Dead dreams today. Bigger dreams tomorrow.

(Originally published 6/4/2008)

When I was ten years old my sister snuck into my room while I was singing "On My Own" by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald (of course I was singing the Patti parts). I had never seen my sister laugh that hard and, honestly, to this day, have not seen her laugh that hard since. The dream of my becoming a famous singer died right then and there. When I was in the 8th grade and passed out from nervousness while standing up at the front of the room of my Drafting class, I realized upon waking that I didn’t have the nerves to be a public speaker. So my dreams of being either a politician or an actor died on the spot.

Recently, I finally struck up the courage to speak with a guy whom I’ve had a severe crush on since moving to Chicago. After spending years asking around about him and building up in my mind everything from where we’d live upon getting married to the kind of parties we’d attend, I let several Vodka Tonics be my guide and walked right up to him at a bar. The conversation was awkward at best. How do you strike up a casual conversation with someone who in a parallel fantasy world is your soulmate? Our brief chat did not end with us exchanging phone numbers, much less taking the Red Eye to California for a hurried wedding. I walked away, my tail between my legs, and kicked the corpse of that dead dream under the closest bar stool.

It’s important to know when a dream has died, whether it’s one you’ve chased with blind ambition your entire life or one you’ve entertained privately while standing in front of the bathroom mirror. When those realizations occur, when you solidly know that you’ll never win the lottery, or play in the Super Bowl, or brush Cher’s hair, you have to step back and take a deep breath. A dream is a dream because a part of you believed in it. It’s important that you acknowledge when a dream comes and goes.

That being said, I am quietly closing the door on a dream I’ve harbored since January 2007, a dream that sent electricty through my bones, one that made me feel safe and secure and proud. It was a dream about hope and optimism and opportunity. It was my dream that someday Hillary Clinton would be my president. She told me via an internet video back on that cold winter day that she was "in it to win it." I danced around my apartment to the disgust of my roommate at the time, a devout Republican. Hillary was coming. Hillary would save us all!
In my short life as an American voter (I’ve only been eligable to vote since 1994), I’ve always gravitated towards candidates that I felt represented not only my views, but also myself. By that I mean candidates who, between the soundbites and opinions of pundits, were able to relay the message to me that they were like me, and in return would represent me and the ones that I love. Hillary Clinton’s biography seemed to better mirror mine and it spoke to me. She’s from a middle class family, raised in the suburbs, went to church most Sundays and played football and baseball with the neighbor kids. Like me, as she got older she began to question the world around her, asking the authority figures in her life why things like segregation and sexism existed. Hillary had the subtle sense of rebellion growing up that I had. Not to mention she spent the better part of her young adulthood in the state next door to the one I grew up in, that she was born in a hospital not far from where I currently reside, and she was rasied in the Chicago suburb just a few miles west of the one I work in now.

But unlike me, Hillary had a burning ambition that lit a fire underneath her, an ambition that led her far beyond the good fortune of simply marrying well. Hillary was the first student to ever give the graduation address at Wellsley college. She was twice named one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under the Age of 40 while First Lady of Arkansas. She was the first First Lady to hold a graduate degree. She was the first former First Lady to run for office. She was the first woman every elected statewide in New York. She has gotten closer to a major political party’s nomination for the presidency than any other woman in American history. More people have cast a vote for Hillary Clinton than for any other candidate in the history of American Presidential Primaries. More federal money and time were spent investigating Hillary Clinton over the years than was spent on investigating 9/11. Love her or hate her, the history books will never let you take those things away from her. A person that came from a background that I felt reflected mine and my values, someone who spent her whole life busting down doors that pulled people outside the status quo closer towards equality was within reach of the Presidency!
But alas, for lack of a better term (and I apologize, Senator Clinton), she was so close but no cigar.

And I don’t think all the Hillary-praising in the world can save her now. This dream is dead. It’s in my dead dream box wedged between being Courtney Love’s best friend and being able to sh*t money.

Symbolically, her candidacy made in itself an undeniable point. Because of her, my sister and my cousins and all of my friends can nudge their daughters and say, "See. Don’t let being a girl stop you from doing ANYTHING. See. You can be smart and strong and no matter how many people tell you that you’re not those things, that you’re only who you are because you saddled up to a good man, that you can keep walking proud and let that fire in your belly push you through ANYTHING. See. You can chose to speak your mind over giving in to your critics. You can face half the world calling you a hag, a shrew, a menopausal opportunistic talentless power-hungry b*tch, but, if you know that you’re not those things, you can stand tall and you can do ANYTHING."

Let’s face it. Little girls in this world have just about the roughest road. As soon as their eyes open every image in the world is telling them they’re not good enough. They’re fat. Their clothes aren’t as nice as everyone else’s. They’re worthless until the cutest boy in school or the more popular girls give them worth. There’s predators on every corner and on every website trying to kill them. Madonna said it best. "Strong inside, but you don’t know it. Good little girls, they never show it. When you’re trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less? Do you know what it feels like for a girl?"

Growing up gay in the south was no treat either, especially back in the days where the AIDS crisis made the evening news every night, way before "Will and Grace" or the LOGO channel, way before openly gay people could run for and win office. Feeling confused and lost and not knowing exactly what the hell you’re gravitating towards is a fate I wouldn’t wish on any kid. So remembering a bit about what that’s like, being a child and looking under every rock for a hero, I think about my niece. I think about her standing in the check-out line at the grocery store, Britney flashing her panties on one magazine, Lindsey doing drugs on another, Jessica Simpson showing off her new boobs on the next. I think about her listening to the radio or watching videos, where girls show them no other ways to get a boy’s attention than to be cheap and easy. And I pray to God that it’s not these messages her little forming heart latches on to.

I hope it’s the cover of Newsweek with Hillary Clinton on the cover that settles in her mind. I hope that it’s hearing the male pundits on television degrating someone that obviously scares the hell out of them, and that someone just so happens to be a woman. I want her to know that her mind and her courage, not just her body or her husband, can lift her to a similar place where men respect her enough to fear her. I hope that somewhere between Miley Cyrus posing with her shirt off and Jamie Lynn Spears giving birth at 16 that my niece noticed that for the first time (and hopefully not the last time) that a woman almost ruled the world.

So my dream of President Hillary is dead and gone. But the dreams I have for my niece are stronger and clearer now. And I proudly thank Hillary Clinton for that.

RIP Hillary Clinton for President 2008.