I have somehow conned my way into a ticket out of
financial precarity & dependence.
* * *
The return of U.S. general election season has brought time into focus in an
unsettling way; my first child was born in early 2016, & I returned to
university classes in early 2017 after having dropped out entirely for four
years, not to mention the personal developments of other folks at home, so I've
had the feeling that so much has been happening in my life that I don't have the
time to actually *experience* any of it. The lives of others are even further
beyond my grasp. I care about them & am moved by them but I can view them only
in glimpses.
I remember following the beginnings of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign before
he declared. I was in a very precarious retail job, struggling to maintain a car
that could get me to that job & pay the utility bills even after relying on my
relatives to help out with rent, & I felt like for once there was actually
someone willing to talk about reality on a national stage. I said in 2016 that
there would never be another moment quite like the campaign Bernie ran that
year, even if he ran again in 2020. I was right, but not in the way that I
expected. The Bernie 2020 campaign has been better, with a broader coalition &
more momentum.
All throughout 2016 I watched the resurgent growth of ethnonationalism with
horror. Brexit, Rodrigo Duterte, Richard Spencer. But since then time has so
outstripped me that it feels like I have been watching the last four years' news
on fast-forward.
