I cried like a girl.
I cried like a girl who, for the first time in more than two hundred years, woke up to a country that did more than just say that a woman has the right, the ability and the experience to run for the highest office in our land. I cried because it’s no longer just words and empty platitudes. It’s reality. She is there. She can run like a girl, fight like a girl and, I have no doubt, win like a girl.
I cried like my father, a lifelong Democrat, who worked his entire life to see the barriers that divide us be torn down and discarded. He wanted nothing more than to vote for Hillary, but he passed away two days before our state’s primary in 2008. He voted for every Democrat from FDR to John Kerry. (She won the first battle, Dad!)
I cried like my mother, a woman not far apart in age from Hillary, who witnessed something she never thought she’d see. I cried when I saw the fear and uncertainty in her eyes, that someone was going to try to deny this woman the thing she had worked, sweat and struggled for. That she would be denied the thing that she was not given, but the thing that she earned. I cried because that fear didn’t just appear. It was a fear she had lived, and she couldn’t bear to see it happen to another woman.
Then, I cried like myself.
I cried for eight years worth of work, of knocking on doors and calling strangers and begging them to vote. I cried for everyone of us who has gotten knocked down but refuses to stay knocked out. I cried for the fighters, the activists, for the people who do the unsexy work of shattering glass ceilings and ripping up sticky floors. I cried for the people who came before me, the gay rights pioneers who refused to accept that there was something “wrong” with us. That were were not deserving of the same rights as a straight person. I cried for the work we’ve done, and the work we have yet to achieve.
But then something happened.
I laughed.
I laughed that Donald Trump has all of us to answer to. His reckoning will come at the hands of the thing that he and his small handed and small minded ilk fear most: a multicolored, multigendered, multisexuality, and multicultural quiltbag of people.
He will answer to men who refuse to live in a country in which their daughters are not afforded the same rights as their sons. He will answer to women who refuse to allow hatred to divide us, when there is so much more that unites us. He will answer to Christians who say in a loud voice that he does not get to determine what religions are acceptable in this country. He will answer to straight allies, who happily march, with LGBT people to fight for the right of a transgender woman to use whatever bathroom she wants. He will answer to African and Asian Americans who stand side-by-side with our proud Latino/a Americans when we say “Basta!” to your bigotry. I laughed when I realized his wall was going to be turned into a ladder to better jobs, a secure retirement, and more affordable healthcare. I laughed when I realized each of us has the opportunity and obligation to deny this bigot another minute in the spotlight. And make no mistake, he will be denied. Because we will win. We have to.
And then I cried like a girl again.