and the first in a series of posts about the candidates themselves.
I fell in love with Hillary Clinton during the 1992 presidential election. I hadn't been out of college long and was just starting my career, as well as a serious romantic relationship with my now husband. Although I could tell Hillary and I had our differences (I've always wanted to stay home and bake cookies more than be a partner at a law firm), we were both highly-educated, intelligent, strong, fiercely competitive and extremely ambitious women. Hillary was not only like me, she was like the female friends I surrounded myself with as a young adult: doctors, lawyers and businesswomen who were smart, driven, practical and not to be trifled with. When Hillary got crap for saying she wasn't some Tammy Wynette standing by her man, I thought, "You go, girl! I can tell you're not, and you tell the media to get out of your face."
Years later, during the scandalous days when the details of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky were published in the government-funded porn of Kenneth Starr's Whitewater Report, I was horrified and angry on a number of fronts. I had no idea at the time that my husband was a sex addict, but like so many people, I reacted to the story at a very visceral level.
I was angry that Bill Clinton would waste his time on Monica Lewinsky when he had an intelligent, beautiful life partner like Hillary beside him. I was furious because he represented all my fears about men: that the most important thing to all of them was a cheap thrill, that they'd act nonsensically stupid and risk everything over anyone who was willing and eager enough for sex, that they were all sexist jerks at heart, that none of them could be trusted.
I was angry at Monica Lewinsky for being a silly, selfish little girl. Since, I believed, no (straight) man on the planet could keep it in his pants when a woman offered sex, it was the responsibility of women to protect each other by acting as moral gatekeepers and not to offering. And I saw Monica Lewinsky as too ridiculous and irresponsible to do this.
I was angry that our government spent money investigating the President's sex life and then gave the findings over to tabloids to splash across the headlines and to late night talk show hosts to mock. I was absolutely furious that anyone thought that Bill Clinton's personal life made him impeachment worthy. He may not have been justified in lying to his wife, but he damn sure was justified in lying to everyone else, because it was none of anyone else's damn business. I'd have lied too.
And above all, I was angry at Hillary. Fine, she had tried to make her marriage work before, but this? This was so degrading. For her own sake and the sake of all women, now was the time to take a stand, wasn't it? I wanted her to file for divorce. I wanted her to kick Bill out of the White House with nothing but his presidential briefs (or boxers) and make him sleep on the White House lawn. I wanted her to be (what I thought was) strong and humiliate the life out of him. I wanted to point to that and show my husband what would happen to him if he ever did the same. But she didn't. She stayed there bitter and angry and visibly hurting, but she stayed. Damn her.
Years later, I found out my husband was a sex addict, and the whole Clinton scandal appeared in a new light. I saw that things hadn't played out the way I thought they had, and people weren't who I thought they were. And gender roles and relationships weren't what I believed. I had a new image of their complexities and humanness. I had a new compassion for all of them. And a new feeling of connection.
During those early days, when I felt so very, very alone, the person I felt closest to on this planet was Hillary Clinton. My husband's personality and the ways in which he acts out are very similar to Bill Clinton. He's charismatic and charming and has a deep, endless, aching need to be loved by everyone. It was a kind of acting out, a sex and love addict's acting out, that the women in my S-Anon group (who were primarily partnered with strict sex addicts) didn't understand. And when the time came -- the time that I always swore I'd kick him out the door -- like Hillary, I stayed too.
When I felt at my darkest, ready to give up and plunge off a bridge, I'd think of three people: my two kids who needed me and Hillary Clinton. I knew I could make it through this pain to some better place, because I knew she had. I knew that, like me, she was smart and strong and driven. I knew that she had been hurt just like I had (God! There was someone else on this planet who had been hurt like I had!), and more than that. She had to go through it all under the bright spotlight of public scrutiny. She had to go through the humiliation and the questions and the pain and the uncertainty about what to do and where to go, all with the world watching and judging.
I used my image of Hillary in those early days to believe in and tap into my own strength. I saw her as water in the desert. I saw her as the beacon leading me toward my God. I saw her as my future, the me I would become: stronger and wiser and better than ever. I saw my strengths reflected in her, and I see my weaknesses. So, when people judge her, it feels like they are judging me. When people criticize her, it feels like they are criticizing me. When people hate her, it feels like they are hating me. (I had to stop listening to election coverage months before she left the race because it was too personally painful.)
But when I heard her speak, she was speaking not just to me, but for me. And when I voted for her, it was like voting for me: not just for the ideals I cherish or the policies I support, but for my own triumph over pain, my own hope and my own gratitude for what her existence gave me in my despair.
18 comments: