The Following Days After the 2024 Election
By: Rachel McCloskey
In the days following the election, I found myself experiencing the seven stages of grief – shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance.
ABC News covering the election results at 9:02PM on November 5, 2024.
Shock. This came on election night, approximately four hours after 7 p.m. when votes were starting to come in. I knew the red wave would be counted first. I knew things were going to look bad. Southern states are always counted first, as their polling booths close earlier. However, I still felt shocked. It was not looking good for the Democratic party.
Denial. Again, this came on election night, or more accurately the next morning around 4 a.m. as I laid alone in my bed, refreshing results, hoping and praying for a miracle. Suddenly I felt like I was 14 years old again, awake deep in the night, full of dread, except this time I tried to remain hopeful. I now know that my feeling of hope was actually just denial. At 3:50 a.m., I sent this text to my roommate, who lay in the bedroom directly above mine, feeling the same hopeful denial as me: “Let’s just pray for a grace of God… If she wins Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Maine that lands her at 270 exactly…” Spoiler alert for those living under a rock, she did not win all five states.
Anger. Anger is probably one of my favorite stages of grief, because it’s the most nonlinear. Anger will be there for you at the start, somewhere in the middle, and continues to follow you through until the end. Then, it can even reappear for the post-credits just when you thought that acceptance truly was the last stage. If you’re like me, it’s not. Anger will linger, and sometimes that is comforting. Even as I write this, three weeks after the election, I still feel angry, despite experiencing acceptance already. Anger reminds me of the things that I should care about, and the things that must be done in the future. However, in the days following the election, my anger was directed at a lot of different people and things. I was angry that Donald Trump, a convicted felon, was legally allowed to run for president again. I was angry that so many people, especially those close to me, voted for him. Some even loudly and proudly, as if shame did not exist to them. I was angry that so many people voted third party, a choice that was never an option to me. I was angry that so many people just did not vote, period. I was especially angry that Kamala Harris and the Democratic party failed so miserably that people could not even vote for her in good conscience. Even for myself, I was angry that I had to vote for Kamala Harris in the end. This anger will follow me for the next four years, and even seep into the upcoming years after that as I picture what my future will look like then.
Bargaining. I began thinking of what went wrong, and what could have gone better. I remember thinking that Kamala Harris actually had a chance after Joe Biden dropped out of the race, and how that feeling just got smaller and smaller as the months leading up to the election went by. I wondered how different things would be had Harris condemned genocide and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Would she be the next president of the United States? Would it really have been that easy? If it had, why hadn’t she done it? Would she still have lost because our country is not prepared for a woman president? I had many questions that still go unanswered.
Testing. For me, testing came before depression. My coping mechanism was work, which I was scheduled for the day after the election. At least working in a restaurant kept me busy and preoccupied on Wednesday.
Depression. Just two days after the election, I found myself feeling quite sad during the quiet parts of my day − my walk to campus or a boring part of class. I was contemplating my future. When (God, please let it be when) Trump leaves office, I will be 26 years old. What will my life look like at 26 years old? I figure I will still be renting, because affording a house seems like an impossible task, but will I be engaged, married, or thinking of children? On Thursday, two days after the election, I spent every quiet moment of my day thinking of the Board of Education. What will the Board of Education look like in the next four years? Will that future be a future I want to raise children in? I began to think, “No.” How long after will the United States suffer from decisions made and implemented by the Trump Administration?
Acceptance. My thoughts ran rampant of my future and the future of my nonexistent children, until I received a text from my landlord. It was a photo of his baby, born on Halloween. Barely even a week old, I thought about the future that he was coming into – how he didn’t have a choice, and how his parents didn’t really have a choice either. However, now everybody involved (less so the week-old baby though) had probably the most important choice: to either overcome the unknown or succumb to the fear of it. It wasn’t until then that I began to accept what had played out on Tuesday.
After the 2024 election, it only took three days for me to experience the seven stages of grief.