I have not slept since the morning of November 8th. I am a woman, my significant other comes from a black Muslim family. My best friends are a kaleidoscope of races and ethnicities and immigration statuses and sexual orientations and gender identities. For the first time, I truly know what fear feels like. Having a loaded gun shoved in my face, being mowed down by a drunk driver, and graduate school: this fear I feel now is incomparable. Everyone is telling me that it will be okay, that my loved ones and I will be safe, that there is nothing to worry about. Why can't I see that? I understand that fear can be blinding, but it is not deafening. I have heard enough over the last year and a half to feel that my fear is justified. And I'm glad to come home to a community as supportive and understanding as this one.

But this fear is not subsiding. And I can't sleep.