I am the lone female in a house of males. There are times this works to my advantage, like when I need someone to carry my overstuffed suitcase or reach a jug I’ve stashed on a tall shelf.

There are other times when being Hannah Solo is a lot harder. Like now, on the eve on an election, as I attempt to navigate and articulate the maelstrom of anxiety and hope and resignation and nauseous, cautious optimism I feel as a woman. That lump is lodged in my throat like a wishbone. Of course, the only thing I wish for, is for all of it to just go away.

I suppose it will, in one way or another. Yet that fact is enough to choke on all by itself.

---

The males are also sports fans. Over the years, some of their athletic aphorisms have wormed their way into my language and thinking. I haven’t yet found a use for the corridor of uncertainty, but others phrases have found a home in my decidedly female lexicon.

It’s the hope that kills you.

Whenever a favorite team or country unlocks some new sporting achievement, the males talk about not getting their hopes up. When your hopes are high, they have a lot further to fall.

Sometimes those hopes are fragile to begin with. Sometimes they plummet and shatter into a million, tiny pieces.

Like mine did in November of 2016.

If hope is, indeed, a thing with feathers, then in 2016, mine were held together with wax and like Icarus, came crashing down to earth.

It’s the hope that kills you. This is what I keep coming back to as I sit here, one day before an election that will reverberate not only around the United States, but the globe. From trade wars to land wars to the war on women’s bodies and the climate, there is an awful lot at stake. As I write this from Europe, we are being advised to stock up on food and water--just in case.

What is not being said explicitly there is just in case Trump wins, gives Putin the green light and the tanks go rolling into some of those bordering NATO countries.

That is only one reason for the twisting in my gut.

It’s the hope that kills you. Or who knows, maybe it’ll be Russian artillery this time.

---

I’ve been here before, of course. Standing on the precipice of history only to have some mangy Uncle Scar come along and shove that hope off the side of Pride Rock and laugh as it twitched and died on the rocks below.

Like many women in 2016, I had an umbrella ready to shield myself from the glass we collectively hoped would shatter as a woman broke through that last, hardest ceiling.

What I’ve learned since is that the ceiling isn’t glass, it’s reinforced concrete. And it’s not a ceiling as much as a never-ending series of obstacles. You get through one, there’s another. And another. And each one is coated in a crocodile hide of misogyny and guarded by groups of small men who listen to Andrew Tate and Kid Rock.

Yet still, in 2016 we hoped. Even though history was not on our side, we hoped. Throughout external and internal misogyny, overt and outright sexism, we hoped.

And for having the audacity to hope we were gut-punched and kicked in the nuts we will never possess. All for daring to hope that the country would elect a qualified woman over an unqualified man. A former secretary of state and Senator, a life-long public servant over a reality television star who bragged about sexual assault, who left his bills unpaid, and who personified the worst impulses among us.

So many of us didn’t understand then that those worst impulses weren’t something that needed to be overlooked. They were the main attraction.

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, I described the feeling to someone as getting kicked in the teeth. I felt like half a country was waiting behind a door, but instead of jumping out with a happy surprise and a cake, they clothes-lined me, stomped on my heart and spat out something that sounded a lot like, “Not today, bitch.”

I feel like we’ve been doing this dance my entire life, this begging and pleading of many women to be seen in our entirety. To be taken seriously. To be trusted and listened to. To lead, to follow, to elect.

And here it is 2024, eight years later, and we are down to the damn wire again only this time? This time he is even worse.

I don’t have the language or the capacity to describe my disgust, not only with the candidate, but with anyone who would vote for him, again, despite everything he has shown us he is, despite his own former aides telling you how dangerous he is, despite the fact that he cannot string together a sentence and acts like a 10 year old schoolyard bully, calls Americans the enemy within and fan-boys Hilter’s generals. Despite his plans to crash the economy with tariffs and mass deportation and appoint more boy-men in charge of things they have no business being in charge of.

Don’t take it personally?

I’m telling you, right now. I do take it personally. Every person who is not voting for him takes it personally, because more than ever, a vote for Trump feels like a giant fuck you to everyone else.

It’s the hope that kills you.

It’s the hope that there are enough people who understand not this fucking guy. Not him. It’s keeping the flame of that hope burning long enough to get through today and tomorrow and however long it takes to be told whether or not enough of my fellow countrymen and women have voted for a felon, a rapist, who has no plan other than revenge upon his perceived enemies, a fat old emperor in training with no new clothes. Whether once again the absolute worst among us will be elevated over an over-qualified woman.

It’s the damn hope.

I can’t bear to hope that there are enough people who recognize that perhaps Kamala Harris is not everything they want her to be but that by electing her, they are, at the very least, ensuring they can vote against her in four years. That the party of small “c” conservatism can be re-branded and reformed, just without this fucking guy.

I don’t want to hope because you know, that hope. It makes the possibility of defeat that much harder to bear. But without hope what is there? What are we left with?

So I’m sitting here, the day before the most consequential election of my lifetime so far, thinking of, of all things, football. Or more accurately I’m thinking of Ted Lasso. Because it was that affable figure head of non-toxic masculinity who implored his team not to give up hope.

Because it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s the lack of it.

If the worst happens, I will not be surprised, or at least not like I was in 2016. I will be sad, not just for the many people I know who have worked hard to get Harris elected, but for the girls and women who will be harmed, for the communities who will live in fear, for those whose rights have always been tenuous and will be even more so. I will be afraid, of what having a demented buffoon who likes dictators means for me and my family in Europe and the broader implications of global politics. I will be angry. I will be disappointed. I will probably be a little heartbroken.

But my metaphorical doors are all closed. You can’t jump out and clothe-line my hope again.

There’s also something I don’t hope, but know: that no matter what, the folks who believe in democracy, who believe in women’s rights, who believe in climate change and science, who believe in morality and tolerance, they don’t give up.

We don’t give up.

Because it’s not the hope that kills you. It’s not having any left.