When Politics Pounds Like a Headache: A Queer Black Man's Anxiety in Election Season

Election Anxiety, Gay, Black, Writer in the storm.

I'm sitting in my room in my robe, headache pulsing—a metronome of pain keeping time with a country that can't find its rhythm. The weather changed overnight the way America changes its mind about who deserves dignity: drastically, without warning, leaving bodies to adjust or break.

My head hurts. But it's not just the barometric pressure. It's the political pressure, the weight of living in a nation that keeps choosing chaos like it's salvation, keeps picking comfort over courage like it's wisdom.

My mind races this morning. Races thinking about Kamala Harris and her book—that confession dressed as memoir, that admission wrapped in ambition. Getting closer to election day here in New York City, where I'm hopeful for Zohran but nervous as hell, because polls are prophecies written in disappearing ink. Who are they polling anyway? The same people who said Hillary would win? The same oracle that promised us anything but this nightmare?

You read about your candidate leading by miles, then boom—they lose, and you're left holding hope like a receipt for something you can't return.

My anxiety clings tight to my pounding head, a familiar lover who never leaves when asked.

Breathe, I whisper to myself as I type this out to you—all four of you who stumble upon these words. No viral moments here, no algorithm blessing my truth. But maybe one of you needs to hear what this queer Black man is feeling. Maybe one of you understands that sometimes the most radical act is admitting the headache won't stop, but you keep writing anyway.

The Kamala Confession

Kamala Harris's new book fucked with me the way truth does when it arrives uninvited to a party you're already struggling to enjoy.

Of course I voted for her. Of course I love her—the way you love family who disappoints you but you can't quite disown. Y'all know I became an independent not because I disagreed with Biden (he was fine, like a C+ on a test where we needed an A+), but because the Democratic Party has no balls. No low-hanging, fearless, take-a-risk-and-mean-it balls.

They play politics while Rome burns. They focus-group their fury. They calculate their courage like it's a stock portfolio they can't afford to lose.

I'm ready for a fighter. I'm tired of negotiators who think compromise with fascism is diplomacy.

You also know I'm sick of old white people running this country—not because of their age or their melanin deficiency, but because they keep choosing preservation over transformation, keep picking the devil they know over the angel they're too scared to believe in.

And the Republican Party? I dislike them even more—a collection of cowards cosplaying as patriots, worshipping a golden calf with a bad spray tan and worse intentions. Y'all know I can't stand Donald Trump. YUK. Just typing his name feels like inviting rot into my mouth.

I remember when Bush was president, thinking, "Yeah, I don't agree with his views, but he's not evil." I never disliked him the way I dislike the orange monster currently building a ballroom of sycophants—tech giants and billionaires kissing his feet like he's a king instead of a con artist who stumbled into a crown.

Whew. Who would've thought this artistry would turn toward politics? But rage has a way of finding language when silence becomes unbearable. My feelings swim in my body while anxiety continues knocking on my head like an unwelcome guest who mistakes persistence for invitation.

When We Betray Ourselves

Back to Kamala—who admitted, in black and white, that Pete Buttigieg was the best candidate for VP. The most qualified. The sharpest. The one who could've elevated the ticket beyond optics and into excellence.

But she didn't pick him.

Because he's gay.

NO BALLS. Yet again.

She thought for us instead of trusting us. Made the same calculation that's been made against Black folks for generations—"I'll never win if I pick someone too Black, too different, too much." The math of mediocrity dressed as pragmatism. The politics of fear masquerading as strategy.

And here we are, doing it to ourselves. Doing to gay people what was done to us. Recycling oppression like it's inheritance. Choosing electability over excellence because we've been taught to think small, to play safe, to never demand the greatness we deserve.

WHEW, Lawd. The irony tastes like rust and broken promises.

This party needs to be shocked the fuck up—needs to be shaken until the dead weight falls off and what remains is something worth believing in again.

America, the Beautiful Disaster

The system isn't working. Or maybe it's working exactly as designed—built to exhaust us, to make us so tired of fighting that we accept scraps and call it progress.

Will we ever learn? Or are we doomed to repeat this loop: hope, betrayal, outrage, exhaustion, hope again—a cycle as American as apple pie and broken promises.

But then—

Zohran Mamdani.

Running for mayor in this city that never stops moving but can't seem to move forward. And for the first time in years, I feel something other than dread when I think about politics. I feel possibility.

Mind you, Bernie's been doing this work. AOC and the Squad—Rashida Tlaib with her unflinching honesty, Ilhan Omar refusing to shrink, Ayanna Pressley redefining representation, Cori Bush speaking truth to power like it's prayer, Jamaal Bowman and Summer Lee carrying torches in rooms designed to extinguish light. They've been fighting while others have been fundraising.

I don't want to overlook that. Shout them out—these radicals who had the audacity to believe that democracy could mean something more than a box we check every few years.

But Mamdani feels different. Mamdani feels like an answer to a question I've been screaming into the void since I was old enough to understand that hope and heartbreak are twins in this country.

The Revolution in My Robe

So here I sit. Head pounding like a drum keeping time with injustice. Weather shifting like a metaphor I'm too tired to fully unpack. Anxiety swirling like smoke I can't escape.

Watching a country choose fear over progress. Watching my own party choose optics over excellence, strategy over soul, electability over the very people they claim to fight for. Watching queer people and Black people get used as political chess pieces when we should be treated like the kings and queens we've always been.

But maybe that's the point.

Maybe the headache isn't just the weather—it's my body rejecting a system that was never built to hold me. Maybe the anxiety isn't weakness but wisdom, my body's way of saying what my mind already knows: we can't keep doing this. Can't keep choosing safety over substance, comfort over courage, the candidate who polls well over the candidate who is well.

The Democratic Party wants to play it safe while the world burns, content to rearrange deck chairs on a sinking ship and call it leadership.

The Republican Party wants to burn the world and call it patriotism, wants to make cruelty great again and wrap it in a flag.

And here I am—a queer Black man in a robe with a headache that won't quit—knowing that the revolution we need won't come from people who think like them.

It'll come from people like Zohran. Like the Squad. Like every person who's been told they're "too much"—too Black, too queer, too radical, too young, too idealistic, too uncompromising, too loud, too proud, too free—and decided that "too much" is exactly the dose this country needs.

So let my head pound. Let it be a metronome for change, a rhythm section for revolution.

Let the weather change—I've survived worse storms.

Let the anxiety knock—I stopped answering the door for uninvited guests.

I'm not backing down. Not playing small. Not choosing the safe candidate or the polite opinion or the comfortable lie that sounds like progress but tastes like betrayal.

I'm choosing the truth. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Because the only thing more painful than a headache is watching your country choose mediocrity when greatness is standing right there, hand raised, ready to serve, waiting to be chosen.

And boo, we're tired of waiting.