She’d Better
aka “Why I Wept Like a Lost Baby Reunited with My Family During the DNC” — aka “Sometimes Hope Feels More Like a Scandalous, Reckless Affair” — aka “We Are Survivors of Psychological Warfare”
She’d better talk policy. At least 5%. She can’t be all hype.
She’d better say, ‘Gaza.’
If not her, who?
She’d better know I’m simmering.
Nervous for her. Hardened. Cold. Head full of static.
She’d better be sharp.
That’s my worry as I tune out the split screen: some white guy muttering about gas prices while Chicago’s South Shore Drill Team twirls, half-hidden.
I roll on my exercise ball — playing video games and watching news clips — trying not to feel.
She’d better say more than Walz, I tell my husband.
He says he can’t stand to watch.
I’m tired, but waiting. She’d better name something real.
And then — Kamala arrives in my living room.
She begins, and I feel it.
She’s talking.
She’d better know what this means.
And then it hits — she’s talking to me.
Not just words. Something deeper.
A gut punch.
I’m weeping before I can stop it.
Then sobbing — rocking on my exercise ball, head between my hands. Full-body crying. Guttural. Desperate.
Like a lost baby, found. Except I’m an adult — a psychological prisoner of war being told:
“The siege is over. Help has finally arrived.”
Help has arrived.
And my body unravels.
Years of tension, anger, and betrayal buried so deep I forgot how much it hurt.
The tears come, not because I’m healed, but because it might be safe — for now — to let myself feel the scars.
Safe, for now, to feel again.
But hope — hope is dangerous:
a foolish affair I swore off long ago,
yet here I am again.
The intoxicating rush,
the fear of betrayal,
the memory of past heartbreaks —
all wrapped in one overwhelming emotion.
As a kid, I loved the Fourth of July:
Flags and fireworks,
the sharp edges of patriotism.
But I grew up and saw
how those symbols became
weapons —
against people like me,
against us.
They always were.
Something shattered
and hardened
deep inside.
Now, Kamala stands before those symbols —
not just invoking, but reclaiming,
liberating, holding them accountable
to their promise.
She’s naming the things others won’t:
Gaza,
policy,
hard truths that make politicians squirm.
Not everything,
(hardly enough)
but it’s a start.
Hope claws at me again.
Dangerous — because I know what it’s like to be let down.
But help has arrived.
Still, I brace for it.
My tears — heavy, carrying decades of disappointment, anger, the armor I’ve worn to survive.
But now, the cracks show.
And it’s safe. Safe to feel how deep the wounds go.
Safe to touch them.
Safe to weep for everything I couldn’t let myself feel.
This moment feels precarious —
like standing on the edge of a cliff,
tempted to jump,
terrified to fall.
She’d better know that for people like us, hope is heavy.
It carries history.
It carries fear.
I think of my great-grandparents — Japanese Americans locked away, stripped of their homes, their dignity,
Bracing
for betrayal,
even when the gates opened.
And here I am,
generations later,
still bracing.
Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Yet here she is. Kamala.
“Help has arrived.” The words seep in as my tears fall.
We’d better know Kamala isn’t just a symbol. She’s not a hero.
She’s a generational signal — reminding us of our power.
Because we’ve all been living like prisoners, holding back our love, our joy, our creativity.
Surviving, not thriving.
Something shifts within me in her words because, for the first time in years, I believe it: “Help has arrived.”
Hope, that reckless affair, has returned.
She’d better know how grateful I am.
And she’d better know — we’re ready for this.
