Fast-forward to a couple of years from now, where at some point I’ll have to recall the apocalyptic event of the morning of November 9th 2016.
‘Where were you?’
‘What were you doing?’
‘How did you feel?’
How did you feel?
If like me you’re insanely passionate about the politics of the world and all that jazz, and if you also happen to have strong convictions about the ideal world, and are often left frustrated as a result you will probably have gone through one (or all) of the following five stages:
Stage 1: Denial
A lot can happen in 20 minutes.
In my case, I fell asleep anxiously awaiting the numbers from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and woke up some 20 minutes later in the most frenzied state.
Michigan.
I blinked. The numbers stayed the same.
I refreshed my live stream. The numbers stayed the same.
I closed and reopened my Twitter feed. The. Numbers. Stayed. The. Same.
So I laughed and convinced myself that I was still asleep and it was all a joke or a nightmare or a prank or to be honest anything but reality.
Stage 2: Nausea
10 minutes passed very slowly and my ‘welcome to reality!’ senses began to tingle.
Everything about this was real life, and honestly it made me sick.
I’m lying in bed at nearly 6am in the morning, the lights are off and very suddenly and overwhelmingly, a tidal wave carrying all the offensive/absurd/ignorant words slurred by President-elect aka annoying orange in the past year flooded my mind.
Which brings me to the next stage…
Stage 3: Fear
My usually cosy little bed suddenly became awfully cold.
I thought about how much ‘progress’ had been made over the years only for it to seem as though we’d pretty much been teleported right back to where we started. I thought of the scores of people who deemed it okay to elect the physical manifestation of hatred. To see them celebrate. To see their smiles from cheek to cheek in their bright red ‘Make America Great Again’ hats. To see them, comfortable. And satisfied.
A surge of this single emotion greeted me as I thought of all the stereotypes I had one day hoped to confound, all the walls I wished to break down, all the great things I hoped to achieve, and how impossible it all suddenly felt.
Stage 4: Rage
It’s the following afternoon.
Clinton delivers her speech. Congratulatory messages from world leaders. Exit poll analysis and statistics and ‘hidden supporter’ theories surface. The foolish emerge and spill their trash opinions from one social media platform to the other.
It’s real.
And at this point I’m fuming.
I immerse myself in a whole load of information and note first how the ‘poor, dissatisfied people voting for change’ narrative doesn’t stick.
I consider how in 2016, an overqualified woman loses to that.
I boil at how the worst in people has now become legitimised.
I think of all the horrible things about life, ranging from personal life, to my home country’s shortcomings, to history, to this and decide within myself to hide my enraged self indoors for the rest of the day like this:
Stage 5: Acceptance
And so after all the articles, blog posts, interviews, essays to friends and family (lol), I decide it’s high time I get my life back on track because:
- I actually have to work and not fail 1st year
- It’s getting quite annoying at this point
I accept basically:
However, I would like to take a moment to thank Twitter banter for getting me through this- I really could not have done it without the memes!
Here is one of my favourites: