It was 2:30 a.m. Tuesday when I found out Trump won the election. Immediately my phone dropped from my hands and tears welled up in my eyes.

I sat silenced in the dark staring blankly at my twitter newsfeed scrolling through my phone as my stomach dropped.

I didn’t think I was going to cry, I wasn’t sad. I was confused and upset, but not sad.

But I did cry.

15 minutes after seeing the results I tapped through Snapchat stories to see my friends reactions until I saw my best friend of nine years heartbreaking story.

As I clicked on her story, her tear streaked face popped up with “If Trump wins, my parents are sending me to conversion therapy,” across the bottom of the photo.

I cried.

Tears streamed down my face as I frantically typed, “There’s no way they can do that.”

At 3 a.m. I turned my phone off and went to sleep, hoping I’d wake up from a nightmare.

But no matter how many times I would pinch myself to try and wake up, I was slowly realizing that this wasn’t a nightmare but reality for America.

Wednesday morning I felt an unfamiliar feeling that has only happened a few times in my life.

Fear for my country.

All I could think about were my Muslim, black and LGBTQ friends and their lives. I thought about women and young children. What were they thinking about this? What was I thinking about this?

I fall into a few of Trump’s targeted groups, I am a woman, I have Middle Eastern heritage and I am learning Arabic because I believe that we shouldn’t blame a race for ISIS.

I believe that we shouldn’t stay silent.

Fear can fuel hate, hate can fuel phobias and fear and hate fuel a divided America.

We can’t let this happen any longer, we can’t let the stories go unheard.

Throughout the morning I heard stories from minority groups asking for help, tears running from their tired, fear-stricken eyes.

Every tear that was shed, every heartbreaking story was another tear in my heart.

I can’t begin to explain how depressing it is to see a country that I used to take pride in fallback decades into its old mold of a racist, homophobic country.

And this isn’t America’s true colors showing. No, these racial issues have always been a problem we just didn’t think it was necessary to pay attention.

Except now it’s too late.