because i believe—perhaps naively, perhaps desperately—that i can still make a difference from here, in this gilded cage of bureaucracy and compromise, even as i feel myself being reshaped by it, molded into something more palatable, more digestible, more acceptable to the very powers i once swore to dismantle, and so i press on, day after day, vote after vote, speech after speech, lighting candles in churches i rarely have time to attend, whispering prayers i’m not sure anyone is listening to, all while signing bills that feel more like concessions than victories, and still, somehow, i hold on to this fragile, stubborn hope that change is possible, that i am still the same woman who once marched in the streets, who once believed that the world could be remade in love and justice, even as i sit in meetings with men who see poverty as a policy footnote and war as a line item, and maybe that’s the price of trying to live with integrity in a world that doesn’t value it, maybe this endless tension is the only home i’ll ever have, maybe this is the cross i bear, or the revolution i never stop fighting, or the prayer that never quite ends.