I cannot even process today. I’m numb and angry and despondent and distressed and scared and so very, very sad. I’m sure I’m much like many people across the country who were pouring through exit polls to figure out how this could happen today. And I have no further answers.

My moment of fear that this was really happening came early last night, as Virginia and Ohio remained stubbornly red (Virginia turned blue at the last minute). I watched in horror as Michigan and Wisconsin went red and knew it was over, long before they called it. My friend Lindsay came over and we just stared at our respective phones while PBS droned on in the background, too upset to even cry.

Today wasn’t better. I am fearful of what comes next. The ACA/Obamacare is the most heavy on my mind because it directly affects the care I give and my patient’s health (not to mention that my sister is on it and my parents were planning on retiring in a year or so and using it to bridge them to Medicare) and it is likely to disappear into thin air, but when I think of the list of vulnerable people – and when I read Trump’s 100 days proposal which was so extreme and so hateful and will alienate every single one of our world allies, I start crying again.

I do live in liberal oasis. The freeways tonight are shut down with Trump protestors. But I’ve never felt further away from my country. The pundits tell me that that’s how the rural and suburban America has been feeling and I’m straining to have empathy. But for now, I have so much anger that they were so short-sighted to elect a man with no morals, no experience, no policy, who was racist, sexist, narcissistic, whose supporters feed into that mentality and I was blindsided.