JFC, y’all.

Told you so.

I cried in November 4 years ago. Sobbed. Woke up sobbing, cried all day, drove to the coffee shop 45 minutes away to be with my people and we stood there and held each other, shaking, crying, angry, scared. I called my mom that night and said, “He won’t leave. There’s no way there will be a peaceful transition of power.”

People called me a snowflake, told me to get over it, told me to leave. They didn’t understand that I wasn’t crying for a lost election, I was crying for a lost country. I was crying because for all its flaws, I always saw that laid into the foundation of this country was the opportunity, fuck, the expectation, that we would evolve, that things would change, and that the ability to change was built into our government as well. We could learn from our mistakes and take steps to ensure they didn’t happen again.

I was crying because four years ago, I learned that in no uncertain terms, we would not learn. We would not change. The violence and blood and hatred of our forefathers had been taken up through the roots and now the whole tree was poison.

I know that this realization, in itself, was a privileged one. The belief, a naive one. Maybe that’s really why I cried — because I could no longer delude myself that we were better. That we could be better.

The past four years have showed, unequivocally, that we are not better. Today has shown that we will not become better without a fight, and that even then, the outcome is uncertain.