I didn’t want to write an article about the election. I really didn’t. And it’s not that I’m trying to be dismissive of what happened last Tuesday, because I’m really not. Honestly, I wish I could be. But the fact is that I just wanted at least one facet of my life to feel unbroken. Because that’s the reality –– I, along with millions of others across the country and the world, feel broken.

On Tuesday night, my roommates and I stayed up until two in the morning watching election coverage. We started the night each in our own rooms, working on homework with our laptop screens split between essays and CNN. Vote counts flashed across the screen on a loop, and someone would shout every time Trump pulled ahead in one of the swing states. But we weren’t worried, exactly. Hillary rigged the election, we’d say. People aren’t that crazy, we’d assure each other. Around 8:30, we all congregated in one room, unable to handle the stress alone. I sat on one bed, one of my roommates at on the second, and our other roommate sat at her desk.

We did our best to distract ourselves, but it got to the point where we couldn’t even pretend that we were doing homework –– all of our attentions were glued to the election coverage. Hillary’s landslide victory wasn’t panning out how we’d thought it would, and it was making us all dizzy.

We were all sort of confused; unsure as to what was going on. Every news source seemed to have different information –– CNN said Trump had 216 electoral votes, the NY Times said 170. No one really seemed to be on track with what was happening, and it was unsettling. “Trump got Florida!” one of my roommates shouted, horrified. “No fucking way,” I thought, turning to Google to investigate. And the first links that popped up said otherwise. Florida was still up for grabs. We didn’t know what to believe. So we just sat, biting our nails and shifting anxiously, waiting for to hear something real.

My migraine set in right about the time that Trump took Ohio. It was a migraine that would last for six days.

I ended the night lying on the floor. I felt completely numb. Nothing was official just yet, but the swing states had gone red and we knew what that meant. It was me who finally said that we should all go to bed. There was no use in watching this anymore. Things would be better in the morning. I think we all just felt empty.

My alarm went off Wednesday morning at nine-twenty. The first thing I did was interlock my fingers and pray. I asked the universe to please keep us safe. I begged it to please not let this happen.

Then I opened my eyes and unlocked my phone, and I typed “Donald Trump” into Safari. The first link that popped up read, “President-Elect Donald Trump,” and some more words that I didn’t see. I put my phone down because I couldn’t look at it anymore. Looking at it hurt.

I got out of bed and I went to my desk to do my makeup, like I do every morning before class. It wasn’t right away –– my mascara and winged eyeliner were practically finished when it happened –– but I burst into tears. My head dropped into my hands and thick black tears ran down my cheeks for what felt like an eternity. I felt like something had been taken from me. Like a future, or a life had been stolen. I felt completely and utterly lost.

I reapplied my makeup, hiding the black smudges I couldn’t seem to get rid of with cover-up and powder. I put on my coat, put my backpack over my shoulder, and left the safe bubble that was my dorm.

My first class is about a three minute walk from my dorm. But on that very, very brief walk, there was enough time still for an older man, probably in his late thirties, to grab my arm as a I walked, drag me to a stop, lean very closely to my face and tell me that I was beautiful. Then he let me go and continued walking. Thinking about that moment now, I wish I’d hit him. I wish that he hadn’t let go so quickly, so that I could have had the chance to fight back. But at the time, I was frozen. It felt like a sign –– an indication of what the next four years of my life would be like. It was the feeling of being under attack; that three minute walk to class suddenly seemed like a war.

In class, we abandoned curriculum and talked about the election. My professor asked us to talk about how we were feeling in the wake of the previous night’s events, and one girl rose her hand and spoke about no longer feeling safe. I didn’t speak; I was crying again, and the words were caught at the back of my throat. At first the tears in my eyes made me feel ridiculous, but one look around the room and I realized it wasn’t just me. And it struck me again just how devastating our loss was, and a pang went through me not just for those who were undoubtedly a hundred times more hurt than I was. People of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, Muslims; their pain at this time is something that far exceeds my own.

After class, I went back to my dorm and watched the victory/concession speeches. The act alone of typing into Youtube, "Donald Trump Victory Speech" sent a lance of pain from my heart to my fingertips. I couldn’t watch the full speech –– I was crying too hard. I’m grateful for the fact that none of my roommates were home at the time, because this was the definition of ugly-crying. It was loud and gross and raw, and that was possibly the first time in my life that I have felt loss that widely. Because this wasn’t a personal loss. This wasn’t a personal pain. This wasn’t something that was hurting just me. This was something that was causing such an enormous and widespread pain that I felt each of my heartbeats tied into a million other heartbeats, all of us thudding that same broken rhythm together.

Hillary’s concession speech was worse. It was, in my opinion, the best speech she’s given to date. She was elegant and powerful and strong and graceful and seeing her speak so beautifully made me break down all over again. I could hear the loss in her voice –– not loss at losing the election, but loss of hope.

“And –– and to all the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”

The fact that we live in a country that has elected a president who makes girls doubt this –– who makes girls doubt that they are people, and that they are capable and wonderful and intelligent and worthy –– is terrifying.

I didn’t bother redoing my makeup for my next class.

That night I went to an anti-Trump rally. There were upwards of six thousand people there, all of us absorbed and overwhelmed by the same rage and hurt. We marched all through Boston, shouting in unison, a series of chants that word by word, made me feel a little less hopeless. Being surrounded by that much love, that much strength, that overwhelming sense of community –– it was healing. For the first time all day, I felt like the world wasn’t ending. That feeling of promise nestled its way into my heart, and it’s stayed with me since that night.

Every day, every single day, something happens as a consequence of Donald Trump’s election that makes my heart hurt. And it’s not unlikely that things are going to get much worse before they start to get better. It’s terrifying and horribly saddening to watch as Obama’s presidency fades into Trump’s presidency, but knowing the capacity we as people have to stand together and to represent love and the hope for something better is something that I will carry with me over these next four years. It’s something I will hold on to when it really doesn’t seem as if the sun will rise; when it seems as though we’ve truly lost what we’ve spent so many years fighting for; when it seems like the world might actually stop turning.