Lauren Agresti | While I was sleeping…

I’ve made a lot of good decisions this week. On Sunday, I bought some of those little floss fork things, which have thus far improved my flossing record by 100 percent. On Monday, I picked tea over coffee for my fifth caffeinated beverage of the day, effectively preventing a major coronary event.

But the best decision I’ve made this week, by far, was to go to bed at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night, bypassing any and all election-related coverage and festivities.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a pretty big fan of American democracy. I helped my friends register to vote. I voted. They ran out of English stickers at the Free Library, so I wore my “He votado hoy” sticker all day.

Pleasantly enough, this gave everyone the impression that I made a conscious effort to embrace America’s multicultural heritage. And when I woke up at some unholy hour on Wednesday morning, I checked the election results.

But I just wasn’t feeling this year’s presidential race. If there were a word to describe the feeling somewhere between “overwhelmed” and “underwhelmed” I would be that. I would be whelmed.

I was less excited than I could have been throughout the campaigns. I didn’t follow the news or the blogs or the endless hours of television discussing the candidates. I only watched one of the debates in its entirety. While I stood in the Palestra on Monday, mesmerized by Bill Clinton (who isn’t?), I was hesitant to cheer or wave a sign.

When it came time to cast my ballot, I stood in the booth for five minutes staring at the top line, fidgeting. The obligation to actually — you know — vote, made me feel uncomfortable. What should have been an empowering and electrifying experience was instead frustrating and disillusioning. Gary Johnson, you almost got me.

As the Eeyore of Election Day, I chose to keep to myself and not ruin it for everyone else. But why was it so difficult to engage myself in the election?

The answer came to me as I succumbed to the nagging urge to flip through the miles of Facebook and Twitter updates I missed while I was sleeping. Everyone was “so so happy” and “proud.”

I, on the other hand … wasn’t.

I could not be genuinely proud of an election that made me choose between a man who apparently keeps his women in binders and another who panders to women in needlessly sexual commercials that throw around “female voter” buzzwords.

I could not be proud to support the continuation of an administration that has failed to kick-start our sputtering economy, or endorse a new administration that offered no viable alternatives to help Americans at all income levels.

I could not be proud of two candidates who, together, spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.8 billion campaigning but fell short in igniting America’s civic spirit. The numbers are coming in and voter turnout is significantly down from 2008 in nearly every state.

Whether this makes me apathetic or just painfully moderate, I don’t know. Maybe this is what inevitably happens to all pro-choice, gun-owning, rural American feminists who grew up among evangelical Christians and now happen to be living in a city with some gays, but also some future bankers.

In any case, I wasn’t displeased by or ashamed of my vote or the outcome. I simply wasn’t proud. There was no champion here for me — just two dudes who seemed fond of interrupting each other, talking to me like I’m stupid, and making up a bunch of crap about what to do with Iran that amounted to “lol idk but that’s not good.”

I am proud of Maryland and Colorado and Maine and Washington state. I’m nearly bursting with pride for those voters who went to the polls and voted for something truly different — those voters who said, “Hey, marriage should probably be accessible for all people,” and, “Spending billions of dollars trying to control a relatively harmless substance that people use anyway kind of undermines the rule of law.” I’m overjoyed to live in a country that continuously offers the opportunity for that kind of forward progress.

However you feel about the outcome of democracy — or about democracy itself — just own it. You don’t have to be ecstatic. You don’t have to be angry. That’s the cool part. You get to decide.

And sometimes, all you have to do is nap it off and hope that Hillary 2016 is hiring in the morning.

Lauren Agresti is a College senior from Fulton, Md. Her email address is laurenagresti@gmail.com. Follow her @lagresti. “Piece of Mind” appears every Thursday.

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