It's Done.

I feel a little bit like Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings, when he's finally cast the One Ring into the lava and destroyed the evil power that has taken over Middle Earth. Instead of elation, he feels spent and tired. Maybe it's just that I came down with a cold immediately following the election, but I think that I'd feel this way (just not as congested) if I were perfectly healthy. It's been a battle being a liberal surviving the Bush years. Trying my hardest not to give in to cynicism and hate for the uber-right, and maintaining hope that sanity and goodness will prevail was not easy, and admittedly at times I failed terribly. But now that the end is near, now that we're Frodo and Sam clambering back from the precipice, waiting for the rescue we initiated to be executed, and to be delivered back to good, it's time to collapse into our relief. It's time to take a few days or even weeks to recover, to learn what the new reality means for us and to recalibrate how we interact with the world, what we expect from it.

Everything, starting now and solidifying on January 20th, with be different. Everything. Not just that we have a black president (which is remarkable and fantastic enough), but that, as Judith Warner talks about in her recent post, we have someone who speaks to all of us, who values intelligence and curiosity, pragmasism and consideration, who believes in the goodness of people and that we are all of worth. He's the president we've wanted, we've craved for eight years. And now that he's here, the joyous celebration that I expected has not come. It is a quiet and desperate relief instead. It's the reaction of the team that's given all they've got and survived, wrung-out, and needs to collect itself for the next game. But all the same, as I've been saying since they called it:

These are my Days of Jubilee.