I haven’t filled out my absentee ballot.

A 22-year-old American expatriate beginning my fifth year in Canada, I’ve been sitting up north biting my fingernails as I half-resent, half-relish my front-row seat to the chaotic U.S. election. And as I sit and watch I am bewildered that in 2016, in the “land of opportunity,” one misguided man’s rhetoric — composed entirely of spite and colonialist propaganda — could still be enjoying so much traction.

My mom keeps pressing me to register to vote. I’m in the process, of course. But living in Canada has given me a fabricated sense of removal. “Do it,” she reminds me, empathetically. “You cannot leave us alone with Trump.”

I won’t go on here about statistics. I won’t scoff at specific remarks made by the man. Feeling, for better and for worse, has dominated this election cycle. So I’ll choose instead to focus on how I’m feeling, and hope I’m not alone in feeling it.

With this slight degree of removal I am watching dark clouds roiling below — they are the persistent calling card of this long-impending catastrophe that has been threatening my home country. This catastrophe has obscured our realities. It has made America noticeably less viable to the rest of the world as an ally, as an enemy, as a refuge, as a home; I feel embarrassment, fear, confusion. I feel glad I escaped when I could.

A Clinton win would have me feeling immensely grateful. But currently, the moral, social, and political environment in America is so polluted that while some of its citizens are threatening to migrate, those of us who have already left are having trouble justifying our return.

I grew up outside Washington, D.C., in a happy environment, one in which I was lucky enough to feel free to express my beliefs. Even as a young adult I was not as blindly nationalistic as several of my friends and schoolmates — but I was satisfied to live in a place that did its best to keep me safe, physically and emotionally. I learned to be kind, to care deeply, and to compromise.

Now compassion and compromise are harder to substantiate; we are rapidly regressing, as we tolerate xenophobia and fascist discourse. An alarmingly significant portion of the country supports Trump and the rest of us fuel his fire by poking fun, inviting him onto talk shows, or openly expressing our distaste. We are, whether we mean to or not, legitimating a weak, vindictive man, who proudly and unprofessionally preaches moral illiteracy.

I don’t derive this pessimism from Trump’s policies — it’s instead this apocalypse of hate he is succeeding to lord that has me feeling so down. I’m concerned for the Americans who have been bruised and displaced during this electoral cat fight; for all the people — both inside the U.S. and outside — who may, soon, have no say in the degree of poison that exists in the air they are forced to breathe.

I am motivated and passionate, and I want so badly to be excited to go home. I want to feel enthusiastic about making a mark on a country that should be doing all it can to afford me, and every other young person, an equal opportunity to succeed and contribute.

I want to live somewhere that is lively and open and unified, somewhere that is trying its hardest to be great. And when I say that I want America to be great I do not mean I want it to be the most intimidating or the richest. I want it to be great in the humblest definition of the word; hard-working, co-operative, to continue valuing intrinsic worth and diversity.

Today, as I restlessly rest up north, watching America bleed, I ache with sadness. I have to wonder how this flailing nation, purportedly “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” will be able to prioritize goodness again, having stepped aside as misogyny, antagonism, and bigotry have pushed their way into the spotlight.

I work on my absentee ballot, but the skeptic in me chirps up: I no longer have any idea how powerful good intentions truly can be when matched against the bad. Sometime in the past year, I’ve become a cynic. I blame this election for that. I have no idea if this way we are feeling will be enough to figure out how to reverse the damage.

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And if it’s not, can we really still call ourselves the land of the free? The home of the brave?

Sophie van Bastelaer is a recent McGill University English graduate and reporting intern at the Toronto Star.

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