When I first started this blog, its intent was to be a place of joint commiseration for the very normal things that suck during your twenties–––becoming an independent adult, job hunting, dating, personal growth, etc. What I forgot is that there has been absolutely nothing about my twenties that has been normal, and nothing proved that more than the 2024 presidential election.

To say that I am disappointed by the results of Tuesday’s election would be underselling it. I barely slept–––I woke up early Wednesday morning to use the bathroom, saw the results come in, and could not go back to sleep–––and when I finally did get up for the day all I did was sit on the couch, doomscroll Twitter, and cry. But behind the tears is just emptiness; there is a helplessness, a hollowness that has grown inside of me over the past 36 hours and threatens to consume me. When Trump won in 2016, I was angry. I was seventeen and I had only really developed a political and social consciousness about two years prior, so I was full of optimistic zeal that surely the system would prevent him from doing the heinous promises he ran his campaign on. But eight years later, I am a beaten down version of that girl, someone who no longer has that optimism that carried her through the first term.

I think that this emptiness stems from all of the “despites” in regard to Trump. Despite being convicted on thirty-four criminal charges, despite being found liable for sexual abuse, despite all of Project 2025 (which, as so elegantly Tweeted by Matt Walsh, is in fact part of the plan), despite holding a rally at Madison Square Garden so hateful and racist that one of the speakers openly called it a Nazi rally and he was cheered on by the crowd, and, for everyone who voted for him because “he’ll be good for the economy,” despite the fact that his planned economic tariffs will send inflation skyrocketing. Despite all of that, and the many, many, many other horrible things that this man has said, done, or stood for, people still elected him. 

Someone once asked me why I consider myself very left politically, and I explained that every single aspect of my world-view is fueled by compassion for other people; that with every choice I make, whether on a ballot or just day-to-day, I consider not just how it will affect me, but everyone I care about; that the most important thing to me is that every single human being has fundamental human rights. And for a very long time, I really, truly only wanted to see the good in people. But this emptiness that I feel reflects the realization that a majority of voters in America do not have other people’s best interests at heart. 

Ethel Cain, a singer I am just now slowly becoming familiar with, made two different statements about the election results, one on her Tumblr account and one on her Instagram stories, both of which resonated with me deeply. I highly recommend reading her entire Tumblr post, but I want to speak specifically about the section where she says,

“Everybody is so incredibly hateful. We are a loveless, disrespectful nation. We are spread so thin by our government that we would sell each other out in a heartbeat for an ounce of relief. This is what we’ve come to. It’s not even about Trump at this point… This is indicative of [a] deeper problem. This is just the ugly consequence of the already present reality in this country that we all just despise each other. There is no solidarity and there is no love.”

This is the hollow feeling in my chest, this reckoning that there are people out there who hate the mere existence of people who are just trying to survive. The hatred of transgender people, the hatred of gay people, the hatred of immigrants, of women, of people of color, of disabled people, of poor people, of anyone who does not fit into the “ideal” mold is so ingrained into the people of this country that the majority elected a shining beacon of hatred into the presidency a second time. In just two Tweets, I have seen vitriol thrown at women and their autonomy so vile that I almost threw up. There is no love. There is no solidarity.

Ethel Cain’s second statement outlines how we can potentially get out of this. On her Instagram stories, she said “‘I don’t owe anyone anything’ is not a mindset you can have anymore. American individualism will be the death of us if we don’t get it together… You have to be a human. You cannot give into apathy.” The idea that someone is inherently more deserving of existence than another person due to factors outside of their control is what fuels this hatred, and this idea occurs only when one refuses to surround themselves with people different from them. This is my call-to-action, my ultimate reason for writing this piece. I am begging, imploring you to give a fuck about people who live a different life than you. 

I’m going to be completely honest, I feel really helpless right now. I am terrified of what a second Donald Trump presidency means for me as a woman, as a queer person, and as a person with both a learning disability and chronic illness. I am terrified of what a second Trump presidency means for my trans friends and my non-white friends. People keep saying “well, we survived four years of this before,” but so many people didn’t. I don’t know what else I can offer besides this feeling, but at its core this blog is to help people not feel alone in whatever they’re going through. I hope, for right now, it offers even an iota of community for you.