It's less than twelve hours until polls start to open, and I am terrified. The news keeps reassuring me that Obama has a sizable lead; that McCain would need to grab all the battleground states in order to win. But still, I worry. I worry regardless of the situation, but this election? It terrifies me how much is at stake.

In 2000, the first presidential election that I could vote for, I was living in a dorm and stayed up to watch the election coverage with other dorm mates. We watched the news in the den on our floor, and as the hours ticked by with polls closing but no conclusion, we waited. People left the later it got, but some of us stayed, myself included. I watched the talking heads try and make sense of the news, or lack thereof, and waited. It was my first real election, I was terrified of W., so I waited. And stayed up, all night long. Waiting.

I am terrified of that happening again, and I am more afraid of McCain now than I was afraid of Bush then. I hope that there's a decisive, Obama victory before midnight. Not just because I want to see the decision, and see it tomorrow night, but because I want an election free of lawsuits after the fact. And I want this country to try and heal, after being ripped apart for the past few months. But mostly, I want to have hope for the future.