For days I have been trying to figure out what to write. What part of my life experience with mental illness do I draw upon to make an important point, call for action to improve the world? For days, I haven’t been able to tap into that part of my life. First, I was hopeful and optimistic about the election, and slowly on the 8^th toward the turning of midnight my hope became obliterated. Slowly, I started to realize the numbers on the television I was looking at meant. Slowly, my stomached dropped and I was re-evaluating my positionality in the world.

I am not a sore loser. I have come in second and third and forth and dead last more times than I can count. I could count on one hand the number of times I have won something, including the time in 5^th grade when I won a state competition for a cleaner mouth campaign. I was 11. I am an expert in loss, I am good at it. I don’t cry when I lose. I don’t throw a fit. I accept it with a healthy grain of disappointment. Growing up I watched my peers who played basketball or football or volleyball lose and cry and throw things. I have watched coaches and advisors get angry when they or their students lost. As I was looking on, I didn’t get it. Someone always has to lose in these things after all you must be mature. I am not a sore loser.

So, when it sank in on the 8^th that our next president would be Donald Trump I cried, not because my candidate lost, but because I was re-evaluating my life and what I could lose in the next four years. That I may lose my right to marry a woman that I love; the right to parent a child equally in the eyes of the law with my partner; the right to not being fired at a job because of my sexuality, or my religion; the right to practice whatever religion I want, especially if it isn’t Christianity. But most of all, I remembered the first time I was called a ‘cunt’ by a man. I wasn’t out as a lesbian, and I hadn’t converted to Judaism. But, I was a woman. I was walking outside my high school to get into my dad’s truck at the end of the day when a classmate clearly and loudly called me a cunt. Right out in the open to my face in hearing radius of my peers, my father, and other parents. As a woman, I have come to expect that a man will look at me whenever the hell they want and call me a cunt, a word that has no equivalent to call a man. And what’s even worse? This kid was popular and I was not, which meant that when he called me a cunt, and my peers heard it, they weren’t going to say anything. And they didn’t. Why does this matter?

Because we elected a man who has been publically heard as supporting and encouraging sexual assault. Because we have elected a man that on numerous occasions has been accused of sexual assault and sexual harassment, and we doubt the women, but have faith in the man being accused.

I cried because I knew that my being an out and vocal lesbian might cost me my wellbeing, my livelihood, my human rights, and my life. I cried because my religion is not Christianity, which means a large number of Americans are anti-Semitic, even if they are secretly so. I cried out of deep fear. I know people in my life that I love, cried with me. We sobbed.

What’s even worse? It isn’t that we have a Vice President that is outspoken on clear and blunt opposition to everything gay, human rights related; although, it is the tip of the iceberg. Rather, I know people who voted for these men. I know people in my life that voted for these men. Why does this matter? Let me point you to 1930’s and 1940’s Germany when people turned their neighbors in to the Nazi’s for being Jews, for being gay, for being Jewish sympathizers, and for protecting and hiding anyone the Nazis hated and wanted to terminate. Let me turn your attention to the early days of colonization of the United States to now, to the lives of Native Americans whose land was violently seized from them, and their lives viciously taken from them. And then, because we didn’t do enough harm, we exiled the indigenous people of this land to reservations that have less than adequate ways to live, and even more, less than adequate resources on the land. Let me direct you to the days of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, to now when African American parents teach their children how to behave if they are stopped by police, in fear they will be shot. We have told the African American community we don’t really care that they have died, because even children who have potential, and did nothing wrong other than to exist in a land they were forcibly brought to have themselves to blame for being shot and killed, and their murderers only get a slap on the wrist. We tell women they don’t matter when young men like Brock Turner only serve three months of a measly six month sentence when he raped a woman behind a dumpster. Why? Because he has “potential”.

I wept because when you cast your vote for Trump, you said to those who are different than you not that you made the best position for you, but that you honestly don’t give a rat’s ass about their lives. Okay, so you claim that you voted for this xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic, transphobic, homophobic, sexist, and misogynist man because he was pro-life. You are pro-life because there are so many potential lives that have been the victims of abortion by heartless abortion doctors, and women are reckless in their sexual behaviors. How do you feel about rape? Rape is reckless sexual behavior, isn’t it? It is violence, is it not? Let us remember that Brock Turner has “potential”, but the raped woman is just a vessel for a man to quench his arousal. You don’t agree with this? You think rape is wrong? Okay, I get it, you are still pro-life. But you voted for a man that has on many, many occasions has sexually harassed and assaulted women. You didn’t make the moral decision when you voted for Trump. You used your privilege to vote a man into office that doesn’t just have a differing set of views than mine, but you voted a man into office that supports racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny. And you did that because you feel better about the world when there are people in this country that are treated less than a full human being, after all you deserve everything you have, but fuck the Blacks, the Hispanics, the women, the Muslims, the trans, the Jews, and the gays. How is this being proven after the election? Because there are ten year old boys groping their female classmates because their President says its okay. There is already a surge in hate crimes in the name of our new President against people of color, women, Muslims, trans people, LGBTQIA+ people, and basically anyone who isn’t straight, white, Christian, or male.

I saw a friend post on Facebook that they never understood how people could so easily get behind Hitler and ignore the persecution of the Jews. But now, they get it. I am a Jew, and I sure as hell don’t take comparisons to Hitler lightly, Hitler is not a buzzword, or even a linguistic emotional move. It is fucking real. Real. So fucking real.

Also, if you disregard the reality that our newest president-elect is supported and endorsed by the KKK, you missed maybe the biggest red flag of the century. If you willfully ignored it, you are part of the problem. And clearly dealing with some kind of deliriousness that is completely enveloped in your white privilege.

So when I, and so many others, wept it wasn’t us being overdramatic because our candidate lost. It was because we have seen this enacted in history. Because our lives and our wellbeing are being threatened. Because we now know more than ever that we are surrounded by people who hate us based on the color of our skin, because of our sexuality, of our gender, our religion, our country of origin. I am afraid, because wherever I go, I know there are people who hate me based on the fact that I am a lesbian and a Jew, without ever even knowing my name. So yes, I am scared. We are scared. We are not being over dramatic. We are being real.

I’ll leave you with one last thought, a quote from the late Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them; the first time.” This is why my fear is valid. This is why our fear is valid. Because now, people all around us have shown us their hate, and I don’t need another time to confirm it.