After a disappointing election, feeling a little responsible.

I didn’t drink on election night, but I woke up on Wednesday feeling hungover.

I went to bed late, because I physically couldn’t handle the stress anymore, but before the election had been called. I had several achingly hopeful, fever-like dreams in which Clinton won the states she needed to—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania—and everything turned out okay. A little scary there for a while, but nothing more than a nail biter.

Then, of course, I woke up.

I nursed a headache and wiped away ugly tears all day. It felt like waking up after the worst kind of fight: the one you didn’t see coming, and which knocks the wind out of you because you were so happy until all of a sudden you weren’t.

As the dust settled and I clicked from site to site, feeling sickened by the headlines and scrolling quickly past the devastating smugness in images of Trump’s face because I couldn’t bear to look at them, I felt like I was living in a different country than the one I’ve come to know. And while I feel disheartened and disappointed by the voters in North Carolina, in Florida, in Iowa and Pennsylvania and all across the country who chose to reject facts and decency and progress by choosing Trump, I mostly feel disgusted by myself.

I’m an incredibly privileged, healthy, well-educated, well-employed white woman, born into an affluent family and cushioned by the relatively homogenous liberal views of my friends and classmates from my Massachusetts hometown and Harvard, my alma mater. I did not realize until yesterday morning how much I’ve taken that privilege for granted, and how different is the country that exists outside my little bubble. And while I’ve voted diligently since I was 18, kept myself informed, and even made a few calls on behalf of Hillary Clinton, I haven’t even begun to do enough.

If I’m being honest, I’ve had a nagging anxiety throughout the past year that this would happen, because I’ve seen this show before. Who hasn’t? An unprepared, unqualified man loudly interrupting a subjectively less charismatic but unequivocally better-qualified woman and claiming that he—who has not completed his homework, whose planner and backpack is not at all organized—is the best for the job. Trump is the embodiment of every privileged man who’s gotten the promotion, gotten the pat on the back, gotten the class presidency—and believed he deserves it.

And I’ve come to realize that I haven’t done enough to stop what has become this reality. I have never actually felt that I, as a woman, could not achieve. But looking back, there is a huge difference in the narrative—you can be anything you want to be, you deserve equality, etc.—and the way life actually plays out. Even amid my astounding privilege, I’ve seen this. I’ve had to master the placid, glazed-over look women know to adopt to avoid catcalls while walking down the street. I’ve had to navigate being interrupted in meetings, had to learn to smile and use a lower, more soothing voice during workplace disagreements, had to listen to men analyze my facial expressions and my tone instead of my words. I’ve had a boss doubt whether I could handle a job, well before my first day, because my being tall and blonde surely meant that I’ve never had to work for anything. And yet, despite all these small data points that add up to something frustrating, I’ve never thought it was my duty to really speak up. I’ve always assumed that someone else would be responsible for working on behalf of the issues I care about: women’s rights, equal rights, aid for the impoverished, climate change, healthcare access—the list goes on.

I’m not sure why I’ve done this; I’ve never relied on anyone but myself to enact the other things in my life I care about. I’ve always kept my eyes on my own paper, done my own work, found my own opportunities. But I’ve felt removed from the bigger political machine, and I wish I hadn’t. Sustained progress is not a sure thing, and it won’t be unless women like me make it our mission to do better. The good news is that women have always been the people I’m most confident actually can get things done: just ask my late grandmother (a single, working mom of three girls), my mom, my aunts, my sister, my cousins, all the girls who ever steered a group project toward an A, my gracious and hard-working coworkers throughout my career. You know, all the nasty women—whose smiles are made of steel.

It’s not enough to feel discouraged, and it’s not enough to be marginally interested in issues and politics while assuming someone else will take care of the heavy lifting. If the reality of a Trump presidency has done anything good, it has showed me how myopic I’ve been in assuming that everything will work out, without feeling that it’s my responsibility to cement the outcome. And Trump can bet that I—and, I hope, many women who feel the same way I do—will spend the next four years ensuring we don’t feel the same way on a November Wednesday in 2020.