Current Events Have Me Paralyzed

[Wiley50]

It's been this way for weeks. Not current events in my life, it's quite easy here.
I'm on an old friend's farm, staying in his motor home while I rebuild my sailboat.
The boat is completely torn apart right now, I got too hot by July to do anything on it,
so I retreated into the air conditioned motor home. I got my Verizon wireless internet
about that time, so after almost a year off of DU I'm back, it's all I do anymore.
I really need to get back busy on the boat because the guy whose trailer it's on needs it back.
So I've got a lot to do to get it ready for the water again. I've been here since last December.

No. The current events that have me paralyzed are the election, how bad we need to win it and
how convinced that it is totally rigged.
The other is the recent stirrings that Smirk and Snarl have already begun moving military assets in position to attack Iran.

See. I've been trying to get it together to leave the country for quite a while. That's why I bought the boat, over a year ago now. But, it's gotten harder and harder to do that and now it looks really clear that I'm too late.
Besides the boat not being ready there are other problems. I'm on SSI disability, and if they find out that I'm
out of the country for more than 30 days, they cut off my benefits. I have my benefits direct deposited and have a
debit card (visa) and if I slip out of the country on my own boat, there would be no record that I'm gone.

The other problem is that in order to be physically able to handle the boat ( or even just to get around every day)
I'm on schedule II narcotics (Fentanyl patches) and have had to see my doctor every 30 days for a script. The DEA
is about to relax that rule to every 90 days, so that would give me enough time to get to Belize and find a doctor. Hopefully.

But, it's all just wishful thinking now as I just sit on DU and watch our government become more fascist and scary,
the election grow nearer with no hope and the war drums get louder for an invasion of Iran, just before the election.

I truly believe that will be the final straw that throws our country into chaotic darkness as the dollar crashes
and real terrorist attacks occur all over the states.

Goddamn it! I've seen it coming for a long long time and tried my best to get out.

But it's just too late for me.

And so I sit on DU like I'm sitting on a train track.
Watching disaster come my way.

A deer caught in the headlights.

[mopinko]

1. i hear ya

sometimes i get that way for days, weeks even. i often wonder what i would be like it is didn't have kids to raise, and commitments to causes that have nothing to do with politics.
it is so frustrating. i started my whole button thing because i thought it mattered. but does it? i dunno.
all i can say it that what is helping me right now is- the biggest thing is that i have health issues that have gotten better, so i am just able to do a lot more than i was. but mostly, i just have a schedule for myself, and i try really hard to stick to it. i have 2-3 days a week that i try to be in my studio, unless something really, really important pulls me away. i have 2 days that i try to take care of family/home matters. it helps me focus.
maybe you should try just having 1 or 2 days that you will work on your boat.
i totally understand. this beating of the war drums is so frightening. is anyone near you working on impeachment? a widespread, grassroots impeachment movement is the only thing that i can see that would encourage the pentagon to say- no declaration of war, no acts of war, sorry. our only hope, i fear.

[Wiley50]

2. Thanks for the reply MoPinko

I'm 40 miles east of Nashville in deep red buckle of the bible belt fucked up fundamentalism. Our senator is Bill Frist.
When society comes unglued there will be roving bands of armed rabid xians all around here. I had to buy a gun just thinking about it.

In '04, I volunteered full time at a county Dem HQ doing internet research. I felt really alive.
until Kerry conceded that is.

Even after that I was the original seed (with DU's FlyByNight) for the election reform group
Gathering to Save our Democracy which hosted the first national election reform convention in Nashville April 9-12, 2005.
I was there and got to hang out with Andy ( God I miss him) and Brad Friedman and Kip Humphrey and Bob Koehler, all of whom I still exchange emails or phone calls with now and then. But I really didn't contribute to putting it together as my mom
had just been diagnosed with cancer (she died in march) and then my disability went through (after 3 1/2 years) and I had to follow through on the plans I had made to buy a boat. I bought one in July on Long Island and sailed it to Virginia via the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay in September, but I couldn't find a doctor in Va who wasn't too scared of losing his prescribing license to keep me on my patches, so I had to trailer it back to TN last December.

