Dread and Deja Vu

In which I want to be hopeful but, man, the last eight years really have been something, right?

Back in 2016, on the Saturday before the election, I sat in a Thai restaurant trying to focus on the rather important business lunch at hand but internally I felt the persistent and overly familiar nausea of an oncoming panic attack. It must have been pretty obvious because my dining companion asked me what was wrong.

I told him the truth: the election was really weighing on me and I had begun to fear that Hillary Clinton was actually going to lose the election to Donald Trump.

“Oh please,” he laughed. “She’s not going to lose!”

And here we are, eight years later and I’m feeling the same political panic attack burbling on my horizon, except this time it’s accompanied by something else: sheer exhaustion.