Getting Me Back

It was AWESOME!! And I don’t mean “awesome” in the 80s surfer dude/valley girl alternative to “cool” or “neat,” but awesome in the way that the event I experienced today filled me with awe, thereby making the event itself awesome. Today was the El Paso County Democratic Party Assembly and Convention.

Now, originally, this was going to be all about that convention, and it still will be, but really, this is about my journey back to myself. Something had been missing from my life for some time. A realization that I haven’t been active in the things that matter to me for nearly a decade. Well, I was involved with my church, but that was back in Cincinnati. I haven’t gotten comfortable enough with myself here to go visiting other churches. So I guess technically, I haven’t done things that matter to me for almost 7 years. Hmm. Okay, so that’s nearly a decade. So be it.

Last night was the second night in a row I didn’t feel like I was about to die. That was a pretty nasty cold virus I had, I’ve been symptomatic for more than a week and I’m still only at about 75%. Because of my normal hours lately, with classes in the evening and nothing in the morning, I tend to get to sleep around 1:00 or 2:00 on a good night. It’s my natural rhythm, apparently. This morning, I had to be at the assembly/convention site at 8:00 AM. That’s morning. Not too much after dawn. Well, okay, more than an hour, but still, I haven’t seen dawn from that end for some time. My alarm was set for 5:50 and I had allowed for 27 minutes snooze time. That’s hitting the button three times for the mathematically-impaired. I forced myself out of bed and into the shower, forced myself into some decent clothes and comfortable shoes (excellent idea, as it turns out) and forced myself out the door around 7:45. Grabbed myself a sausage biscuit and headed downtown.

I wasn’t completely sure where I was going, so I drove probably a bit more slowly than the people behind me would have liked, but hey, there were two lanes, they could go around. Just as I was getting close to where I needed to be, I was quite clear where I was going. Hard to miss. There was a line of people around the building. Around the building. A school, that took up an entire city block. The line went from one corner, down the entire street, around the next corner, and nearly down that entire street. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to wait in that line for about 15 minutes, I had to find a place to park. Colorado Springs is a growing city, but it’s still small in many ways. For instance, I did park in a garage, just $1.00 for the day because it was a weekend. And you know what I noticed, what made me realize this city is still a bit on the small side? The elevator in the garage didn’t smell like someone’s personal toilet. Hmm. Need to work on that cynicism.

Back I go, walk a few blocks to the school and the insanely long line outside. In the cold. At least it had stopped snowing. Like others, I stood in that line and grumbled a bit, although not too loud, a woman about a third of the way up let me in with her. She offered, I didn’t ask. We inched forward, I think more for warmth than anything, and talked. And as I talked to this woman, this, technically, elderly woman, I realized that this was an historic event. That not only were we given a choice between a woman and an African-American (his father was from Kenya), but here we were, in Focus on the Family country, standing with a couple thousand of our closest friends, waiting to exercise our rights as Americans. Wow.

The rest of the day was pretty much surreal. There was a problem getting into the building, I don’t think anyone had really expected the sort of turnout we had. Colorado in general isn’t a particularly liberal state, and Colorado Springs, with 5 military installations, and the headquarters for Focus on the Family (see? I wasn’t kidding.), is REALLY not liberal. Funny, ‘cuz it did seem fairly liberal to me, coming from Cincinnati. Seriously. Walk around there, you’ll see. Because of the numbers, because of the growth of the county, and the exponential growth of the democratic segment, the El Paso County Dems were ill-prepared. Not their fault, really, I think in the past 20 years, you’d have had about as many people, if you added them all together over that 20 years. All things considered, they handled it well. And they’ll be better prepared for next time.

I found a seat on the aisle, realizing the Fire Marshall was obviously looking the other way, and listened. There were speakers aplenty. Sadly, waiting to get signed in I missed our Senator Ken Salazar, but I guess you can’t have everything. I did get to speak with a bunch of other people, people who understood it was safer to talk about religion than politics in this city. People who were just as excited as I was to be in a room full of people who were energized, excited, rarin’ to go. Ready to change the world. There were the Hillary folk and the Obama folk, and neither willing to concede to the other, but when it got right down to it, we were there together, united.

There were other things to take care of, more over-crowded rooms in breakout sessions for district matters, votes and such, and committees to chair, and somehow, I got elected to one. Granted, I had to actually volunteer to do so, but there were only 8 chairs and 13 candidates. I was the last one on stage to get a vote. And I think I got the second-highest number of votes. Again, surreal. I’m a delegate for the 5th Congressional District assembly, and the 5th Congressional District convention, and an alternate for the State Democratic Convention, held on May 16th and 17th. No birthday party this year.

And after leaving that meeting that took 10 hours of my day, 12 if you count the time it took to get out of bed and travel to the convention, that had me standing for extended periods of time, the first day out of my house since I got sick, and frankly, unable to stand for long periods of time any more anyway due to my kidney disease, I was high. Totally high. I hadn’t felt that excited about anything since I was the emcee at the Multi-racial Solidarity March in 1996.

I knew I was missing church, I remind myself every Sunday that I would be happier if I would just get myself out of bed and go. I even have one picked out. I forgot that I also enjoyed getting involved in the Democratic process. Not the party, per se, the process itself. And here in Colorado, it’s truly Democratic. Everyone had a say. Everyone. It was a mess. It was hot, it was tedious, it was at times boring, and people got slap-happy and a little rude. And what I saw leaving that place was a bunch of people who felt like, well, like they participated in something special.

I decided to go to my favorite sushi place for dinner afterward (no, I’m not telling you where, it’s undiscovered, and I’d like it to stay that way), and it was while trying to remember where to turn that I realized what had happened to me today. I’m going back to school, something I’ve wanted to do for some time, but hadn’t the courage. I’m getting an MBA in accounting. And I’m actually doing well. And now, I’m getting back to another fundamental piece of me, my political spirit. I’ve missed me. I didn’t realize how much until today. I’m glad I’m back.