God, I wanna be back on the boat in salt water, but money is so tight ($603/mo) that it's slow getting the stuff I need and then by July it was 100 or almost every day and I just got burned out, literally.

I was diagnosed Bi-Polar three years ago and am on a stable doseage (hasn't changed in two years) of Trileptal and Remeron, now prescribed by my internist. I don't see a shrink anymore as all the ones around here are fundies and 12 steppers ( I think the mental health clinics vett them to be) and I am a non-theist. I can't deal with a shrink who believes in things that can't be proven by science. To me that's a delusion and I won't deal with a delusional shrink.

Thing is: do I sound like I have anxiety problems now, is it still depression, or am I just a realist given current events?

[mopinko]

3. i ask myself this

Thing is: do I sound like I have anxiety problems now, is it still depression, or am I just a realist given current events?

i answer- just still alive.

but seriously, maybe you need a dosage adjustment, if you are not doing what you want to do. anxiety is such a common side effect. of life and pills. but you can change the pills.
the bad thing about du is the way it sucks up your hours, and burdens you with terrible truths. the good thing is you are not alone.
take care

[Wiley50]

4. Thank you so much for validating my feelings

It does help to actually talk (or write) with someone who has the same feelings.
I am very isolated here, although I tend to be a loner anyway, by choice
That's why I singlehand a sailboat.

There's just no one that I know, around here at least, that I can open up to.
The people around are mainly fundies, or at least they are brainwashed by corporate media,
or worse, Dittoheads for Rush, who ignore the message and immediately aggressively attack
the messenger as an evil Bush-hating Liberal. There's just no point of trying to talk to Dittoheads
aand Fundies. The only people I interact with, who understand the truth, are on DU.
But I wish there were some here that I could socialize with and hug every now and then,
like in my old hippie days. I had a real "family" then. My own blood family, those who are left,
are like the people that I was describing earlier in this paragraph.

I do have a wonderful son, who graduated from Whitman College last year with two degrees
in four years, mainly on scholarship, and some loans, with too little help from his mother
who lives on a schoolteacher's salary and, ashamedly, no help from me.
He's a wonderful adventurous boy who backpacked alone through Europe the summer after he
graduated high school and did the same, only through China and Tibet, after his junior
year of college. He has my old sailboat and works at West Marine in Seattle.
Very very far away from me.

I also have his sister, my stepdaughter, an actress, who helped me tremendously when I
bought the boat, in Long Island, as she was living in Queens at the time. She's now in Tulsa
with her mother, trying to make money to move to LA. She hasn't been greatly successful as an actress yet, but I give her credit. She doesn't give up.

I'd love to be near my son. But it's a long way around via the Panama Canal, and I don't see Canada as a valid escape
destination any more, as the neocons are in power there also and my old bones need warmer weather.
Though Seattle is a much more progressive atmosphere from what I hear than where I am now.

Anyway, thanks for being there for me to ramble off to.

I hope others will feel interested and join in.

I post my opinions in the big forums.
It's good to post my feelings here.

[DemExpat]

5. Hi, Wiley50....

Unless you are now living in a place you are very attached to, I would say, go to Seattle - for although I've never been there I have friends from that area who love it.

Definitely more liberal people living there!

All the best, I hope you feel better after sharing your stuff here with us.

DemEx

[Wiley50]

6. Hi There! I'm not attached to this place

I'm attached to a 28 ft sailboat which is my home
and my entire net worth.
I can't afford to truck it to Seattle
and it's a long way to sail around
via the Panama Canal.
As I have customized it suitable for me
it wouldn't bring much if I sold it.
I bought it for $2500
but now have over $10,000 invested
but on the market, I'd be lucky to get
the original $2500 back.

