Ugh.

I’m running out of words for the nonsense because nothing makes sense anymore.

It’s been a loooooong 886 weeks (roughy). That’s how many weeks it’s been since the 2016 election.

Republicans charged. Democrats surrendered. And nothing has been the same since. Now a billionaire/criminal is president (again) while everyone else is broke.

Is this hell? I think this is hell.

We are just a few short days away from primary elections in Kansas and a few looong months until the general election. Starting now until November we will see our streets once again littered with signs and text messages we didn’t consent to being sent to our phones on the daily.

Automatic delete.

Really? Again?

Enough.

Those signs, they’re everywhere, all while on my way to the store to buy food I can’t afford and hawking gas prices to see if I can get gas today.

$3.79/gal? Nope. Not today. Guess I’ll stay home until it goes back down to $3.29, if it ever does. Feels like those days are over.

I stopped taking my allergy medicine months ago.

Lotion? I’m perimenopausal and I look like a lizard but lotion is now on the list of “only use if it’s absolutely needed” and until my scales start peeling off in layers, that Lubriderm is staying in the bottle. Deodorant only gets used if it’s 90 degrees or above and conditioner is becoming optional.

Where else can I cut costs, I ask myself? I guess, if I’m looking for the silver lining here, I’m finding some things I used to buy I really can live without, before advertisements and commercials told me I needed them.

I’m also in decision fatigue so now instead of using that expensive face moisturizer I’m using my son’s Neutrogena. One less decision and one month in and my skin looks the same as it did when I was spending $20 as opposed to $8.

This is America today. And even if you’re one of the lucky ones to have a steady paycheck, that steady paycheck isn’t even making it until next month anymore. If it ever did.

We can’t afford gas, a home, groceries or even our daily medicine or anything that might keep us just a little more comfortable.

But yeah, sure, let’s vote for more of the same. Sounds like a good idea.

I have two ribs out right now because EDS is so much fun. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts. Spent $100 last week at the chiropractor because my insurance doesn’t cover rogue ribs or pinched nerves and because I sneezed two days ago my ribs went on strike. Again. So now I get to choose between breathing or eating.

I went to the store and bought some veggies. The unruly ribs will have to wait because I have to eat and I’m praying these Taylor Farms snap peas I bought won’t give me raging diarrhea.

So much to look forward to.

While I was in my incline chair hanging upside down like a bat, trying desperately to relieve the pain, I noticed the view. I had to chuckle at the irony.

I took this photo hanging upside down.

Yes, it all feels so fragile and I should probably stop but I am so broken at the moment letting all the blood pool to the top of my head feels better than being right side up. I’d like to believe it was telling me there is nowhere else to go but up, but I’m not that optimistic anymore.

Fragile. Like my body. Like this country. It all feels too broken to be fixed. And until money is out of politics, the system will stay rigged and it will remain broken.

I think our kids, the next generation, are going to be holding the unecessary and impossible burden of fixing what we broke. The good news is, I see in them what I don’t see in a lot of adults today; reasoning, self-regulation, and critical thinking skills.

I see them being fed up with us.

Good. Because they can and will be the change they want to see. I just wish they didn’t have so much to clean up after us.

I started HRT a little more than a year ago. A few days ago Walgreens let me know that the estrogen I’m on is on national backorder. So here I am without my hormone treatment that I’ve been on for over a year. Just like that and for no reason and without explanation.

Kansas is keeping it cruel as usual, Missouri is the same old dumpster fire, and I’m losing hope for the midwest.

Kansas still doesn’t allow alcohol sales on Sunday’s and weed on any day. Am I all on board with legalized weed? No. Would I vote for it if it meant more funding for care for vulnerable populations? Absolutely. Because I’m still more afraid of an alcoholic than I am a pot smoker and I have the receipts to prove it.

Special Education is seen as a privilege and schools are underfunded while they’re building more data and detention centers. Kids are going hungry, verterans are on the streets and people are dying.

It can’t be principles, right? Because those seem to be bought and sold to the highest bidder so how important could values be if they’re always for sale?

I’m exhausted from hearing about all the problems and all the ways there’s no way to fix them from the people I voted for. We’re not New York, they say, but I’m going to vote like I live in New York, like Mamdani is my mayor and I have a list of requests. Instead of doing nothing but posing for photo ops he’s actually doing something and making things happen. So what if he’s a democratic socialist? Fixing problems that have been ignored for decades in less time than it took to reach another birthday? I’m a fan. Sign me up.

