Growing up in the 80s, I got my ass handed to me a million times as I struggled to find my way. I was a shitty dancer, never earning trophies. I lost more than one speech competition because I went over time and got disqualified. I tried out for volleyball and I didn’t make the team because the other girls who tried out were better.

Guess what? Not making the team did not ruin my life. Losing competitions did not crush my fragile soul. Has my adult life been adversely affected by having grown-ups tell my kid-self I wasn’t good enough and should find something different to try? It has not.

In high school, I wanted the lead in a play. I did not get the lead. I got a supporting role where I learned that memorizing lines is hard, acting is sweaty, and though I loved the stage, I wanted to try something different. So I wrote a play. And that led me to write short stories. And novels. And boom, here we are.

What is my point? My point is that learning to fail is what taught me to succeed.

And I wonder if some of these Bernie-or-Bust supporters have ever had that experience in their lives. What must it be like to be young and privileged and earnest and to have grown up in a world where every little league player gets a trophy and no one keeps score? What must it be like to navigate the ugly real world now when all you’ve known is that there were 35 cheerleaders on the squad because if you didn’t make the squad your parents threatened to sue? What is it like to always hear that you’re special, and to never hear the word no? It must be really, really hard to be an adult and to learn these lessons for the first time.

It’s not that I’m advocating destroying the hearts and minds of children in order to make them toughened adults, it’s that I’m sighing deeply over “progressive” adult humans having multi-day temper tantrums because they did not get their way. I’m sighing deeply over weeping white boys with duct tape over their mouths that reads “silenced.” I’m driving in disbelief as I listen to NPR interviews with young women who say, “I see your basic point, but it’s, like, the principle of the thing?” when the interviewer points out that a protest vote for Trump actually endorses pretty much everything Bernie stands against.

Most of the time, losing sucks. Having someone tell you No sucks, too. Finding out there were dirty shenanigans behind the scenes really, really sucks. You’re pissed. You’re sad. You totally get to be those things. Feel the feelings, baby. Roll around in them. But then, grow the fuck up.

You know what happens after someone tells you No? You learn from it. You grow. You affect change. Understand that your temper tantrums do not affect change. Taking your anger to every single election in the next four years, the next eight years, the next twelve years, THAT affects change. Rallying people to start from the ground-up and revamp a shitty system, THAT affects change. Just because it feels like you lost this round doesn’t mean that you pitch a fit and boo public speakers and stick out your lower lip and refuse to vote. You know what it does mean? It means you feel like you lost, but take a deep breath and look around you. The party platform includes things it never would have included if you hadn’t made your voice heard. Bernie Sanders – who is not actually a Democrat, you know – has his arm elbow-deep in the muck of the Democratic party and he’s swirling it around. He’s frothing up that muck, y’all. He’s getting down and dirty, making allies, and jamming his foot in the fucking door.

Bernie is not the nominee, but his words have made a difference. His policy is already affecting change. Don’t you see that, Crying Children At The Convention? Don’t you see the leaps and bounds that have already occurred? And don’t you understand YOU WILL LOSE ALL OF THIS if Donald Trump is elected president? Everything you worked so hard for is going down in a flaming pile of shit if you abstain from voting, or if you vote third-party. You WANT the system to be ready for a third-party revolution. The system is not ready. What the system IS primed and ready for is a demagogue to rise to power on the backs of whiny baby special snowflakes who don’t know how to turn the word No into the word Change.

So buck up, buttercups. Feel your feelings. And then take your medicine, vote for Hillary, protect your loved ones from a world where hate and racism and bigotry are all state-sanctioned, and then vote, vote, vote in every local and state election until the assholes are gone.

And the best part about channeling your earnestness into down-in-the-local-trenches civic duty? You get a sticker every time you vote. EVERYONE GETS A STICKER! EVERY TIME!

Bernie didn’t get the nomination. It sucks, and it doesn’t feel fair because you wanted it to happen. You really, really wanted it and you didn’t get what you want, and you are lost.  But now is the time to learn what you should have learned when you were eight. Now is the time to realize your lack of a trophy at this very instant doesn’t mean you will never have that trophy. It means you are going to have to work for it. It means you take this failure to fuel future success. You do not take this failure to fuel future flaming shit piles. Shit piles governed by fascists do not offer very many trophy opportunities.

You hear me? Good.

Now get off my lawn.