CHRONIC TONIC posts on Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST, it is a place to share stories, advice, and information and to connect with others with chronic health conditions and those who care for them. Our diarists will report on research, alternative treatments, clinical trials, and health insurance issues through personal stories. You are invited to share in comments (and note if you'd like to be a future diarist).
Tonight's diary by: paradox
MsGrin asked me to step in on the fly this evening, and although I am rattled and unwell I will give it the ol’ college try, I’m not really sure why. I have been very quiet politically lately, unsure if my voice is worth anything, even if it would be heard somehow. I used to be so confident the voice of a little person always had value, but now I just feel too small.
I was ill badly this month, late but still there and then again just 12 days later, that time for 2 days. [I have cyclical vomiting syndrome] Some rest and food and I perk along like always, flying on the bike path and hit a bit at the gym, but inside I reel, if this is the fade that should be here by now it better be a final flare or I’m in trouble. I don’t have the mental or monetary resources to handle this forever, constraints and realities exist outside of my control, and my life will tumble into something quite different pretty soon if I keep puking.
I fear nothing, I don’t care about consequence much. I’m not foolish or looking for trouble, it’s just that normal stimuli squirt out of my head differently, it isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way after being wrung through it. I have to be careful when I ride, it can get a little different when a car coming right at you means nothing, not like it used to. A couple of weeks and I’ll settle down.
[opens hands] What was I supposed to do, relate how a decade of sickness has made me into some superbrain of acceptance and coping? It hasn’t. I’m not a badass in this world, I’m not going to set any records or retire a bazillionaire, I stand before you flawed and unhappy, I didn’t set a groove in this world like I thought I would.
It’s just human nature to put our best foot forward, of course, but sometimes I get irritated how liberal and Democratic sites on mission are still stuffed with brilliant, attractive writers who are of course basely happy. That’s fine, but it isn’t our Party or our people, not in totality, we have problems and issues that really need a fix, and in the meantime we’re hurting. That’s the life and America we know, we organize as Democrats to make sure the little people have a chance.
So me’n the country have issues, what a shock. I mean it sounds ridiculous when you say it, but we bomb and build tanks and subsidize oil and cut taxes and just where the hell are the little people in all this? Hurting badly but fuck all if DC seems to care, there just never seems to anything done to get folks real jobs that really pay. America can bomb Tripoli on a dime, but the little people always have to wait.
It fucks with my head, of course. My head is not in a state to be fucked with by Lieberman types, I ask you, is that wise? Of course not. So I stay quiet, why let in trouble?
It’s going to be an utterly boring and mundane 2012 race anyway, it’s surprising how many junkies aren’t into Presidential elections but it’s there all the same, they’re incredibly long and horribly dumbed down by TV and Republicans. Next year is going to be a farce of historical proportions for the Republicans, they have nothing with no one to run it. John McCain embraced the The Stupid with Palin and it’s obviously totally out of control, only idiotic politics can make it out of the Republican base now. They are doomed, as plain as the pixels you see, I’ve seen this show in California, trust me nothing stands in the way of an Obama win in 2012.
So I feel unwell and rattled and unheard, and my Party is going to walk to a win without producing peace or jobs. That’s my world, I can’t change it, and it may hurt me more to try.
But Ms Grin asked me here, she is my people, and I never, ever don’t show up for my people when they need me, tiny or big shit, it never matters. I guess as leave y’all that’s what hurts and baffles me the most about this world, this inability of others to be there when it matters. US of A, you are not fucking there for your people, not by a long shot, and my hope dims each dawn.
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