I started off this election season excited. It was going to be my first time voting, and after witnessing the first African-American president be elected when I was 11 years old, I thought there was nowhere else to go but up. I was watching and experiencing a progressive America, where people of color, the LGBTQ+ community and women were becoming powerful and accepted as equals throughout the country. I was proud of my country. It was great.

In June last year, 2015, Donald J. Trump announced his intent to run for the Republican candidacy for the 2016 presidential election. I, like many others, thought it was a joke and laughed. How in the world was a businessman turned reality star going to persuade people to vote for him? He just decided to be a politician a year ago, as a hobby. This can’t be real.

Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May">https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/3323082... 9, 2013

I focused my sights on Bernie Sanders and getting him the Democratic Party’s slot. I was much fonder of him than Hillary Clinton. However, I was fully ready to support her if Bernie lost the election. She’s had 40 years of experience doing good for our country, not without her setbacks but still.

Then, Trump caught the country’s attention. He began yelling out slurs towards Mexicans, immigrants, women, handicap citizens, Muslims, and black people. He had no filter, and I suppose that many Americans appreciated that. Let me be more specific – white Americans appreciated that. Not all of them, but many of them. It got them excited that someone different was running, someone “not corrupt”, which is already a little sketchy to say because of his Trump University trial beforehand and multiple problems he’s had from taking money from workers and not paying them what they worked for.

As Trump began to show his true colors, so did the rest of America. So did my family and friends. So did my coworkers and classmates. “Make America Great Again” shirts and hats began springing up everywhere. I watched countless videos on Facebook of Trump and everything he’d said about people. Ultimately, he won the candidacy.

My hate for Trump grew strong.

To me, he represented hate. He was spreading hate. He was allowing racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic people to feel comfortable in their hate and let their hate flag fly. He, also, sparked such hate in those who oppose him. He made Democrats and some Republicans feel the strongest amount of hate they’d ever experienced.

Hate was his weapon, his only weapon.

Then, the tapes of Trump with Billy Bush were released. The things Trump were recorded saying appalled America, but yet, his supporters were still defending him, saying it was “locker room talk” and that it was 11 years ago.

Sure, if he were 35, and he has been in his early 20s when he said that. Sure. It wouldn’t have been ideal, but this man is 70 years old. He was 59 when he was saying such things. On top of it, numerous women came out, accusing him of sexual assault. Still, people defended him. He just kept being defended, apologizing and getting it pushed to the side to focus on his campaign. His daughters defended him. Ivanka Trump, one of the classiest and most inspirational women, defended her father for calling a woman Ms. Piggy, admitting that he would “grab [women] by the p*ssy” and telling the American population that he’d be dating her if she wasn’t his daughter.

I found myself disgusted by Ivanka more than her father. A woman was allowing a man close to her to behave as such and was not doing anything to stop it, just supporting it.

Hate grew inside of me. It wasn’t even about getting the first female president elected anymore. It wasn’t about getting the most qualified candidate elected anymore. It wasn’t about supporting my country anymore. It was about stopping this monster.

Then, I turned to the people around me in the world. Trump’s vileness and vomit-inducing words were causing me and so many others around me to view his supporters as such. Those in my immediate family would joke about voting for him, telling me to do the same, and I would just laugh it off. There was no way he was going to beat Hillary with his bigot ways, so my hatred of him turned to those who were spreading his message.

I found myself immediately repulsed by anything and anyone supporting him. I still do. I don’t understand it. I always try to put myself in others’ shoes to understand their ways, but I couldn’t understand why people who aren’t racist, homophobic and sexist would support him and Mike Pence.

(Don’t even get me started on Mike Pence. He believes in gay-conversion therapy. He doesn’t support Planned Parenthood. As a woman with multiple family members and friends in the LGBTQ+ community, he scares me just as much as Trump.)

I watched children listen to their parents supporting the awful things he was saying about Mexicans and Muslims. I watched a little girl tell her friend that gay people are disgusting and that it’s okay to say that because her mother says it. I saw a little boy whisper “terrorist” to himself in a grocery store when a woman with a hijab on passed him and his mother. “Trump that B*tch” stickers and shirts began to circulate, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw a woman wearing one. A woman. It’s one thing to support Trump. It’s another to wear an obviously sexist shirt as a woman.

My 17 yo cousin on her way to school. A group of white girl's from her class tell her "shouldn't you sit in the back of the bus today?"
— Zoraida (@zlikeinzorro) November 9, 2016

Hate. It changed me. Trump’s campaign and supporters changed me. Yeah, I have control over my body, – at least everything but my reproductive rights now that Trump and Pence have been elected – but I would never have been capable of such hate if the amount of hate that Trump’s campaign was feeding off of had not been thrown into the world.

I never realized the amount of racist people in the country. I never realized how many women didn’t care for their own rights, the same with the degrading numbers of men that don’t support women’s rights. Trump’s election revealed that. I’m from the South, so I knew I would be out numbered here. But the amount of normally Democratic states being overthrown by Republicans was shocking to me on Election Day.

"To all the little girls watching...never doubt that you are valuable and powerful & deserving of every chance & opportunity in the world."
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November">https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/79639492... 9, 2016

The results of the election have taken away most of the hate that plagued me for so long this election season. I had so much hope that the country would stand up to the discrimination that Trump targeted at minorities, but it didn’t happen. He won. The Electoral College voted for him. My candidate, Clinton, won the popular vote, but it wasn’t enough. The “white-lash” prevailed.

And with that, I felt the devastation. I felt the hopelessness. I felt the fear. I am terrified of what is to come. I cannot imagine how I would feel if I was a woman of color. At first, I thought the hate was going to consume me, but now, I am consumed with fear. I am fearful of the future. Maybe everything will turn out okay, but I’m still in the now. I am experiencing the immediate fear that comes with someone like Trump being elected president.

To those who voted for Trump and are excited: that's perfectly fine. Your candidate won. Congratulations. However, if he would have lost, the feelings that you would have experienced would have been nothing like the devastation that Democrats and certain Republicans feel right now. Please, do not take your victory as justification to commit vile acts toward minorities. Do not go harass women, black people, Muslims or Mexicans. Trump's win is not your free ticket to be a bigot. This is still the United States of America, where everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Do not take away anyone else's.

Forget all that moving to Canada bs. Y'all better keep fighting. Protest and scream and do what you need to do for equality. We not leavin.
— Lexie (@lexiesterling98) November">https://twitter.com/lexiesterling98/status/7962353... 9, 2016

The decision has been made. It’s done. And unfortunately, there’s nothing that anyone can do to change that. Now, we must go through the stages of grief until we hit acceptance. However, we must never stop fighting for what we believe in, and that is tolerance and acceptance and love. I hope that all of the hate and fear that have taken over our bodies be eradicated soon enough. We must fight and hope that America gets back to the right path once again. We must be as classy Clinton and Obama when they acknowledged Trump's win. Our country cannot be set back decades. For our children, we must fight. This election has made me stronger and more passionate for what I believe in. I am more confident in defending myself and others because it doesn't seem like most of the country is going to. Just please, America, love one another and don’t let this ever happen again.

"No matter what happens, the sun will rise in the morning." -President Barack Obama