Emotions in the Wake of a Staggering Election Result

There’s no wrong way to feel.

Note: I know many people — myself very much included — have taken great pains to avoid any commentary or analysis of the election results this week. So here is your warning that today’s piece is my attempt to process my own thoughts and emotions in the wake of it. If you still do not have the stomach for that — and I am not sure I do myself — here is a head’s up for you to duck out right now. After this, I think I’m gonna take a break from writing about this for a while, for my sake and for yours. But gotta get it out this week. So, yeah, heads up. Look: It’s my first trigger warning!

It hits you in waves. I’d spent months, really years, fearing the ramifications of another Trump presidency, but it wasn’t until it became real that its implications truly set in. Like, you knew it could happen, but you didn’t think it would really happen, not really. And now here we are. It hasn’t sunken in, and I suspect it won’t until he’s physically inaugurated — something I didn’t watch last time and am even less likely to this time — that it will. Even then it’ll feel surreal and wrong.

The day after Trump was elected in 2016, I was in New York City to film my old Sports Illustrated football show with Nate Burleson, and that afternoon, I went to a screening in Union…