Henry Abbott

It’s mourning, America. It’s mourning in America, and it’s mourning from beyond America.

Five hours ahead of the Eastern Time Zone, I woke up on Wednes- day to news about this election as it happened. I woke up, and Pennsylvania was called. I woke up, and three electoral college votes remained. I woke up in the early morning, and I mourned, as I’m sure many of you did, too.

I’m writing this column one hour after waking up. One hour after sending countless text messages. One hour after talking with the Brits who I eat breakfast with every day. Everything is raw.

By the end of this week, when this column comes out, I’m sure things will happen in America that I cannot predict. Five hours from now, when the rest of my fellow Americans who didn’t pull all-nighters wake up, reactions will be heard and seen and felt. As I write this now, as I speak to you from three days in the past, which is confusingly currently five hours in the future, there is a bubble of silence. There is a period of eerie calm. No one has technically won yet, but the winner is certainly known. No one knows, yet everyone knows.

Five hours from now, I will receive more text messages from my friends and family. Five hours from now, speeches will be made, Instagram posts will be shared with stories and America will mourn.

But I think that’s what’s killing me the most.

I feel like I don’t know what America I’m even talking about. When the majority of the country voted for the man whom I mourn because of, does “America” mourn? Or does the bubble I find myself in mourn?

So instead I mourn not for a nation but for a belief. I mourn because I believed that my fellow countrymen, women and persons would vote to protect the rights of their fellow Americans. I mourn the belief I had in my fellow Americans. I will always be disappointed in our system, but I was not prepared to be so disappointed in my fellow Americans.

Let me make it clear, however, that I do not mourn for this nation. I do not mourn for this nation because this nation is not dead. You can call me naive, but I will not lose faith in America.

I’ve never considered myself a religious person. I’ve never grappled with the idea of faith before. But right now, I find myself internally wrestling with an obstinate feeling of faith.

There is no proof to support my faith in this nation, yet I hold it strongly in my conviction. I do not know why I have faith, yet I know that I do.

It will be three days post-election when this column is printed and scattered across Bowdoin’s campus. Where we will be when that happens, I do not know.

The one thing I do know is that in my mourning, I will have faith. I will do everything I can to fight for the America I believe in: an America that fights for those people and those policies that are left behind on the fringes of political promises.

Someone is going to have to stand up and make the change that we keep talking about. Why not me? Why not you? Why not us?

So all I ask of you, whoever you are who may be reading this, is that as we mourn, let us have faith.