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Eleven months ago, Hillary kicked off the primaries by winning New Hampshire on my 26th birthday. Glee would be an understatement of my mood that night. Not only was I watching my idol taking her first step toward the White House, but I had been caught off-guard by a surprise pajama birthday party thrown for me by my fiancé. Everything was in place. I was getting married and Hillary was going to be president; the future was going along in perfect accordance with my plans.
Six months later the woman who I’d been so sure of conceded the race to a candidate I’d barely bothered to read up on and couldn’t have cared less to support. And the man who I’d been convinced would be my husband for the rest of my life was nowhere to be found. I’ve always joked that Hillary and I were best friends who’d simply never met; in June 2008, we certainly could have commiserated like old pals.
On the bright side, I managed to restrain myself through the week of her concession and my non-wedding date without succumbing to a mental imbalance causing me to flip into stalking status. So sanity-wise, I’m probably in the clear. But then, it may have been that I was simply too depressed to muster a full-blown obsession.
In addition to the obvious heartache and shock of a broken engagement, I could not get over the fact that the future was not behaving as I had told it to. Hadn’t it been fate – real, live fate – that brought the most exciting election of my lifetime in perfect alignment with the year of my wedding? I’d been waiting to vote for Hillary Clinton for president since before I’d been old enough to vote at all, before it was even clear if she’d ever run. As the two party nominees droned on and on in ads and interviews about their marvelous and maverick-y plans, I made guttural noises in my throat and threw stuff at the TV. Plans. I told their televised faces exactly what to do with their stupid plans. See where plans had gotten me?
But between those first few weeks in June and now, something happened. In fact, a lot of things happened, both in my life and in the saga that was the presidential election. In neither storyline was there one moment when I realized my cynicism for the future was slowly turning inside out, but there was today. Today I saw that it was simply gone.
Watching 100,000 people in Grant Park create an enormous, living organ of patriotism and hope for the future, I could so clearly see the difference between making plans for the future and being a part of history. What happened in polling booths all over the US was history. And as I sat in my new desk in my new position watching the election coverage (because you can do that, apparently, when you have a good job and your own office), I could see that my own history has turned into something just as hopeful and worthy of pride.
I’d never imagined I could actually be successful, self-sustaining and happy being single; I thought I’d never understand people who hung American flags on their houses. Previous to the last six months of my life I’d assumed whatever plans I made for my future and the future of my world would always yield the best result, even if they didn’t work out. Just as I couldn’t have envisioned my excitement at seeing my own, original last name on a fresh stack of business cards, I was shocked to find how magical the words “president” and “Obama” felt rolling around together on my tongue.
The worst part of having my wedding cancelled so abruptly at the same time my hero’s presidential hopes began to crumble was that I completely lost faith in plans. Making plans had
