NaNoWriMo hits day five and I am at 8.5k. I spent most of last night in chat, running wordwars while looking at the results of the election coming in. I was so relieved to wake up this morning finding that the US (here I wrote “we” and backtracked, because no, I’m not an American, I never was, I’ll never be) ended up with the black man as their president.

(I never thought I would root against the first female candidate.)

I remember the last election vividly. We lived in a trailer park. It was just like in the movies, with these dingy, once white single-wides, four rows of them, creating a community that housed those unable to afford better. People came and went, friendly when they came, most of them leaving overnight, without saying a word.

There was our neighbour on the right, J.D. I never found out his full name. He was short, scrawny, with the sort of tan that seems to run deeper than the skin. He worked in construction, had lots of wrinkles, no front teeth, and apologised every time he swore so that I heard it.

His trailer, bizarrely neat, reeked of smoke, because he always seemed to have a cigarette in his mouth, even after he admitted he’d been coughing up blood. He told us the doctors wanted him admitted to the hospital, having found a spot on his lung. He refused, saying “Every day I live after ‘nam is a blessing, when my time is up it’s up”.

Those words are still my most vivid memory of him.

Our neighbours on the left changed far more often. For a while it was Mexican immigrants with a fondness for “cookouts”, where they lit two or three barbecues and rigged speakers to their truck, parked less than a metre away from our bedroom wall.

The first time it was kind of fun. The second it was tireding. The third, fourth, fifth? Not so much. There were others too, like the family with four or five kids, and trampoline in the space between their trailer and the next one over. Two bedrooms, five kids. You do the math.

Our landlord lived across the street, in a real house, as big as four or five of our trailers put together. When it was time for election he put up Bush signs in his yard, and outside the office where we paid rent. He had a Bush sticker on this truck, too, and on the lease there was a clause saying that he was not responsible for damage that were caused due to an act of God.

I suspect that the year of five hurricanes came in under that one, but I’m not entirely sure. I remember that too – how the TV kept urging people in trailer parks to go to one of the shelters downtown, but A. had to go to work, and I was stuck where I was, with five cats and a TV that upset me more and more. I went to pay rent, and the landlady tore herself away from her daytime soaps long enough to write me a receipt and tell me to seek shelter.

I still didn’t.

We were lucky. There were no trees around that could fall on us, and the thin walls held.

Back to election day, though.

A. didn’t want to vote. He said it didn’t matter. Bush would win anyway. There was no way Florida would vote democrat. I put on a red shirt and dragged him with me to the polls. I had no idea that red was the republican colour – socialists are red, of course the most left-ish option was red!

I was wrong, I realised, when we got there. I waited outside in my red shirt, showing too much of my pale stomach, because I accidentally shrunk it in the laundry. I had no ID, and thus wasn’t allowed inside.

It was November, but the grass was dry and the weather was hot.

He took me home before going to work, and I spent all day in front of the TV. I was hopeful. I had the Swedish naiveté. I believed that the Americans would know what was best for their country. As the results came in my hope was crushed, one bit at a time. Eleven states passed the ban of gay marriage in that election. I didn’t get a vote. I wasn’t American.

I’m still not American. But I have friends who are. I hope this change is a good one. And I can’t describe in words how happy I was when I woke up to a map that marked Florida in blue.