My heart is broken. My eyes are shot red and swollen. I have spent the majority of today huddled underneath my comforter quietly watching my future morph in front of my tear stained face. Never before in my life have I been so shocked, so terrified, so mortified, so desperate to believe that reality is just a nightmare that I’m clawing to get out of. And I’m not okay. But it’s okay to not be okay.
It feels like I did my part, I voted, I encouraged other people to vote, I had political discussions clarifying the foreseeable extent of damage that would begin if we let Trump take the Whitehouse. But I’m realizing something very important.
This is something that was going to happen eventually. None of us had the power to stop it. You see, when a country is filled to the brim with racism, homophobia, and misogyny bubbling right beneath the surface, it is just waiting for someone to slash through the surface and set it free. So, in a way, we should say thank you. Not because I think that piece of garbage should be our president, but because it has created a call to arms. It is now time to fight. We can’t sit back and let this take our progress away.
I have seen the light leave a man’s eyes when officers came into his work and dragged him back to Mexico. I have watched people feel they had the right to throw coke bottles and insults at a hijab. I have been told that my love is not equal. I have felt the vigor with which people use to exclaim that as a woman my body is not my own. I know what it’s like to have your rights stomped on and then be forced to bend over like an object. This. Is the America we as a country said “yes” to.
And here’s the thing. We cannot reject half of the country. We cannot let our love be trumped by hate. But that does not mean that we cannot shout and scream and roar to have our voices heard. It does not mean that we cannot continue writing until past the point that our pens run out of ink.
We cannot apathetically let our friends be ripped from their families, let people see people only by the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual preference.
As a woman, as a rape survivor, I have never identified less with my own country.
But at the same time, I have never felt so strongly that this is the reason I was born. That today begins a lifetime of not backing down, of putting my every second into making sure that the voiceless are given a voice, that those who cannot defend themselves are protected.
The majority of this country made a decision that shows how much racism, hatred, and misogyny has overtaken America.
This. Is. Not. What. We. Stand. For.
We must bind together. We must let our pain drive us to change the future. For Muslims, for immigrants, for members of the LGBTQ+ community, for sexual assault victims, for women, for our daughters and our daughter’s daughters. Let them say that they stand on the shoulders of their ancestor’s progress.
Progress that we make not by fleeing the country in fear, but by claiming America as our own. By defending those who will be increasingly attacked in the coming hours, days, months, years.
This is about conquering the divisiveness. It is about binding together and showing Trump and Pence who they are dealing with. You want to be an anti-LGBTQ president? Well, we have prepared for combat. You want to ban all Muslims? You’ll have to go through us first. You want to build a wall around the country? Good luck laying down one brick that you don’t have to push through a wall of protestors to get to. The campaign may be over, but love still trumps hate.
Today we mourn. Tomorrow we fight.
