While swiping through instagram stories with a late-morning I need more coffee swiftness, I saw a story from a friend whose son voted for the very first time. There he was, with a sticker and pride shining through a 30-second square frame. I don’t know who he voted for or how the internal matrix of their life works, but if I had to take a hopeful guess, I’d say the Biden/Harris ticket. 

President Obama’s first term was the first time I voted. I was 18 with two jobs living in Brooklyn. I just moved back to my mother’s place for some reason or another, but felt this odd and true adult freedom that I still can’t deny to this day. I thought by the time I was in my 30s, I’d look back and think that I was just performing adulthood. But reality and growth tells me that maybe I was always just truly doing it. At 18 I knew why Obama mattered—outside of the necessary vision of a Black man in power, who could speak to me and so many Black other teenagers performing or truly in their adulthood with power and  grace, that made us listen like our own fathers were sitting us down for a conversation. Have HOPE. I couldn’t escape it, I read it on every screen and Brooklyn window too.