Yesterday: Everyday Life in the Time of Trump

6:30 — The day begins like every day begins. My wife and our two year old son wake up while it’s still dark out so that we can get our boy dressed and ready for the preschool where my wife works. Like everyone, my son does not love getting up early and/or going to school but he’s a little trooper and I brush his teeth, strap him into his carseat and kiss him and my wife goodbye.

6:37 — I experience an intense feeling of disappointment when I realize, “Holy shit. Donald Trump is our next President.” It’s a realization that somehow never loses its capacity to shock and sadden. It’s an ugly reality I confront every morning, not unlike the way I felt right after getting dumped or getting fired from a job. It feels like a form of rejection not just of your candidate, but your way of seeing the world, and our country in particular. It just hurts. And it keeps hurting.

9:00-I take my dog Ghostface for a walk through the lovely playground by our apartment and take great joy in the changing of the seasons and in the natural beauty of Decatur, Georgia.

9:10: Then I think about my enormous respect for President Obama, and I how I would love for my son to grow up to be a good man like him. This leads to me thinking about how Obama defended Trump to his audience in a clip that quickly went viral as even more proof of Obama’s fundamental decency, and, despite clear evidence to the contrary, Trump blatantly lied and mischaracterized this heartbreaking act of graciousness and respect as Obama screaming insults at the man. That anger towards Trump and the people who empowered him flares up all over again.

12:15: I finish watching Rat Race for my Sub-Cult column over at Rotten Tomatoes, and am deeply grateful that I have a life and a career where I can write about movies and television and books and everything else that I adore and be able to support my family with my labors. I’m grateful for silly movies like Rat Race, because we all need levity in our lives, especially now.

Then I think about how we had an opportunity to either elect a woman who is among the most qualified and accomplished candidates ever to run for the Presidency, or a man taped bragging that when he sees a woman he wants to fuck he just “grabs them by the pussy” because he can, and how we elected the man who talked, on tape, about grabbing women by the pussy instead of someone uniquely qualified to be our first female president, and a massively inspirational figure.

5:30: My wife comes home and has to dart off to tutor to raise some much-needed extra dough, so I look after our baby and I give him a bath and put him in his pajamas and we watch episode after episode of Paw Patrol, a show he is obsessed with.

I think about my dad, who has had Multiple Sclerosis even before I was born, and how difficult his life is as an impoverished disabled senior citizen whose children have moved away, and how unforgivably hard life is for the disabled. And that leads me to replay in my mind, yet again, that awful clip of Donald Trump clearly mocking a disabled reporter, and I feel sad and hurt and overwhelmed but also defeated. It’s hard not to feel defeated these days.

10:30: Before I drift off to bed next to my wife and baby and dog, I think about all of the wonderful things in my life, and how grateful I am to be a dad and a writer and a husband but I also think about everything that I have to lose, and what a profound threat Trump and his administration is even to my very modest quality of life.

We’re going to get through. But we’re only to get through this together. As with most traumas, God willing, each day it’s going to get better, easier, less brutal and more manageable. But we’re going to get through this day-by-day (in part because even trying to contemplate the horrific vastness of 4 years of Trump rule is almost too upsetting to bear) and we’re going to have some brutal, brutal days along the way. As a veteran of mental illness I’m trying to steel myself for the tough times ahead, and I encourage you to do the same.

Nathan Rabin is a dad, columnist and author of five books, most recently 7 Days In Ohio: Trump, the Gathering of the Juggalos and the Summer Everything Went Insane, which was just released in a hugely expanded edition