Imagine all the people living life in peace...

On Tuesday, November 4th, for the first time in my life, I was able to vote. I pretty much knew from the start who I was voting for.

I'm from the North and a very liberal area. I've always considered myself Democratic and even more fittingly, a liberal. In high school, one of my best friends was gay and many other teenagers were not afraid to come out. Everyone treated everyone equal, based on personality, not social or economic status, not by religion, and not by sexual preference. Moving to this new big state 3 years ago was a culture shock, when I quickly discovered that many people here, did just the opposite. Every morning I wake up and think how lucky I was to be raised where I was raised, and by who raised me. My mom is pretty much a modern day hippy, extremely liberal and I feel like I agree with her on a lot of political and social issues. I would consider my dad as more of a moderate. I'm not sure of his actual beliefs on every little topic, but despite what he may believe, he is respectful of other beliefs and I think that is one of the most important qualities to have.

Throughout the past few months, I haven't talked about who I was voting for. It was always in the back of my mind, but I'm a young college student with a very busy life, and in my day to day life, it wasn't important to talk about it, like everyone else seemed to be doing. On Tuesday afternoon, I drove 30 minutes to a little town in our precinct. I had decided not to change my address to the college, and thankfully I didn't, because on election day the line was 6 hours long. In my precinct, I only waited about 5 minutes (+ a few extra minutes because someone made a typo when filling out my address for voting). I filled out my ballot and was done. I voted for Barack Obama and No on a Ammendent 2. I didn't talk about it with anyone, I just went along with my day, like it was any other day.

That night, I had my house all to myself. Around 6pm I turned on the news and watched the results all the way until the new President was named (with a few episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8 thrown in between so that I wouldn't go crazy). At 11 pm, an announcement interrupted the news. Barack Obama was the new President of the United States of America. Then something happened that I was not expecting. I began to cry tears of joy, relief, and hope. Maybe this will really be the change that we all need so badly.

For me, the election did not go completely smooth. The next day my heart was broken when I found out that Ammendent 2 passed. So many people have just associated this with gay marriage, which I 100% support, but its so much more than that. It hurts to think about how anyone with a civil union have had so much taken away from them and I wish I had to power to just give it all back to them. My boyfriend and I never talk politics, but November 4th night, we talked about it a lot. He was raised, in terms of liberal/conservative, similar to me and we have a lot of the same views on that type of stuff. We both consider often, if it doesn't apply to us, why should we have the right to take it away from the people that it does.

That's about all I can say about all of this right now. My superfiscial world is calling, and I need to go get ready for a sorority/fraternity social... it shall be interesting

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one"