I have seen the messages of positivity and love on Facebook. On Twitter. Via text. I appreciate them … but I am not there yet. At some point, my warmth, my humor, my kindness will all return, although I will never again trust in the goodness of humanity the way I did even as late as yesterday evening. That naivete has been ripped from me, leaving a gaping hole that I can only hope will eventually scar over enough to not burn as much as it does currently.
Right now, I am coming out of shock into a feeling of massive, crushing betrayal. I can tell you this: if I have reason to believe you voted for Donald Trump, until you show evidence that you have seen the error of your ways and WORK to fix what you have done, you are dead to me. Dead.
When I woke up this morning, I knew that the knot in my stomach felt familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it until a friend put a name to what she was feeling, and then a sinking feeling of recognition took hold. Yes. The last time I felt this level of dismay and fear, I was watching a plane fly into the second of the twin towers in Manhattan. The difference is that this time, the people steering the plane were United States citizens.
Women. Muslims. Immigrants. People of color. The LGBTQ community. We have all been rejected. Utterly.
Last night was a victory for misogyny, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and just complete, total bigotry. Not to mention an embracing of some of the most idiotic economic policies conceivable.
Half the voters in this election were thinking about improving the real future for everyone. For literally everyone.
The other half were thinking about going back to an imaginary past that never even existed. For themselves, and screw everyone else. (And by the way, you backward-thinking assholes, no one was ever going to keep you from marrying who YOU loved, from having all the children YOU wanted, from cocooning yourselves in your white, hate-filled churches and making unnatural love to all your sweet, sweet guns.)
Trump voters will get precisely what they deserve. Unfortunately, the rest of us are shackled to them.
That’s the 2016 presidential election in a nutshell.
I do not know how I will move forward. I know that is a decision I will make with my partner, and I know that I feel like a refugee in my own country right now.
I am bereft.
I am angry.
