My friendship with a girl I deeply loved and cherished did not survive the 2024 election, and Instagram is actually the platform that exposed the truth to me before I was ready to acknowledge it.

Watching season 3 of Euphoria and seeing Cassie Howard turn into MAGA Barbie of the century honestly triggered my grief. Because truth be told, I’m genuinely traumatized over the loss of this friendship.

I watched Cassie morph into MAGA Barbie, even though she started as one of the more introspective and vulnerable characters on the show in the first two seasons.

Cassie had genuine emotions on her roller coaster of lifestyle decisions. But she turned into a character who casually disrespected the Democratic Party in the third season, and the grief of losing one of my former close friends was definitely triggered.

My old friend was someone I grew close to at my dance studio. I loved her energy and her vibe. I asked her if she wanted to meet for coffee, and the first night we hung out to grab coffee together, we literally sat there for hours until the baristas kicked us out because they were closing up for the night. I immediately saw her as my soul sister and invited her to my wedding. In my eyes, if she could do no wrong, which made it impossible for me to put two and two together that she could be a Trump supporter. I trusted her with a lot of vulnerability and secrets, and vice versa. She trusted me with a lot of her more vulnerable thoughts as well. She truly meant a lot to me, and she honestly still does. I still feel like I’m grieving the loss of my friendship with her because I never felt like I went so emotionally deep with anyone in my life aside from her. Which is why it hurt so badly when I found out she was a Trump supporter.

I was scrolling on TikTok and saw a video from a content creator advising everyone to check Trump‘s follow list on Instagram to see which of your mutual friends are following him, and to also check other accounts like RFK Junior, Erika Kirk, and beyond. I did a full sweep and saw that this particular friend of mine was following pretty much every major mega figurehead in politics. I did this Instagram sweep at about three in the morning, a couple of weeks after the 2024 election, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I was crying in my husband‘s arms in the middle of the night, feeling completely devastated about it. And I didn’t want to believe it was real. I tried to convince myself that she followed all of these accounts because she wanted to stay informed on everything going on politically. But deep down, I already knew the truth.

We never talked politics when we first became friends. To be completely honest, I just didn’t think someone like her would ever vote in a way that was so damaging. It literally didn’t click for me, and it never even crossed my mind. But once you know the truth about another person, the cat’s out of the bag. It’s sort of like Pandora’s box is opened, and he can’t really go back in time. I can see us rebuilding our friendship from here if she were to denounce her support of this administration, but if that’s never going to be a conversation, then I don’t see us ever rekindling our friendship. But I’m not a liar, and I will admit that I do miss her and still have so much love for her. It would be a lie for me to say I don’t care at all. When I absolutely do, and I absolutely do miss her.

Anyway, I asked her to dinner to sit down and talk about it face-to-face so I could hear it from her directly. And at dinner, she admitted the truth. Yes, she did vote for him. At the time, I tried to stomach that reality. I tried to make peace with it. I thought, I love her so much that I want to do my best to look past this and not even think about it or let it ruin my perception of her. And as we parted ways from dinner, I tried to convince myself that I would be able to maintain my friendship with her without letting her politics overshadow things. However, not long after, I saw that she removed me as a friend on social media, likely after seeing some of the things I posted or reposted about the racist, disturbing, and abusive nature of this current administration. And when she unfriended me on social media, I took that as the silent out that I needed to protect myself. She didn’t want to lay eyes on things that would make her feel uncomfortable or hold her Accountable regarding her vote and support of a racist sexual predator. And I made a commitment to myself around that time to only surround myself with people who make me feel safe and seen, which means surrounding myself with people who vote with the intention to love, protect, and accept others. not people who vote in a way that brings harm to minority groups. I don’t want to surround myself with the Cassies of the world, with everything going on outside right now. I want to surround myself with people who make me feel safe and seen.

The reality is that since then, I have been traumatized. I’ve been pretty much unwilling to go to such a vulnerable place with female friends. I’ve been okay with keeping the friends I do already have, and I’ve been shifting my energy and attention toward my creative pursuits, like building my YouTube channel, getting certified to be a yoga instructor, self-publishing my graphic novel, and several other creative projects.

