Last week was a rough one.

I spent Wednesday in a daze.  I was exhausted (after a night out in NYC for work), I was dazed after the shocking and massively disappointing (for me) election results.  On Thursday, after some much-needed rest, I remember the feeling of utter despair settling into the pit of my stomach.  Unfathomable sadness.  Sadness that ran so deep, that felt so immediate, that not even tears helped alleviate it.

I’ve tried, sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully, to understand what happened.  Why it happened.  How it all went south so fast.  Sometimes I feel calm.  But oftentimes, the panic creeps in and overwhelms me.

These feelings put some things in sharp relief.  How as people, we drift through life, and sometimes we are in touch with who we are, what we believe in, but more than not, we are not.  Who am I?  What do I stand for?  What am I willing to fight for? What compromises am I willing to make to be me?

I try — very hard — to learn from my failures. I don’t want them to break me.  Or define me.  But they can teach me.  Teach me how I want to be treated, teach me what I will allow and what I will not — teach me my limits but also how to push the boundaries and experience new things.

I hope very much that it doesn’t take another 37 years for a woman to be on the ballot for President.  I hope very much that the next time a woman runs, she wins.  Not because she’s a woman, but because she is great, because she is right, because she is the best choice.  I hope that everything my mother fought for, everything I try to fight for, everything that every progressive woman has fought for for years, decades, centuries … isn’t lost after one defeat.

I feel lost right now.  I feel lost, and overcome with sadness.  I feel afraid for the immediate future.  I believe in the greatness of my country, but I also wonder as to how someone like our current President-elect won an election as important and significant as the one he won.

I feel lost and I am grappling with how to move forward.  How to make better choices for myself, for my beliefs, for my future and the future of my country.

I feel lost.  And I very much want to change that sooner rather than later.