It’s too late

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 a reality for America.

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

Fear for my country.

The same feeling I had after learning about the Orlando shooting, the same feeling I have when I see racism. The feeling that hits your stomach like a rock while a chill runs down your spine.

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 together they 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.

America’s true colors are being uncovered.

The racial issues that we have tried to push down are rising to the surface and now we are forced to pay attention. We can’t just push it away anymore.

Now it’s too late.