I’m not very good at expressing my emotions because I am at heart fairly mean and insincere, but at this point it feels like there’s nothing else that I can do.

I am angry. I am angry that Donald Trump, a deplorable fascist who is extravagantly unfit for the office of the presidency on literally every conceivable level, has been validated in his depravity by the American democracy. I am angry that half the country is either made up of bigots or is comfortable enough with bigotry that it is willing to condone it in their president. And I am furious every time I am told that what I must do now is put down my pitchfork and try to empathize with those bigots, when they have told me through their votes that I, as a queer person, am invalid.

I am heartbroken. I am heartbroken every time I think about Hillary Clinton and how instead of powerfully demonstrating America’s commitment to forward social progress, her bid to be the first woman president was stymied by the greasy, orange personification of toxic masculinity. I am heartbroken when I think of the futility of all the work my friends did around the country to prevent the rise of hatred and cruelty to elected power. I am heartbroken when I think how quickly all the work of President Barack Obama, which gave hope to me and so many others marginalized by the heteropatriarchy, will be undone.

I am betrayed. I am betrayed as someone who has devoted much time to the practice of politics — an attempt to better the world by working within democratic institutions. These institutions are supposed to safeguard the citizens they rule. I am not naive enough to believe them to be perfect; they can be cruel and violent, but as someone who came of age during the Obama era, I had believed that they would succeed in the end. But now that the electoral college has thwarted the popular vote for the second time in my life, I see the hubris of that position, and I feel like a fool.

I am afraid. I am afraid because I had already seen political violence being normalized over the past year, and the past few days have confirmed that Trumpism is why. Trump’s America already has a death toll: At least eight suicides of trans youth have been reported since Tuesday, and if this trend continues, by the time Trump takes office in January, he might already be responsible for more American deaths than a dozen Benghazis. I am afraid to walk the streets of my own city. I am afraid of the comments section below this article.

I am not OK. This wound is not healing with time; as every day passes and more news rolls in — the countless stories of hate crimes, the size of Hillary’s growing lead in the popular vote, the squadrons of homophobes and anti-Semites filling Trump’s transition team — I’m actually feeling worse. I wonder if I can safely ride BART alone. I came home from work on Thursday and didn’t leave my house for two days.

Trump has yet to even enact any of his policies, and he is already an intolerable failure. He is a clown, and we should have been able to identify him as such as soon as we saw his hair and face color. He is an unrepentant sexual predator (libel law demands I add “allegedly”). He is either the most openly racist president we’ve had since the Civil War or he is so comfortable playing to racist impulses that the difference between the two is irrelevant. He is a con artist who scammed his way into the presidency from second place, even as he whinged that the system would be rigged against him (and the idea that the system would be rigged against a rich white male racist in favor of a woman is laughable to anyone who knows anything at all about American history).

I am an extremely unsentimental person, and I usually find it grating when optimistic types try to point out silver linings, but one thing has stood out to me this week: I’ve never been so glad that I live here, in Berkeley. While it’s been devastating to have to deal with the fact that the country has decided the economic anxiety of affluent whites matters more than Black lives, my one comfort has been going outside and having that melange of horrible and overwhelming emotion mirrored back to me by everyone in our little bubble.

On Wednesday, after a long day of chanting “not my president,” I came home to see that ASUC President Will Morrow (a straight white man!) had announced that he would be taking a knee during the national anthem at the Big Game this weekend out of solidarity with communities marginalized by Trump, and I wept because I had found my president after all. And because although we lost this battle, we’re not alone. And it’s not over.

Let’s get back to work.

Jake Fineman writes the Monday column on the ASUC. Contact him at [email protected].