I hear he’s making New York more affordable. May be time for a change of scenery. Mamdani made politics fun. New York looks more fun.

The vibes here are bad.

I’m also a progressive so I don’t fit in well here anyway.

Progress, that’s what’s in the word progressive and I’m so tired of this country being stuck in reverse. I’m done voting for the “most likely to win” in my party because I did what was asked and saw nothing in return. In fact, my life got worse, not better.

Democrat, Republican, does it make a difference anymore? If it ever does the changes won’t happen until long after I’m gone.

The Democratic Party has disappointed me the last two years more than the Republican Party. At least I know what to expect from them. I’ve come to expect “nothing, not even the truth” from them, but Democrats, I have no answers. Democrats are busy playing it safe and “reaching across the aisle” while the Republican Party is actively shooting us in the streets.

Reach across the aisle they say.

Well, from what I’ve seen when that happens, deals are made and we the people are always the ones to lose and pay the hefty price tag for their posturing and game playing.

This all could have been solved years ago. It could be solved today. Republicans and Democrats could come together and fix this whole thing in a week and rid this country of all the toxic shit making us sick.

My July calendar says, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” I no longer care if I’m taking a vote away from someone with a better chance for the democratic party. I don’t want the better chance.

I want change.

Real change.

Not another someone whose going to not only reach across the aisle, but lay down in the aisle while the rest of us are trampled to death.

I don’t buy it anymore.

I want to be able to afford gas and medicine and healthcare and food and lotion again.

I want people to feel safe in this country again. We aren’t safe. We are being terrorized and bullied and bankrupted and murdered.

No one is smiling. Everywhere I go; the store, the library, the pool, everyone looks miserable and afraid and depressed.

The smiles are plastered for optics and no one really talks anymore.

I am very clear eyed on what’s probably going to happen. Not much. Who I voted for wont’t survive the primary. I know that. I wish there was another party. Another way. A plan Z that everyone could get on board with because we’ve been through all the other letters, but they’ve got us too busy fighting each other and keeping us broke to even be able to organize a clear, better, more intelligent way.

Business as usual.

It’s working. I’m exhausted. I think we all are. Sometimes I just sit on my floor and cry. I cry for this country. I cry for myself. I cry for my kids.

No one deserved this.

That’s why I’m going back to grassroots. The broke people are the people I trust because the poorest are usually the most generous. You probably won’t see their sign in your neighborhood because they aren’t funded by evil billionaires, and that’s a good thing. That means they’ll work like hell for us. I hope. We’ll see.

I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, I’m just saying maybe we try something different?

Plan Z?

Throw a wrench in the wheel and see what happens.? What have we got to lose when we’ve already lost so much-including for many-their lives?

I just can’t believe a few horrible people have more power than 342,718,589 people. But then I’ve also learned there a lot more horrible people than I ever realized and I think that has been the most terrifying lesson of all.

What a fucking ripoff this whole thing has been.

Another election will happen and a stalemate will probably continue to be a stalemate. We’ll keep voting against threats to take away our freedoms and protections while how anyone plans on making our lives better remains to be seen on the ballot or in our wallets.

Where’s voting for free school lunch? Or expanding Medicaid and Medicare? Or semi-automatic weapons bans and background checks to protect our children from being gunned down at school or in the streets? Where’s our vote on ICE or data centers? We the people, with the tax dollars, should be making those decisions, but no one even bothers to ask us anymore.

Literally anything that moves the needle is lost and replaced with constant votes back and forth on issues that keep us arguing with no real progress in sight.

What. A. Waste. Of. Our. Tax. Dollars.

It’s complicated they say.

No, it’s really not. It’s designed that way by the people elected.

This is what we’ve been handed and I’m tired of eating shit.

August 4th, November 3rd. Eh, I’m not holding my breath on any of it. Actually I am but it’s only because I have two ribs out and it hurts to breathe.

I wish with all of my heart I had a sunnier perspective about the next election, but it’s all the same thing with different words and names.

More dark clouds promising rain.

Ugh.

P.S. Women know how to do it, mothers know how to get it done, the president is a criminal in every sense of the word, Mamdani for President (eliminate the “born here” rule), get the geriatrics out of office, and fuck ICE.

*In the words of my own mother, “Most immigrants in this country value this country more than its actual citizens because they’ve seen and come from so much worse.”

Amen, mom.