Where do I even begin?  I have so many things I need to get off my chest and I don't even know where to begin.

First I just want to get some housekeeping done because I am an author first and foremost, and if you want to just get right into the juicy stuff just skip down to the next paragraph.  For those who are friends with me on this site or are subscribed to me as an author, I'm really sorry for not posting anything this past summer.  I don't know how many of you notice, but I usually write a major multi-chaptered story over the course of a summer and I post it in the beginning of Septemeber before I go back to school.  Honestly, I went through a major maturity transition over the summer: I turned 17, I worked at an actual job for the first time, I had my first relationship (and my first breakup), I experienced my last summer as a high school student, and most importantly, I started my college applications.  I'm the type of person who will stress myself early for the sake of giving myself a break for the rest of the year before the rest of my classmates, so I applied to Early Action/priority deadline for all of the colleges that offered them.  I went on vacation to California and really just spent some time with my family on that side of the country and came back completely changed and more confident and comfortable with myself, and I really just didn't have the time or the energy to write much that was creative.  I have a lot of unfinished ideas, a few of them have been incomplete for a few years now actually, but I'm hoping that since I have become a Senior and I will be done with my college apps soon, I will have time for writing and all of my readers who have stayed with me up till this point.  For the past few days I've been staying up a little late to write a story that I've been committed to for a while, and I will hopefully be able to release it by Christmas, and I might do a Christmas special for that story, who knows?  I really do appreciate all of you, and I'm really grateful for you especially since you've made it this far into this post without rolling your eyes and leaving me yet.  So I'll stop talking and I'll get on with the point of this post.

Let me give you a bit of a background of me before I begin:  I am a 17 year old cis female born in the US in the ever Democratic state of New York.  I look like I am Latina, but that's because I identify as mixed racial.  My mother is a Hindu Guyanese immigrant who's ancestry is in India because of the British and history I won't explain.  She came here in her teens and now has citizenship in America.  My father is a Jewish Iranian who escaped during the Iranian Revolution just before the Shah was kicked out of power and became the Islamic Republic that it is now.  He is a legal alien living in the US because he never applied for citizenship, and quite honestly I question if he even wants to be.  So, I'm probably better off than a lot of other people, but I'm still a little worried.

I have followed this election since last summer when my AP English teacher assigned summer homework on the nominees for each Party.  I laughed at the possibility of Trump becoming the nominee because he wasn't a real Republican and he was absolutley appalling.  And yet here we are today.  Honestly, I didn't care all that much who was running against him as long as it was a Democrat who was of decent character.  I would have preferred Bernie Sanders, but at least Hillary Clinton had the experience and had practically worked her emtire life for America.  And the email scandal?  Nothing compared to Trump being ist, a , narcissistic, anti-Islam, anti-Latinx, most likely anti-LGBTQ+, bipolar, big-mouthed, trigger-happy, and the list goes on.  And she was cleared twice.

The polls were in her favor for a long time, but about 2 weekends ago when the emails were under investigation again her odds went down.  That's when I actually started worrying that this election isn't going to end well.  On the night of the election, when I noticed how long it was taking to count up Florida, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, after he had already won Ohio, I knew it was over.  I just went to sleep hoping that I would be wrong and I would wake up to a pleasant surprise.  I wasn't wrong.

Today was just dreadful.  The weather was already overcast, I slept through my alarm, and I barely slept.  When I hurriedly checked the results, I knew today would just be a depressing day.  My mother was furious and my dad might as well have been gloating.   Going to school was like feeling a completely different atmosphere; everyone just seemed to be...dead.  And when I got to school, it was worse.  I attend a school where out of about 500+ kids, maybe 1-2% were white, half were East Asian, half were Brown (what we call either Indian, Bengali, West Indian, anything of that group), a handful were Latinx, and a pretty good percentage of the school was openly LGBTQ+. And we were okay with everyone being just the way they were.  The entire student body and even the teachers were all hoping Clinton would win the election.  So you could imagine students who were already depressed and anxious for ant reason being more so because of that election result.  My English teacher didn't even teach today; he played some really chill music and tried to guide us on what might happen and how we could get through this.  During my lunch period, my friends streamed Clinton's concession address, and we litereally cried.  During Gov class, we looked at all the exit polls to see how the hell this happened.  Groups that normally wouldn't vote Republican voted for Trump, groups who shouldn't have voted for him did (College educated white women, single white women).  We were all angry, we were hurt, we were shocked, we were disappointed.  We were all scared.