Thanks for the direction
I know I'd love Seattle
if only because Dungennis crabs
are much bigger and easier to eat
than the atlantic Blue crabs.

I kick my but that I didn't go there and buy a boat
when I had money. But I have a friend with a cabana
in Hopkins, Belize where the cost of living is lower
and the median temperature much higher

Thanks for your input though

[Pharaoh]

7. Wiley50! I love your dream!

I always had that dream of someday buying a sailboat and just cruising the Caribbean,

I recently retired from the post office at 50 years old and with pension in hand I really could almost do it now!

I would love to see a picture of you and your boat, yeah, Belize is sweet,

Anyways, I had forgotten my sailing dream until I saw your post, I would love to follow your travels via email if you ever get back in the salt water, ..............but yes, the current regime gives everyone pause as to what the future might bring, they are the most dangerous thing the planet has faced in my lifetime,they are evil bastards,

Keep following your dream buddy!:toast:

[Wiley50]

8. I Look Like The Jolly Green Giant Right Now

It did me good just to let the dam break
and write everything out. Who needs a fucking therapist
when you have DU.
Today, I got back started sanding the 20 year build up
of green copper oxide anti-fouling paint, off the bottom
of my boat. I worked all afternoon and made some definite progress.
If I can keep it up, in a week or so, I'll be ready to shoot new gel coat
and then put new bottom paint on. Then I can paint the registration numbers
and the boat's new name, "BEYOND BELIZE" on the stern.
( It's as close as I dare to name it after Ken Kesey's bus, "FURTHER"
which I would never do out of deep respect, but invokes the same destination )
and it's in keeping with the boat's last incarnation, "FANTASTIC"

I went inside yesterday for the first time in several weeks and pumped
out the rainwater in the bilge (actually overflowing onto the cabin sole)
that got in because the boat sits slightly unlevel on the trailer, causing
the water in the cockpit to flow, not to the cockpit drains (as it should,
but to the leak at the emergency tiller hole that I must fiberglass up
before I paint. I never would have known the leak was there though, if
not the situation being so. In a boat even small leaks can contribute to making
life uncomfortable.

So, maybe I'll just keep this thread as therapy, as it has worked so well so far.
I find that I can tear myself away from the GD forum at least during daylight hours
for a day anyway. And yes, the world will continue to be fucked up and fall apart.
But, I wasn't really able to stop it anyway, so I don't have to focus on it all the time.

Thank you all for being there.

[ChickMagic]

9. Are you sure we're not twins?

I majored in Marine Biology and my dream was to live on a boat.
Life got in the way, and right now you echo my thoughts. I've
always had problems with depression (it totally runs in my family),
but now I've become despondent. I've even had suicidal thoughts
for the first time in 2 decades. Not the kind I would act upon,
but the fact that I'm having them scares me.

I've been seeing this coming since '94. I so desperately wish
things can turn around, but I'm not the least bit confident.
It's nice to know I'm not alone, although I hate that you are
suffering.

[Pharaoh]

10. Ginbarn how are you doing?

I feel for you dear as I am going through a major down time also......

Keep the faith honey, there's light at the end of this tunnel:pals:

(at least that's what they keep telling me :party: )

[undergroundpanther]

11. I feel the same thing

And I can't get out.On SSI unable to drive,yeah I am so screwed.I know it.It's just the stress of waiting for the shit to hit, that's killing me. Yeah if the US had more of the mentality of DU I would feel so much more confident things would be ok, but sadly most people are not resisting.It's so much like Nazi Germany now it ain't funny.I feel like I got a big target on my head.

If they come for me,and they will because I am everything they hate, I'll just kill myself.
They won't even get the satisfaction of traumatizing me again, or murdering me..fuck them.
I hate this world anyway it's ruled by bullies,and life is one pain after another.I refuse to accept or live in THEIR sickening world.
But while I'm here I will help the best I can and RESIST..