Monday, January 23, 2017

A New World In Which To Be Brave

I have finally recovered enough from my surgery to sit at my desk again. Oh, it feels so good to be able to type again.

With that said, there is a lot to type about. This election has been fraught with triggers, potholes, anxiety pits, and events that have me downright suicidal. I have had to set my SEP (Someone Else's Problem) Field on maximum. Every Facebook post or news story about what the new president was going to do or who he was going to appoint to what office had to go into the "but it isn't official yet" folder. Ditto with what bills he would repeal or pass or anything else he was saying he would burn down or rip apart or build. I just couldn't deal.

Now it is slowly starting to happen and I am terrified to my core if I let myself think about it. I am one of those most vulnerable people - a woman with a mental disability who survives on Social Security Disability payments and Medicare supplemented with Medicaid. If he does even a fraction of what he says he will, I am screwed.

But I am also heartened. The Women's March was a beautiful thing. We had 1400 marches alone in our little town in Southern Utah - yes, in Utah. And it was peaceful and poetic. And these women and their supporters are determined to do more.

I am sad that I wasn't able to join them in person. I had to join them in spirit instead, and I was cheering on each and every female who took up a sign and walked to protest the treatment of women and everyone else by the male-led oligarchy our government has become.

I hope I can be brave in all this. I pray with all my heart and liver and kidneys and every other organ that things can remain a peaceful protest. A little revolution now and then is a good thing, but that revolution doesn't need to be violent.

And I will have to be brave. My ambitions to be open about my mental and physical illnesses have hit a bit of a stumbling block with this new government. The ground beneath me doesn't seem quite as stable as I proclaim that I am schizophrenic or have anxiety disorders. When out own president mocks the disabled in public and proclaims those on disability are freeloaders, it is easier for my anxiety to see stern, sneering faces instead of kind ones.

Be brave, I whisper to myself. Be brave.

1 comment:

  1. Somebody has laid the old Chinese curse on the least able and most vulnerable in our country: "May you live in interesting times." I'm not doing well.

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