Now, New York City is completely different from any other part of the US because it is much more liberal.  We take trains with every other race, we offer seats to the elderly and pregnant women, even rich private school kids take public transportation!  We have so many ethnic neighborhoods and we eat any kind of cuisine we feel like.  To put it simply, we have developed a great tolerance for every race, gender, ual identity, and ual orientation.  But going out of New York is asking to go into White supremacy country.  People have said that Trump even becoming the nominee has caused an increase in hate crimes against Muslims and other minorities , and an increase in attitudes of white supremacy.  Just from Day 1 after Trump being elected had caused acts against all minorities.  Because why the not?  If our President can openly mock Muslims, Blacks, Latinxs, etc, then why the hell can't I?  It must be okay!  I nearly cry over these accounts that I've read on Twitter.  How have we gone in Retrograde?  Just 8 years ago we were crying because we had a Black President for the first time in history, and now we're cheering for the epitome of bigotry?!  What. The. . America?

But you know what really bothers me?  It's not because I see Black people getting notes calling them that one offensive name with images of hanging ropes.  It's not because of Muslim girls getting their hijabs pulled off because some ignorant white person tells them "it's not allowed anymore," that they'll be deprted soon.  It's not because little boys in middle school are gleefully smirking that they can do whatever the hell they want to to women now.  It's not because Latinxs are being stopped and being asked for their Green Cards because "that's how it works now."  It's not because mothers are telling their LGBTQ+ children that they need to hide who they are because they fear oncoming conservatism.  And it's definitely not because people are freely carrying guns and threatening minorities openly with them.  You want to know what really ing bothers me?  It's the fact that my father, who isn't even a full Trump supporter because he still disliked both of them, looks at all this evidence of hate crimes starting only on the first day of Trump being ing President Elect - not even innaugurated into the Presidency yet - and responds angrily, "What does that have anything to do with Trump?!  It's not his fault that people are being stupid and doing all these things!  He didn't plan this!"  It's not his fault.  It's not his ing fault, he says.  It has nothing to do with him, he says.  He didn't plan this.  Are. You. ting me??!!  Because Trump was publicly a bigot, because he openly opressed every non-White race and Muslims people think it's okay to do it.  And you dare say it has nothing to do with him?!!  You think that he's President because people knew any better than to oppress people??  He even said it himself that Trump said everything they never could say because that was his platform, and he thinks now that people were crazy enough to get him elected that they wouldn't be crazy enough to act on everything that he voiced??  Trump knew exactly who his supporters were, HE'S BEING SUPPORTED BY THE KKK FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!

Honestly, I was just so angry at my father today that I almost cursed him out, but I needed to respect him enough to not say anything rash.  How dare he say it isn't Trump's fault fault the country is divided and in chaos?  And what scares me is that if that's how a rational somewhat-supporter of Trump says, I could only imagine how a die-hard crazy Trump supporter would justify these actions.  America, what they have you done?  And being 17 doesn't help, I was one year away from voting in this election.  Do you know that feeling when you're watching something fall on the other end of the room and everything is in slow motion and you're reaching to save it but you can't because you just missed it and it falls anyway?  Yeah.  That's exactly what it feels like to be 17 in this election.  Not that popular votes mattered anyway.  And to anyone who might say "Oh, you're only 17 and you can't even vote, why do you care?"  That's a terrible question, just because I was born at a terrible time a year from election doesn't mean I shouldn't care about the state of my fellow countrymen.  And if I see by the next election when I can vote that nothing has been going right, then I'll know exactly who to give my vote to.

Major props to Hillary Clinton for making it this far and sticking it out against Trump.  Honestly, if she were a man, I think she wouldn't have gotten all this hae and bull from everyone.  But thank you for being so gracious in conceding to the win.  If Trump was in your shoes, he wouldn't have been able to be half as humbled and gracious as you.  Thank you for your empowerment and serving all your life towards the betterment of the American people.  It's been a wild ride.

To the international community, I honestly hope you don't hate Americans now that we have a bigot representing us.  The maojority of us didn't even vote for him, blame the stupidly outdated Electoral College for all of this.

Also, to all the people in California, Chicago, and Manhattan  who protested (or are still protesting, I'm not quite sure how long this is going to last), please stay safe and don't do anything violent to get the police involved so people get hurt and arrested.  Thank you for your courage to use your right to vote and to protest.

And of course, thank you to all the Minorities living in the States right now.  It's deeply depressing to see all the accounts of you guys being terribly hated and threatened and oppressed again.  I don't blame you guys for being terrified and confused and depressed.  Please stay strong and please please please be safe.  I pray for all of you and your families and your safety, it would be a terrible shame for something to happen to any of you <3

With that, everyone have a good night/good morning/good afternoon.  Thank you for actually reading through this for this long, I honestly needed to get my feelings out since my household is very divided and so it the country at the moment.  Hopefully this is only the initial outbreak and things will die down soon, but I really can't be optimistic anymore.  Stay well everyone.

...Please go do something happy now that this is done and over with, I don't want to keep you all depressed, sorry...