Maggie Mu: Election Night Anxiety
I don’t seek out the news, but it comes to me anyway.
It’s the music I listen to on my way to school, a cadence of words in a British accent weaving a tune of numbers and votes, politics and policies. The silent morning air becomes filled up from the sound of the radio with only the whir of rubber wheels on concrete to serve as a backdrop.
Radio waves turn to the chatter of students in the halls, in the classrooms. Transitions between periods become opportunities for debate. I have minimal social media, and I have been staying away from the news, but information makes its way through the grapevine anyhow.
It’s the introductions to all my classes, lessons giving way to election updates, opinions and beliefs turning to the white noise I work to. It’s everywhere, making its way to me through secondary sources and words tinted with partiality. It finds me even when I’m not searching for it.
3pm. It is silent at last, but in this silence, my mind echoes. Stories and statistics, biases and bigotry – it spins my head as I think about it all.
Climate change. Police brutality. A global pandemic. The rise of the LGBT+ movement and the Black Lives Matter movement. Right and left. The legacy of a system created during a time in which “people” only meant white, property-owning men. The changes since then. And the voices, mine and theirs, clamoring to be heard, non-stop and sometimes speaking over each other. The weight of it all seems to tremble, sitting precariously on my generation’s shoulders. It threatens to topple.
Somewhere, someone is counting votes, marking tallies. Somewhere else, a person is scowling, snarling, how could he win? How could he lose? In homes and schools, others are praying, hoping, pleading. And here, I am watching the election through the filter of my friends, my classmates, my teachers. Seeing images shown through the light of a computer screen, hearing words spoken through the barrier of a mask.
As I head to bed, I wonder how many other filters I’m looking through.