Dissonance......

I've been trying to figure out what I am feeling since election day. Disbelief certainly came to my mind when I woke at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday and found out the results. And ever since I feel like I'm sort of walking in a fog....even though we've been enjoying beautiful, sunny, blue-sky days here in Port Washington.

My social media is flooded with all kinds of political comments and crap....the talking heads are talking and talking and talking....and I find I just can not listen anymore. I keep thinking that this just can't be "my America"....and it isn't.

I'm white, I'm upper middle-class, I went to college, I had good jobs, I enjoyed nice homes,  now I live in a mortgage-free condo overlooking Lake Michigan, I travel, I'm married, our kids are grown/college educated/independent, we are enjoying a comfortable retirement.  That's my America. It doesn't reflect America for so many others....and the left-behinds roared into the polling places on election day responding to a candidate who said, "Only I can fix it."

We're still figuring out "what now"....and it saddens me so to see that we now have can't-argue-with-it-proof that racisim is alive and well all over the United States of America. Individuals who, before election day, might have shared their racist comments only with like-minded individuals, now feel free to scrawl them on school walls, hurl them at the "other" in their neighborhoods. It saddens me to see the protests in the streets although that is certainly a measure of the free speech we enjoy here. It saddens me to see that our peaceful transition from one President to another will not be so peaceful this time....and the whole world is watching.

So again I muddle through the day wondering just what I am feeling......and then I went to the dictionary. The word "dissonance" means a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.

That's it.....every time I hear the words President Elect partnered with the name Donald J. Trump I feel a ripple of dissonance vibrate through my brain.

For me, I fear it's going to be a very long four years.