For the last hour and a half, I’ve been trying to figure out what to write here tonight. Finding the words to summarize the feelings and emotions of this day seem to be eluding me at this moment. I’ve tried searching for a picture that sums it all up, but I have yet to find the perfect one.

I thought about just leaving it at that–it was an amazing day, and trying to find the words or the photographs later, but this day is only going to happen once. I want to capture at least part of what my experience of this day has been.

I started watching television coverage early this morning, and now, at 10:30 at night, I’m still watching. Although I couldn’t be there in person, I didn’t want to miss a moment of this day. I’ve largely succeeded, having missed maybe an hour, hour and a half to cooking dinner.

As I told someone else earlier, as I set here tonight, I feel a peacefulness and calmness I haven’t felt in a long while. It’s kind of like I feel like a weight as been lifted after not realizing for so long it was there. I feel a sense of freedom I haven’t felt in 8 years. As someone I know said election night, this is what hope feels like.

I thought a lot about the things I mentioned last night–the day I thought President Obama should run, the day I signed the petition. As I was watching today’s events unfold on television, they seemed surreal at times. It seemed amazing that this day actually came to pass, and I felt like I needed to pinch myself more than once.

I thought, too, about race and civil rights and the struggle that has essentially gone on even longer than this country has formally existed. We still have a long way to go, but what a long way we’ve come. For the first time in the history of the United States, a person who is not a white man is President. Growing up, I always heard “anyone can be President.” It was one of those things I believed in theory, but on some level, doubted in some ways. What an amazing barrier we have broken. President Obama is just the first. I’m glad to witness it in what I hope is relatively early in my lifetime. Now, I truly believe, that one day, we’ll eventually come to have had Presidents of both gender, all races, all beliefs, and perhaps even sexual orientation. Some say that a day like that will never come–where none of that list will truly matter. My answer to that is that 50 year ago, no one would have thought that this day would actually come to pass either.

All in all, it’s been a historic, emotional, and overwhelming day. It’s been so many things.

I think, at the end of the all, all you can really say, is “What a day.”