“It’s voter fatigue,” my therapist, Dr. Tuttle, explained to me. Some people just get voted out.”
It all made sense. I was simply too tired of the constant voting.
I began my hibernation in the winter of 2023, when the articles started. I swallowed one New York Times Op-Ed About Biden’s Age and one Gen Z Is the Most Politically Disengaged Generation Yet, and was out for three days.
My year of Voter Fatigue would not be an act of self-centeredness; it would be an act of self-preservation. If I did not not vote now, I might never not vote again.
I came to crave the comfort of the election coverage, which assured me that millions of other people were equally disengaged. Not Reva, my only friend, who had no qualms with voting for someone who was currently courting full-out war in multiple countries. Reva had not grown out of the “Grandpa Joe UwU” stage of praxis that the rest of us had dallied with in 2012. I hated her.