roller coaster

A week before the election, my grandfather died. They found him lying dead in his kitchen, already much too late to bother with an ambulance. He was 86. I was saddened by the news mainly because he had never gotten an opportunity to meet his great-granddaughter.  Regret, sadness, disappointment.

On election day, I finally had the opportunity to read David Lipsky’s profile of David Foster Wallace in Rolling Stone.  The depth of his depression, the severity of the despair that he knew that final year was simultaneously devastating and heartening.  Devasting because the portrait was vivid enough to allow one to experience one’s own despair and sadness, one’s own insecurities and recriminations along with Foster Wallace’s own.  But this same vividness provides some solace for those of us who were, mysteriously, moved by David Foster Wallace’s suicide.  He did what he thought was best to end his suffering.  It wasn’t an irrational, impetuous act.  Rather, it was the rational decision of someone who, having tried everything, could see no other end to the pain.  I came away from reading this feeling emptied and ennervated.

The next morning, as the returns began to be counted, I learned that Obama had won the election.  For the first time in my life, the person I wanted for President won.  I have only lived within the confines of the Republican ascendancy, by which I mean the period when they have dominated the public sphere, setting the terms of debate and deciding whose ideas and which ideas are legitimate, which ridiculed.  In every election cycle, the progressive candidate, always my preference, has been rejected.  Obama is the first candidate, and the first President, that I can honestly say shares my values.  Elation should have been my reaction, but I couldn’t quite allow myself into that emotion.  It was a glorious victory, though.