I had planned to post this sooner, but I needed to give myself some time to try and organize my thoughts. So many things are going on in my mind, I’m not sure if gathering myself was a success.

A week ago at this time, I wasn’t crying yet. My confidence level in the outcome of the long awaited Election Night 2016 was as high as most people who thought that the United States presidential seat would see back-to-back historic wins; the first black president in 2008, and the first female president in 2016. But as the night went on, and the polls were closing from east to west, a sad reality swept the country.

Quite honestly, I had been tired of this presidential campaign. It felt like it had gone on for more than a few years and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I sheepishly admit I didn’t delve into most of the issues that arose from the beginning. Becoming invested in politics is like stepping into quicksand, but I had an idea of what was going on. Last week on that fateful Tuesday night, I realized just how emotionally invested I had become in a matter of hours. I hadn’t planned on watching the election coverage, yet there I was. When the remaining electoral votes of the battleground states seemed to mathematically eliminate who I thought would win, my tears flowed. Hard and fast.

I sobbed as if someone told me a friend had died. I thought of all the fellow supporters who had voted for the same candidate as me, and I wept for them too. It’s gut-wrenching to physically feel hope fade. To be disappointed would be a complete and utter understatement in the context of this election.

It’s been a week. And in that week I’ve gone through the motions: shock, anger, sadness, acceptance…well, almost acceptance. This is where I struggle. I’m trying to be patriotic and demonstrate the same graciousness that our current president is displaying, trying to concede with class just as I would have expected the opposition to had the results of the election turned out the other way around. I’m trying to give a chance. I’m trying to listen to the points-of-view from those who voted differently from me, or who didn’t (!!!) vote at all. I’m trying to refrain from judgment and hostility.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and their choice of vote…and again, their choice not to vote. I’m trying to be respectful of that because I want people to be respectful of my choices. But I’m struggling to understand why. WHY on earth was this the final decision? And HOW could this have happened? Additional questions that ran through my mind this past week, among many:

• Why would you choose someone who doesn’t have one second of government experience to hold the highest position of government in this country, and the free world? That’s like entrusting me to perform brain surgery and at most, I can gut a fish.
• If you say you can’t trust her, what makes you trust someone who contradicts himself regularly, who denies he’s ever said XYZ when there is clear, unedited, video/audio PROOF that he DID say XYZ? I agree with anyone and everyone who has ever said “he’s like a child.” Actually, let’s not insult children that way, I know plenty of children who are far more mature than this guy.
• How can you choose someone who could never answer a debate question straight up?
• Why would you choose someone who blames everyone else for bad things that are happening and only points the finger at himself when he believes he’s right? How can you not hold him accountable for anything?
• I understand his opponent had her faults, but how could anyone hate her so much?

That last question. This is why it’s hard to accept the outcome, why it’s hard to be 100% in the effort to unite after the results are in because this election alone revealed how much more divided the country is than I thought, and it scares me. You know, you learn about the terrible ways people have treated each other all around the world in your history books, but you don’t think you’ll have to live through a modern-day version of it yourself.

I think it’s safe to say we’re never going to have a president that all people love because it’s pretty impossible to please everyone. I’m old enough to have witnessed past elections where I once again was disappointed with the outcome, but somehow I was able to get past that. This time it’s different. There is something about this election that is completely different from the ones before, and I’m about to pull THAT card.

For the past eight years, as a non-white female, I felt like the country was finally making progress in terms of being the change a lot us wanted to see in racism, sexism, LGBT rights, climate change, etc. To some, eight years should have been enough to bring a lot more change. But trying to change decades, hundreds of years of resistance to change, of oppression and disenfranchisement, is going to take more than eight years. And it’s going to take more than just one person and their administration in the White House. At most, more awareness was raised, and the country turned to a hopeful direction.

But now, as evidenced by the winner’s campaign and the country events within the past year, and especially in the past week, progress has halted and appears to be turning again in the direction we just came from. Efforts feel like they’ve gone to waste and we have to start over. Like building a house of cards; every move is so delicate, and in the blink of an eye, time and effort have fallen.

I’m horrified at what I’ve seen on Twitter and in the news, of the hatefulness and such resentment that people have towards each other. Some incidents have been in the same area I live in, which is an embarrassment, but what’s the most disturbing to me is how some of these incidents, hell let’s just call them what they are, these hate crimes, are being committed by college-age students, by teenagers, by children. Where you think our youth learns this from???

I’m not much of a feminist, but as a female, this election really did hurt. It really did feel personal. And it’s not solely about a man getting the job over a woman, it’s the fact that – regardless of being a man or woman – the person who devoted damn near their entire life to public service was vilified. The logic that I’ve heard between choosing one over the other was so lopsided, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It’s like this:

Imagine both candidates each had a table with ten trays on it, and each tray held a different kind of dish (sorry, food is easy for me to use as an analogy here). The male candidate didn’t cook any of the food on his trays. Obviously it was ordered from different restaurants, most of the food is greasy, and probably not healthy if eaten every day. He didn’t even try to work on the presentation of his food, just left it in the takeout containers, insisting the food was prepared by his own hands. The female candidate, on each of her trays, had a healthy, hearty, homemade dish, some still fresh from the oven or the stove, and each was presented as if it was going to be photographed by the top food magazine in the nation.

Now imagine a judge who approaches the male candidate’s table, doesn’t care for any of the other food, doesn’t even like them, except for one side dish on one of the trays. Says it reminds him of his childhood and he doesn’t care about anything else on the table but that. Then the judge goes over to the female candidate’s table, and loves everything…except he remembers from other dishes she’s cooked (which are not on the table) that he didn’t like some of the ingredients she used, or that there was one dish he liked, but didn’t love. This woman spent hours in the kitchen preparing all that food.

Yet the prize went to the man, because of that one side dish.

Lopsided decision-making. Ignoring the bigger picture and focusing on one single thing from each candidate, and basing a major decision on that. I’m not sure that counts as common sense. I become enraged when people either voted that way, or once again, didn’t vote at all.

Here’s my take on that: your bitterness and/or your apathy are yours, no one can tell you how to feel. But don’t be surprised when your lack of participation and your selfishness bring a backlash to you so hard that you have to defend and explain yourself in hopes of people backing off you. Do you not know how privileged and lucky you are to be able to vote? To have a say in how the country is run, what direction it can turn to? How can you just toss that aside? If you’re so willing to give that up, you should give up plenty of other American privileges that come with your citizenship.

It’s disappointing to share a nationality with people who just don’t care. It’s saddening and scary as hell to share a nationality with people who were waiting for this election to use as a platform for their bigoted beliefs, who were so anxious to have their narrow-minded, hateful ideologies surface once again.

I really wish those who were filled with hate knew what it felt like to be treated the way they treat others who don’t deserve to be hurt. I am constantly searching for a shred of decency, of humanity, of compassion, in these people. Who hurt you so much that you have to pass that hatred on?

I don’t know what else to say other than I still love my country even though I am so disappointed. I do have hope, because America has gone through big BS before.

I will keep trying to understand. Will you?