A coworker's sublimated reaction to the presidential election.

Like me, my one library coworker who I've known for a while goes out and knocks on doors for Dems in competitive races during all major elections...

I had met her years ago as a student, and now I work with her, and she's this (later middle-aged) (white) woman with a Ph.D. in ancient languages who now works as a bibliographer, who grew up in rural Missouri and has like a high school- or college-aged son and has lived in the city for years now.

This past week, I was working and sitting and organizing some books up on the one floor near where her office is, and all of a sudden I hear a cheery "Hey, I haven't seen you since the election!", and I look up and it's her.

And, next thing I know, we talk for at *least* a half hour, maybe 40 minutes, all about politics.

At one point, she told me that the election results "touched her core" because it's people like where she came from who voted Trump in.

She said she tried not to think of the election for a while afterwards, but then like 10 days to two weeks out, she wasn't even thinking of it and she was just in her house and some classic rock came on the radio, and next thing she knew, she found herself giving two middle fingers at it and saying "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!".

"It just poured out of me," she was like, "It was all in there."

Then, after a slight pause, she was like, "All my memories of high school are poisoned."