America is falling apart. We are going down in a red, fiery terror. We just chose Donald Trump for president and the rest of our political cabinets to be filled with Republicans. Trump is a man who, in December, will be on trial for fraud involving Trump University (a total scam). He was supposed to also be on trial for allegedly raping a child a few years back, but she dropped the charges after receiving death threats from his supporters. If he is found guilty, he won't become president. Although that's a positive, it's followed by another toxic waste: Mike Pence. Pence will become president if Trump is indicted. Pence openly supports and actively funds conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ teens. He actively wants to teach abstinence-only sex education in schools - this would mean that youths will not be able to learn about safe sex, including how to prevent the spread of disease and pregnancy. They both want to force religion on us - which is a big problem for me since our nation was built on the freedom of religious oppression. What really hits home for me though is their combined treatment of women. I sit on my couch watching the news and feel like a bare, dead tree standing alone as they strip me of my self-worth. I know other women feel that way, too. I have a story just like everyone else, and I want to share it here today.

I was raped when I was 16 and then again sexually harassed and taken advantage of at 21, done both times by people I knew very well. Having a president and vice president who quite literally think that I'M the issue is a problem for me. Having a president who openly goes out in public and tells men they can have women if they just "grab them by the pussy" and then having his supporters walk the voting lines grabbing women by their vaginas sets me into a panic. I was drugged when I was raped, but not drugged enough to pass out from it and not enough to not remember it... just enough to not be able to scream. I then had a man twice my size on top of me. You might not know what it's like to have a man using and abusing your body while you lie there helpless, almost completely frozen in time. You probably don't know what it's like to go on for the next three years starving yourself, taking a knife to your inner arms and thighs, and eating sleeping pills like they're candy because everyone you once loved turned on the 16-year-old girl who "turned her sweet innocent boyfriend into a monster." You probably don't know what it's like to have your school force you into therapy with a counselor of their choice where you sit there for three hours a week hearing all of the ways you can be a better Christian by "not being a whore." And you probably don't know what that's like to have it happen again almost 5 years later by your "manager" at work. I doubt you know what it's like to have to quit your job when it got out to the public because "you're now a liability to the company by making these accusations"... because a good guy like him could never do such a vulgar act.

You probably don't understand how it feels to have your body stripped of all its worth and turned into a physical object for a man to use, but I'll try to explain what that's like. Every time I hear Trump or Pence degrade a woman and talk about her as an object, I flash back to those lifeless moments in my own body where I couldn't move as a man took advantage of me. I see myself from the third person point of view, lying there on the cold hard floor wishing I was dead... Because death would be better than being completely helpless. I remember the moments after that where I was, and still am, called a liar. I still stare down at the "warrior" tattoo on my wrist covering my biggest scar and think there's hope that someday things will change.

I do have hope, though, because I am strong. I have hope in president-elect Donald Trump. I have hope that he fooled us all in his campaign and that he will actually be a leftist president with the intention to make the world a better place by exposing this type of hate through his campaign. But that hope is only a sliver. In the past week, he has surprised me. He has told his supporters to stop harassing minorities on public television, taken his plan to repeal Obamacare and thrown it out the window, and just last night, he would follow President Obama's immigration reform (only focusing on criminals and illegals) rather than his original plan to deport 11 million people who aren't Americans. He also said in a statement that banning a whole religion was unconstitutional. This hope might be small, but it's all I've got.

For those who have been sexually assaulted and are feeling the same things I am, know that you are not alone. There are many of us out there who sit inside and cry in fear for what is to potentially come in the next four years. The next four years will be full of tears, heartbreaks, and fear. But nobody is alone in it so long as we have each other's backs. Hillary Clinton said it best - we are stronger together.