I’ve been thinking a lot about how one event can change the trajectory of someone’s whole life.

My grandfather went to college to be a history teacher, but just a week after his graduation he had to report to basic training for Vietnam — after which, he became Boston-area police officer for over thirty years. My mother was supposed to work on Cape Cod the summer she was twenty, but the area was going through a recession and instead, she got a crappy waitressing job near her house...where she met my dad. Hell, the only reason my family is in this country at all is because Ireland never really bounced back from that sudden potato shortage. All life is just reacting to unexpected hurdles.

In the early hours of November 9th, my friend Matt drove me home from the election viewing party we threw at his apartment. My whole body felt numb, even though I was intellectually aware of the hot tears streaming down my face. He tried to comfort me with some quote about Winston Churchill, about the twisted nature of democracy. I didn’t really hear him. The whole world seemed echo-y and far, far away. I wasn’t alone in this horror, I know.

When I woke up the next morning, nauseous for reasons that had nothing to do with my hangover, my phone was flooded with texts, Facebook messages, tweets from friends, family, people I sort of knew in high school or from drama camp when I was sixteen. All these people were talking about their plans.

Plans to go to law school to learn how to defend media and immigration rights. Notifications about their most recent donations to pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ, pro-immigration charities. Rallies to protest Cheeto McFuckface. Sign up sheets to escort people safely into Planned Parenthoods or work as human shields around mosques during worship services.

“I had a lot of plans for the next two years,” one of my friends told me. “Now they all feel so futile and terrifying. So I’m making a new five year plan. I’m not giving up because of this.”

My grandmother, a Wellesley graduate and the person I wanted to witness the shattering of the glass ceiling more than anyone in the world, texted me when I was in tears: "I have so much faith in you and the women of your generation. I think men of your generation have respect and confidence in women. There's so much hope for the future."

I’m devastated by the results of the election. My heart is broken. Day One after the election saw me lying on the floor of my apartment watching fifteen episodes of Key and Peele and bursting into tears intermittently. But that was my only Day One plan. I’m still feeling grief, but I’m also going to attempt to channel it into something positive to help us all get through the next four years.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did. And America finds itself at a crossroads because of this one insane event. Not just millennials. Not just women, or people of color, or queer people, or immigrants or Muslims. Everyone who believes in kindness and equality and basic human decency must make the decision to fight for those beliefs, in ways big and little every day. It's going to be hard and exhausting, and it's not fair. It sucks. But it's necessary.

Allen Ginsberg is one of my favorite poets, who wrote the majority of his work during the equally turbulent 1960s. In the past few days, I’ve read his poem “America” about 50 times. This is one of my favorite sections:

"America this is quite serious.

America this is the impression I get

from looking in the television set.

America is this correct?

I'd better get right down to the job."

Let’s get down to the job, America. Because everyone’s lives are going to change, and it’s on each of us to make sure they change for the better.