The grief hit me on the way home on election day and I couldn’t help thinking about how, no matter how things went, everyone was going to hurt.

Everyone.

I started to pray and the more I did, the more I felt like crying. It felt like something long coming. The stock market started crashing around the 60th electoral vote for Trump. I kept the page on, refreshing, not to see what the result would be, but to see how deep it ran.

That’s what happens when you’ve been paying attention. I woke up the next day to messages, mostly of surprise and shock, from every quandrant I live on (excepting Facebook). I felt conflicted because I felt nothing.

No shock, no surprise. Just… nothing.

I felt conflicted because I felt nothing.

I remembered the news for the last few years and the sentiments I’ve seen crossing social media about so many different social issues and they could be summed up as:

• People being angry for being called privileged.
• People being angry at being oppressed.
• People being fed up with abuses of power at the civic levels.
• People being angry at mainstream media for the way reporting has been handled.
• People being terribly misinformed about social issues and what the implications of ignoring them are.
• People being inflexible of mind and heart and unwilling to listen to… well… anyone.

None of this is recent. This is 2014. This is 2001. This is where the bodies and the blood and the anger led.

I wonder about the 6.6M or so people that voted for no one at all. Not even a 3rd party. They went to the polls and voted, but not for a presidential option. I wonder about the people that normally don’t vote that showed up to this one. I hear they were normal people who were tired of being made to feel bad about being white, straight, and male.

I try to imagine what it is like to be terrified for your life for any number of reasons and then watch as someone votes to bring that terror to power because they don’t like being called a name. I try to imagine being able to say things like this:

https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796193228210851840

https://twitter.com/RubinReport/status/796255336722153472

I think about the last time I felt either of those things and remember that, when I did, someone died. I then try to see things from his point of view and have to wonder as well: what would have happen if we had chosen a means of starting the necessary conversations that was less angry, more considerate, less militant. What then? Would that have helped?

Based on that, there’s a lot to be said about what we voted for, but I only want to mention the largest one which is this: we are in this together now.

I wonder if that would have been heard. So far, it hasn’t. o far, soft gets dismissed as drama and being too harsh gets people to lie in wait for voting day and make themselves known then.

I’m not a political science major, so for Clinton and for Trump alike, I only have what they said in this election season to gauge them on. Based on that, there’s a lot to be said about what we voted for, but I only want to mention the largest one which is this: we are in this together now.

I wonder if you can hear a chant of “my body, my voice” through blood. Through a body. Across an ocean. Through a wall of paper.

Whether we wanted it or not, whether we regret it or not, for better or worse and until the next four years are gone, we are in it now and we have to work through it even if we have to work through it with people that get make my mom text me at 9:30AM to ask if I’m OK. Even if we have to work through it surrounded by people that make my mom ask me to call her the moment I land somewhere just to let her know I’m alive.

I want to ask the people that voted for Trump because he wasn’t Hillary or because they felt disenfranchised how they feel. I hear that many of them don’t like or espouse what Trump stands for, but they saw no other alternative to make their voices heard.

I wonder if you can hear a chant of “my body, my voice” through blood. Through a body. Across an ocean. Through a wall of paper.

And then I return to my convictions and my basis of faith and I have to ask: how am I going to keep loving them, too. I don’t get exempted from that responsibility during wars or elections in spite of what people might tell you or behave like.

I’m a kaleidoscope:

• I want everyone to listen and respond instead of reacting.
• I want people to recognize issues and deal with them.
• I want people not to fear for their lives.
• I want to be angry, but I’m not even surprised, so I don’t know.
• I want a world safe enough for my mom not to be concerned about me. I’m 34 right now.
• I want my friends to not be terrified of existing.
• I want to not have potential nazis in office.

Am I not as normal as these disenfranchised people? Don’t I have that right to peace? How do I even process this?

When do I get to stop asking?

I don’t know y’all. I don’t know.