SARA WALDBILLIG
Opinions Writer

My love affair with politics started two years ago in a modest high school class, not at all where I expected passion to stir my heart.

This class was grade 11 history, where learning ideologies was love at first sight. During the past two months of university I have begun eating, sleeping and breathing politics. If politics were not being discussed I would bring it up. From my modest beginnings in high school I had fallen in love.

By the end of September, politics and I were going steady. In that month I joined debate club, introducing myself and then broadcasting that I was deeply passionate about politics. I made friends who had strong opinions about politics, who acted as the support system for my developing relationship with politics. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I found myself bouncing off to my political studies class and I just couldn’t get enough.

Politics was my lover — that annoying tag-along, puppy-dog partner, in that new relationship where one person is never seen without the other.

October brought great excitement, so much more than before! While I had been hoping for a federal election so I could vote for the first time and flex my newly developed democratic muscles, the election never came. Being practical, I welcomed the loss of this new experience knowing full well that politics and I would meet one day in that tantalizing vote.

“Politics was my lover — that annoying tag-along, puppy-dog partner, in that new relationship where one person is never seen without the other.”

I also knew that with our new relationship and the expense of this big step, I was not ready to meet the federal ballot. The municipal election would do and I knew that I was in for some prime preparation.

Politics and I had developed a bit of a careful but curious relationship. We had known each other for quite some time now and I was learning many new things about my lover as we exited the honeymoon stage.

I learned the flaws of my love’s electoral system and that my partner could not always be trusted. But in my curiosity, I threw caution to the wind. I learned about the people that support my love and what made my partner so interesting. I attended the councillors’ forum for my ward and got up front and personal with my love’s mannerisms. I attended the mayoral forum on campus and gained a deeper hope in the future of my relationship with politics.

Our relationship had blossomed and I could not have been more thrilled as I could not stop talking about my dates with politics. These forum dates were the icing on the cake as I longed for advance polls on campus.

The first day of advance polls, Oct 19, how could I forget the day, right after lunch, (though “they” say you’re never supposed to “do it” after eating, like swimming) I did what I hoped everyone else was doing. I voted.

The piece of paper, no different in many ways than the one you hold right now, was my power and I felt it. I filled in those circles, double checked, triple checked (there is always room for human error, right?) and then watched as a machine, of all things, ate my power. It munched it up, gave me a number and then I was told that this trustworthy machine would reveal the outcome.

How did I not know that the plurality would get in the way? I thought politics was taking this big step with me but it truly turns out my loving partner politics was not ready to make the change. Maybe in the civic form, politics was just not progressive enough. Maybe my partner was just scared? I said I would support my lover but I was betrayed. There was no change — we made no big step — and our relationship has stalemated. I invested hope but this hope has lead to a sad, hopeless heart.

Maybe I will court politics again soon but for now I must look to other things to fill my heart with hope.