People Asked Me What To Do After Trump Won. This Is What I Said 8 Years Ago

I wrote the following essay eight years ago, when Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States. At that time, I was the head of HuffPost Queer Voices , a section of this site that I was hired to create and oversee in 2011.

I spent a lot of my time writing about what needed to happen for queer people to feel seen and safe and, hopefully, at some point, gain full equality in this country. Thanks to tireless activism, brilliant organizing, and a lot courageous folks who made a lot of courageous moves, we had secured some incredible wins in the relatively short period of time I had been at HuffPost. From marriage equality becoming the law of the land to the arrival of the "trans tipping point," which brought more visibility and support for trans folks, beautiful and once-unthinkable things had happened. However, we still regularly faced extraordinary bigotry, so I saw every day that I sat down at my desk as another chance to say something that might matter.

After Trump won in 2016, friends and readers and complete strangers immediately began to ask me, "What do we do now?" At that moment, blindsided by Trump's unexpected victory and everything it could mean for myself and my community, I had no idea what to tell them.

Then, a few days later, I wrote the essay below and sent it out into the world in hopes that it could provide, if not an exact blueprint for survival, at least some record of where we had come from, what we had already overcome, and why we had to keep going.

In 2018 I became the director of HuffPost Personal, a section features real stories from real people. I know longer regularly write about the queer community, but, last week, after Trump won again, I began to hear from people who, once again, wanted to know if I had any idea what we do now. I didn't. The terror that I and so many of us are feeling makes what happened in 2016 feel almost quaint, and I have spent the past eight days vacillating between numbness, queasiness and rage.

And then I remembered this essay. I hadn't thought about it since I published it almost a decade ago, so I dug it back up and, when I reread it, I was shocked — and overwhelmed — by how much of what I wrote is still pertinent.

So, I'm republishing it now. Though my target audience in 2016 was primarily queer folks, I now recognize how much of what is written here applies to so many communities who find themselves in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration.

And, of course, things are different than they were eight years ago — if anything, it feels like there is even more at stake, even more that is about to go wrong, even fewer guardrails, even more danger awaiting us, and even more suffering about to be unleashed. But the gist of what I believed then remains the same and somewhere in the distance I can still see a light — however dim — refusing to die.

I went to bed last night before Donald Trump was officially named the next president of the United States because I didn't know what else to do with myself. The anxiety was too palpable. The dread was too real. I felt like my soul had left my body and was repeatedly banging itself against my living room ceiling in an attempt to knock itself unconscious.

I woke up at 3 a.m. thinking that Tuesday night had been some kind of sick dream, as if I were a character at the end of a badly written horror movie who learns the monster was merely a figment of his imagination.

But I wasn't dreaming ― we aren't dreaming ― and this isn't the end of a horror movie. It's just the beginning.

So, what do we do now? How do we, as queer people, move forward knowing so many people ― our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers ― who live in a country that's supposed to believe in and protect liberty and freedom and justice just voted for a man who is so rabidly anti-woman, anti-people of color, anti-immigrant, anti-queer and who is so obviously so unfit to lead this country? How do we look them in the face and not want to cry or spit or throw punches?

I don't really know. What I do know is that no matter how lonely you feel right now while you're reading this at your desk or lying in your bed or waiting in line at Walgreens, you are not alone. There are millions of you ― of us ― searching for uneasy answers, trying not to break down on the subway, forcing ourselves to pull our clothes on and go out into the world and attempt to somehow be useful in a country that seems to have no use for us, in a country that we are certain does not want us, that we worry will not keep us safe.

For now, we must hold each other as we fall to pieces, as we simultaneously lose ourselves to our despair and drown in our panic, as we burn with the hottest, bluest flames of hopelessness.

And then we must hold each other as we piece ourselves back together, as we remember who we are ― who we have always been ― and remember what we have stared down and refused to give in to before. As we remember what we and those who came before us have overcome, together, for hundreds and hundreds of cold, dark years.

We must — perhaps more than any time before now — be exactly who we are, not by denying our fears, but by willingly pumping them through our veins as proof that we exist despite the very real dreams of those who wish we did not. Let those fears fuel us as we remind ourselves and anyone who dare look upon us that we are not going anywhere ― that we are wholly deserving of our love and our desire simply because they are real and they are ours and they have made us who we are today.

Let us be furious. Let us be afraid. Let us tell ourselves everything will somehow be OK and then let us believe it and then let us make it so. If you haven't come out, and you can find a way to come out without putting yourself in danger, come out. If you have come out, and it's still safe for you to be out, come out again and again and again ― to your families, to the officials who have been elected to represent you, to the woman sitting next to you on your flight to San Diego.

Let us be heartbroken. Let us be doubtless. Let us learn and relearn and teach each other our history and let us never allow ourselves or each other to forget. Let us vote. Let us donate our time and our money and our attention to those who may have even less than us and even more reasons to be terrified than we do.

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Let us be vigilant. Let us be brave. Let us give ourselves and anyone else as many orgasms as we can muster with our bare hands and our open mouths and our beautiful, quivering bodies and let us understand how radical of an act this truly is — especially now. Let us fall in love with ourselves or anyone else at any given moment ― just because we can, just because ― look at us! How could we not?

Let us be rooted. Let us be decisive. Let us refuse to hear "no" but be unafraid to say it. Let us look for moments to offer mercy to ourselves. Let us hold those who have wronged us accountable for their actions and their words. Let us not fear righteous anger or the very real power it can have to get things done. Let us know when and how to forgive and when and how not to.

Let us see ― truly see. Let us speak what needs to be spoken. Let us wake up and stay awake today and every day after today. Let us fight alongside one another with our words and our actions and our hearts and let us never stop fighting, even when we're telling ourselves and each other that the end of the world has finally arrived ― even when the end of the world finally arrives.

Noah Michelson is the director of HuffPost Personal and the co-host of HuffPost's "Am I Doing It Wrong?" podcast . He joined HuffPost in 2011 to launch and oversee the site's first vertical dedicated to queer issues, Queer Voices, and went on to oversee all of HuffPost's community sections before pivoting to create and run HuffPost Personal in 2018. He received his MFA in poetry from New York University and has served as a commentator for the BBC, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight and Sirius XM.

People Asked Me What To Do After Trump Won. This Is What I Said 8 Years Ago — And What You Need To Hear Now.

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