Election Anxiety 2020

Tomorrow is the most anticipated and dreaded of election days in my memory. My stomach has not stopped clutching and heaving since Trump was elected four years ago. I knew he would be a bad president, but I could not imagine the horrors that he would commit in four short years. Historians for decades to come will struggle to explain how one stupid and evil man could destroy what intelligent, patriotic men worked so hard to establish more than two hundred years ago.

I am only one person, but I read about and hear about how others have reacted to the Trump presidency. They sound like me. Every day is a struggle to cope and endure.

I know that the most unfit person in America is president and is doing everything he can to destroy the good things that Barack Obama put in place. And that he installs incompetent, ignorant people to run important offices. They reduce their offices to pitiful shadows of what they should be. It’s like watching lines of dominoes fall into each other until they all lie flat on the floor.

Depression has taken over my survival instincts. I forget to eat. I forget to brush my teeth. Some days I take a shower; some days I don’t. This doesn’t bother me. I sleep for 10 to 12 hours a night. I have nightmares. Once recently I slept for 15 hours. I wake up in the mornings too depressed to move. I think I can’t get out of bed. But my cat Sally isn’t worried about Trump’s vile activities and she insists that I get up and feed her. I’m grateful for that. I do get up, for her, but then I slop around in my jammies for hours because I don’t have the energy to get dressed. Trump has sucked up all of my energy. Sally doesn’t care whether I get dressed or not. She just wants food and company. Eventually, shame forces me to get dressed. 

 I do my chores. I clean the litter boxes. I feed the birds that I so enjoy watching at my bird feeder. I feed the foxes that come out of the woods behind my house for a snack. I feed the raccoons that climb up on my second story deck to eat. They are so cute and such fun. The squirrels help themselves to everything they can find.

I agonize over the possibility that Trump could win a second term. I know I’m not alone. I watch Rachel Maddow reporting the latest shameful Republican activities and wonder how forty percent of Americans can support Donald Trump. My best guess is that they are willfully ignorant. It’s easier to be ignorant than honorable.

In the end, what will America’s epitaph read: Stupidity Won?

Or: Greed Won? 

Or: Putin Won?

I have already voted for Biden and Harris. I am 83 years old and worn out from four years of inexplicable evil. Voting is all I  can do to stop it.