There Is Still Hope

I carry within me a thousand quiet storms, each one murmuring its own grief, its own rage, its own sorrow—and I know, in this moment, I am not alone. I know you, too, are feeling it, all of us bearing witness to the same cruel truth. Perhaps, in time, I will have more to offer—more words that are clear, more thoughts that are useful—but for now, this is all I can say:

Tonight, America chose hatred. And in doing so, it has reminded me of a truth I cannot forget: this country has always chosen hatred. It has always cloaked itself in the robes of freedom, justice, and progress, selling itself as a beacon of hope to those willing to believe. But beneath that shining mask, the truth is cold and unmistakable: it was never about hope for all. It was a system built to preserve its own power, its own interests, and its own reign of oppression. Hope was its currency, its bait, used to lure us in, to make us believe that we could belong, that we could rise—while the very gears of the system ground down those who would never truly have a chance to thrive. And tonight, this bitter choice—this loud, ugly declaration of hatred—pulls the curtain back again, exposing the lie that a better tomorrow has always been just beyond our reach.

A part of me—the part that once clung to the belief that a better future was inevitable—feels crushed beneath the weight of this revelation. That hope, once a quiet whisper, is now a distant echo, slipping further away with each passing moment. Worse still, a darker part of me, the one that once murmured quietly, now speaks with unflinching clarity: What a fool I was to believe in it. It tells me there will be no better tomorrow. It tells me that such things are impossible—that what we have left is only endurance, only survival in a world that asks for nothing but our submission to pain and death.

To imagine a world unchanged—unyielding, unforgiving, endless in its cruelty—this thought suffocates me. It is a weight upon my chest, pressing down until I cannot breathe. It cuts deeper than fear, shaking the very foundations of everything I have believed, everything I have fought for.

But then, in the depths of this despair, I remember why I’ve fought. I remember that I was never fighting for my own tomorrow, even though part of me secretly longed to see it—longed to see that better future unfold before my eyes. And now that part of me knows I will never see it, that knowledge hurts more than I could have ever expected. But I know now: that future was never mine to claim. It was never what I fought for. I fought for something more.

We fight for each other. We fight not for a better tomorrow, but for each other today. Because as long as we are here, there is hope. It may be fragile, it may be fleeting, but as long as we remember that the truest essence of humanity lies in the fight for each other’s dignity, there is hope. Hope against those who would strip us of our humanity, who would reduce us to mere cogs in a machine that knows only death.

And in that hope, there is love—a love that transcends fear, a love that endures beyond the darkness. It is love for ourselves and each other that keeps us reaching for something better, something worth fighting for.

As long as that love remains, a better future can still be. Even if I never live to see it. Even if my role in this struggle is simply to make sure that hope survives, even if I only fight to ensure that the possibility of that future stays alive.

The truths of the human heart—our compassion, our connection—will never be extinguished, no matter how long the fight to erase it lasts. It will be hard. It will be violent. We will lose more than we can bear. But in the end, no matter how long it takes, we will always find one another. We are here for those who remember, for those whom the world has forgotten, for those whose names we will carry in our hearts, for those who will come after us, and who, despite everything, will still dare to dream of a world not ruled by hatred.

America has always been a system of power built on the backs of those it claimed to liberate. It sold us the dream of liberty, justice, and equality—the shining city on a hill, the land of opportunity. But these promises were always wrapped in contradictions, ideals upheld by systems of violence, exploitation, and exclusion. Built on white supremacy—on the backs of slaves, on the slaughter of indigenous peoples, on the suffocation of queer difference—it tried to convince us that it was hope, that it was a new world where anyone could rise. But that was never the hope of the people—it was the hope that served power, the hope that maintained oppression under the guise of freedom.

True hope is found in those of us who see each other, who stand together, who remember one another even when the world asks us to forget. True hope is in the fight for each other’s dignity, the struggle to preserve the humanity that no system can ever fully destroy. It is the hope of those who refuse to bow to the false promises of this broken system, who choose to see the world for what it truly is—a beautiful, fractured thing—and to act against those forces that would tear us apart by telling us that the world is only pain. In a country that claims to be the land of the free, the real freedom is found in our solidarity, in our love for one another, in our refusal to be divided.

That is the true promise. That is the true hope. The hope that, even when America’s systems of power fail us, we will remain. We will fight. We will reach within, to our hearts, and we will reach toward one another. And from that place—no matter how dark or bright the world may become—that is where the better tomorrow will rise. It is where it always has been.

This morning, the sun still rose. Despite everything, the sun still rose. And it reminds me, as Tolkien once said, that there is goodness in this world beyond the reach of evil. We carry that impossible goodness in our hearts—and that is why I have hope.

Don’t you dare let it go. Don’t you dare give up on it.

As an out trans person, I fought once to bring that goodness to the forefront of my being—and I will never let it retreat into the shadows. I refuse. That refusal is my first step in the fight. And I will fight endlessly to remind each and every one of you, to remind all who choose to hope by reaching for each other, that that goodness lives in you too. I will reach for it, always. And I ask you, with all my heart, to reach for me.

The destination has not changed. The road goes ever onward—it is simply longer, and darker, than we thought. But it continues.

I love you all.