I followed the election returns until 1:30 this morning, and then made myself go to bed, suspecting nothing would be known before morning at the earliest. But waking up from a restive sleep at 4:30 I checked the returns again, and realized then that it was all but over. I had to go to a conference today, so wasn’t at work nor near any media, so I was able largely not to have to think about it much during the day. I came home this afternoon, though, to the radio, which we leave on during the day for the cat, walking in to hear Bush speak about having “one country, one Constitution,” and I found myself screaming, sickened by the words of this man who has shown himself only too willing to poison that Constitution for his own political gain, and whose positions and party led to the unconscionable, uncharitable and, yes, unchristian sullying of eleven state constitutions last night.

How do I feel? Numb, betrayed, hated, hopeless, powerless, adrift. I keep spontaneously breaking into tears, and–while I’m not suicidal–I keep thinking about death. Only my father’s death last year has caused me to despair as much as the result of this election, and that at least was tempered by knowing that he finally was suffering no longer; I have no such solace this time, as our country’s suffering is likely only just beginning. Its people, and especially its youth, will be paying the terrible prices for this man’s and his administration’s actions for decades and generations to come.

This morning I told Jeff–the man I love in a relationship not only legally meaningless in our own state, as well as many others, but that now also has been given a constitutional stamp of disapprobation in eleven states, the tip of an approaching iceberg–that I feel as though we’ve lived at a monumentally horrific point of history, in which we’ve personally seen our country’s greatness crest and begin to ebb; never again in my life, likely, will the U.S. be considered as respected, as trustworthy, as democratic, as peaceful, as neighborly, as wealthy, as powerful a force for liberty, freedom and good as it was just three years ago September. We lived at the time of the beginning of the fall of the American Empire; a new American government of theocracy and oligarchy/plutocracy is arising, with suspicion, persecution and greed taking the place of liberty, tolerance and compassion.

I feel very tired and, for the first time in my life, very, very old.