But I am still completely traumatized, if I’m being honest. And that’s not an exaggeration. I feel that emotionally and energetically, I went deeper with her than any other friend I’ve had over the years. But pouring into my creative pursuits has given me something else to focus on instead of trying to make sense of my old friend’s beliefs. Because I’ll never understand her beliefs, and I’m still hurting over them, but trying to make sense of them is only going to drive me crazy and make me feel like I’m going insane.

I shared this video with her on my mind on social media not too long ago:

And that’s genuinely how I feel. I wouldn’t be closed off to the idea of reconciling my friendship with her because I do still have so much love for her. I know there are a lot of liberal individuals who are super hurt by their MAGA friends and family members. It feels like my friends and family don’t really care about us at all or love us at all. They are willing to vote in a way that puts us directly in the line of danger. So, of course it hurts, and of course it feels like they can no longer be trusted.

But I’m not the type of person who wants to cut others off permanently, especially others who are willing to grow and evolve. If people are willing to make a change and change their mind about something they might’ve thought before, then I don’t see it as a problem to have conversations and see if friendships and relationships can be rekindled.

When I saw that Ashley St. Clair, Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend/baby mama, decided she wanted to pivot and change her political beliefs, I posted this.

And I stand on that too. We have to be open-minded enough to give people room to change, grow, and evolve. If we tell them we’re never going to forgive them and that we’re shutting them out forever, how does that motivate them to change their mind or switch things up?

I’ve got issues with my stepfather, who happens to be a white man married into a Black family. He is a three-time Trump voter, which he, for some reason, thinks is perfectly OK despite the fact that he is married into a family of minorities.

People like my stepdad, who voted the way they did while hiding behind the guise of “good old-fashioned Christian values,” are the reason I started reevaluating Christianity as a whole and deconstructing religion altogether.

I still believe in God, and obviously, I’m aware that humanity was intricately designed by a divine creator. But knowing that people like my stepdad voted for a racist sexual predator based on Christianity as his religion is what opened my eyes to the fact that there might be something a little bit off about Christianity as a religion.

I honestly never would have second-guessed Christianity or religion as a whole if it weren’t for this current political atmosphere. Seeing otherwise good-hearted people voting in such a toxic and disturbing way in the name of Christianity is what forced me to reevaluate everything I was taught to believe.

Literally, I have been forced to reevaluate because there’s nothing normal about what I see going on around me politically, environmentally, and socially right now.

Since this country ties religion, politics, patriarchy, and capitalism together and ties it all up perfectly with a bow like it’s a Christmas present, I’m actually surprised it’s taken me this long to start reevaluating religion and deconstructing what it means to be a Christian.

The Christians I’m surrounded by think it’s okay to negatively judge the LGBTQ community, the immigrant community, minority groups, childfree women, pro-choice women who want autonomy over our own bodies, people who practice other religions, or people who claim no religion at all.

The Christians I’m surrounded by have a problem with others who think differently from them, and they try to force their beliefs on everyone else through their voting patterns, which is why they vote Republican for the most part.

And everyone else just wants to be left alone to live our own individual lives. Everyone else wants progress. We want progression. We want progressive lives. But they’re holding us all back with their regressive need to control other people.

I never would have started deconstructing religion and the way it has this country in such a chokehold if it wasn’t for my stepdad, so maybe I’m a bit grateful to him for all the pain he’s caused me since it’s allowed me to go further in depth exploring what I really think and what I really believe.

But anyway, back to my old friend.

As much as I miss her and love her, I love myself more than to subject myself to self-abandonment. To continue maintaining a friendship with her would mean I would have to beat around the bush and hold back from telling her my real thoughts about the problems of this current administration in order to keep her in her comfort zone.

And that’s not fair to me.

I shouldn’t have to stifle myself from acknowledging the disgusting nature of our current political atmosphere just for her comfort zone.

As I said before, I don’t want to surround myself with the Cassies of the world with everything going on outside right now. I want to surround myself with people who make me feel safe and seen.

Instagram has been very helpful in helping weed out certain people from my friends list, by the way. Not only was I able to find out the truth about that friend, but I also found out the truth about several other friends and family members who were discreetly hiding their political views to avoid being held accountable and to avoid getting called out.