I Am Terrified

The thoughts of a teenage female, growing up in a swing state (Ohio), on the new president, Donald J. Trump.

Future of Business and Tech / Via google.com

I don't want to start this with nerves or perhaps hope, I want to start this with my reason for writing.

I want to go forward. I need to start somewhere else.

Bear with me; it will make sense in time.

Picture this: It is 4 a.m. You wake up looking at the wall of your bed, and you have to think for a moment why you feel so anxious. Then you remember. It is the day after election day, the day you stayed up way past when you should have been sleeping to not hope, but pray for your country though you don't really know how.

But mostly pray for yourself.

Again, it's 4 a.m, and your stomach is flipping. So you turn to the side and you pick up your phone and you take a moment to squint at the screen and then you read it.

Right there.

Just read it.

Please.

Donald J. Trump has been elected as President of the United States.

Now imagine, please stay with me here, the immediate stomach flip. The shaking hands as you turn off your screen and try to think of how you will be ready for the next day in an hour when a nuclear bomb has been dropped on you. Right on your chest.

So you turn back over. You don't cry. You don't cry for the woman you thought would be keeping you safe and representing you for the next four years. You know she's shed enough tears for the country in the past two hours than you could shed for one person.

So you turn back over to that wall. You lie there, and you shake on the inside and the outside. And you wonder how could this have happened? How could this have possibly happened?

How could we have let this happen?

You can't find the space in your brain. You can't find anything to make sense out of this.

I'm not safe here, you think. Not safe in the house your parents own, where they sleep in the next room. This house they bought to keep you safe.

And then you feel repulsed.

And then you feel nothing.

That's how I woke up today.

And I didn't want to talk about it. I was too drained, too tired, too worried. I felt like when I stepped outside, I was going to step into a world so filled with hate now. I was in a glass house and everyone was throwing their hatred at me.

I'm just a girl, yet I feel responsible for how everyone else in the world views Americans.

I know when I go to different countries that I am to hold myself with dignity and not dishonor Americans, but here I am now with a loose-cannon president.

Here we all are now.

So I don't talk for a while. I don't want to talk. I don't want to think about it, so I don't, yet it is all I think about.

I think about how proud I would have been if it had been Hillary. How I would have walked into class and I would have smiled. Grinned. Felt safe.

I felt like my insides were eating themself, instead.

The Independent / Via independent.co.uk

So I think about it on the ride to school.

I think about how no matter what, my body is my body. My body has to be my body because it is mine.

I feel like I'm going insane. I feel like I'm Alice, but not the emo Alice where everyone identifies with her and likes it. I'm in the bell jar now, I'm Kasen now. I'm beginning to question the amount of bones in my hand -- are there even bones in my hand?

And then I snap into reality. I think of all the jokes I can make and then I decide to have a social media black out.

Because I know if I rally with any other Hillary supporters, I'll cry.

I try to put on a happy face and not feel like pure shit the entire day but my stomach is exploding. I know I'm not that sick and I know I don't have a cold. It's because of our president -- not Barrack, Barrack would never -- you know who.

I think of all the little girls out there who might think of themselves as ugly because of what he has said and the little boys who might look up to him.

And vice versa.

But why write this now?

The Highlander Online / Via homesteadhighlanderonline.com

Because of one woman's speech, and one man's mix of comedy and serious words.

I'll start with Stephen Colbert, and his speechlessness. He couldn't be funny about what he was paid to be funny about.

And that's hard. So I began to collect myself about twenty-four hours after the election coverage.

And Hillary.

It wasn't her words about unity. It was her message to all the little girls of the world.

And Hill, I heard you.

And I did rally.

From,

Just a young woman from Ohio.