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And they'll coach you in the classroom that it cannot happen here, but it has happened here
I didn't realize how much I had existentially relaxed in the last eight years—how much having Obama in office made me feel safer on some unnoticed level, because I knew the world was getting better in ways that mattered deeply, no matter the turmoil and backlash of working out the routes and means. I thought I could expect it to keep getting better. My low-bar, minimum-clearance definition of better was apparently so terrifying and repugnant to more than half the country I live in that they killed it. Now I don't feel safe and neither do most of the people I love and I know I will have to find ways to fight for them, because the alternative is not acceptable to me (nor would it make me safer: I am not in the demographic of America Trump promises to make great again), but it feels exhausting even to contemplate and any fight of this kind will take the most resources from the people who already have the least to spare. Right now I cannot imagine relaxing again and I spent most of my adulthood working to convince myself that this world was a good place to stay in; now I feel it would be irresponsible to leave it, but I don't expect to enjoy it. This is the tension of the Bush years. Worse, in fact, because then I thought we must have hit rock bottom, surely we must recover, if we just don't blow up the planet there cannot be farther to fall. This is not how I had hoped to feel by today. I don't believe in miracles, but an improbability would have really been nice.
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*hugs*
I haven't been crying. I have had a half-blinding headache for the last thirteen hours, but it is demonstrably environmental. At the moment I am doing all the usual things I do with a day on which I feel terrible, like working from home and feeding the cats; I don't know anything more useful to do right now, but I know that failing to do them will not make me feel that I am responding to the situation better. Do whatever you need to do for yourself.