What it felt like to have loved ones vote for Trump

“I know you’re upset about the election and I’m very happy about it. But let’s agree not to talk about it.”

That’s more or less what my best friend of seven years told me when she came over the other day. (Of course we did proceed to talk about it after that.)

It didn’t come as too much of a surprise as we had talked many times about her opinions on both candidates. Still, I had a glimmer of hope. A glimmer that maybe she thought the “lesser of two evils” would be Hillary Clinton. Turns out the answer to that was no.

I spent all last week blaming Donald Trump’s supporters, unfriending every single one of them, screaming and crying over the hate in the world and wondering why on earth anyone would elect him.

Yet after I had spent the weekend with my best friend, a Trump voter (and therefore one of the people I targeted so directly), I rethought my actions. What had I become?

I think I’m giving her special treatment and I know it’s not okay. I should be treating her the same way I treated every other Trump supporter last week. But I just can’t. She’s been with me for so long and I think it’s time to put aside my beliefs for just a second and realize that politics aren’t everything. (Even though they have taken over all of our lives for far too long now.)

Does it make a difference that we’ve known each other since middle school? Maybe. But it doesn’t stop the fact that I feel like the biggest hypocrite in the entire world right now.

Not every Trump supporter is hateful, and even though I wrote a fairly angry Facebook post saying the opposite thing, I have now witnessed it firsthand. It makes me cringe saying it, but not every Trump supporter is hateful.

It’s so hard not to blame my friend. In a way I think her parents had a hand in her beliefs—they all do in some way or another. But I’m not making excuses for her. I understand her hatred for Hillary and her liking an outsider—I’d like to believe that’s why the majority of people voted for him—but I will never stand by the hatred he promoted. I hope she won’t either.

I’m a hypocrite plain and simple, but now that the post-election night anger is somewhat gone, I know we cannot be divided anymore. He’s not my president, but he’s other people’s. And we can’t let those other people be miserable. We’re all still in this together, in some messed-up way or another.

I still think our nation is screwed up and may never be fixed in our lifetime. I still think we won’t heal for a very long time. I’m still with her, and in the wonderful words of Kate McKinnon, “I’m not giving up and neither should you.”