I may have found the best melt

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Like so many of us, I have struggled today. I have cried at my desk at work. I've been sick to my stomach. My heart has felt almost unbearably heavy in my chest. To so many of us—women, people of color, LGBT people, Muslims, immigrants, people with disabilities—this outcome made a very clear statement: that many people around us every day hate who and what we are.

It's one thing to know that in theory, but it is something else entirely to have it validated by the highest office in the world, to know in hard numbers just how widely it has spread and how deeply it has festered in America. Hate isn't just violent and overt—it also takes the form of people who value those lives so little that this outcome was fine with them. My heart is broken.

I've had a few of those big watershed moments in my life where I literally felt my stars realigning and something cosmically huge changing in my universe. Last night was one of them. Like many of you, I sat in shock and watched my vision for my future be completely reshaped. This isn't hyperbole; this election is a moment of reckoning for this country and every single person in it, and you're kidding yourself if you shrug that off.

For the past few years, I've felt my heart being pulled more and more toward activism and politics. It's tricky territory as a journalist, because I'm not always allowed to be fully open and candid about where I stand. But I have to say something about this now, because I'm afraid and I don't know what I will be allowed to write as a journalist in the future. And I cannot be silently complicit. I can't tell my kids I didn't do or say anything.

Today, I have made a plan. I'm ready to fight. We have to hold the line. Sign up for a recurring donation to Planned Parenthood. Get involved in local and state elections and campaign your heart out. Find your local LGBT youth shelters or non-profits and volunteer. Check on one another, ask what people need, listen to their needs. Use any privilege you have as a shield to protect those who don't have it. Stand up to hate when you see it happening. Go to law school. Don't move to goddamn Canada—invest in where you are or move to a swing state and invest there.

As for me, I'm ready to spend the next four years and the rest of my life fighting to make sure nothing like this ever happens again in our country. I believe we can be better than this. It's going to be ugly (and, yes, nasty) and difficult and frustrating, but I swear to God we will force hate out and back into the slimy gutter of shame that it came from. I believe that. So let's get it the frick together, people. Get ready to do work. There's so much to do.

I have some big changes in mind for the next few years in my life that I didn't have yesterday. I hope some of you do too. I believe in you.

I'll leave you with this quote from a woman who would have been an incredible president: "This loss hurts. But please, please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. It’s always worth it. And we need you keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. "

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