Where Have I Been....

Some of you reading this title will think it a statement, some a question. And you'd be right on both accounts.

Where...have...I...been. The simple answer is of course, right here. My writer's voice though, has not been translated through this medium for several months. It's been dormant, elusive...hiding, depressed, ill and exhausted. Many times I called up this site and sat staring at a blank page, a blinking cursor a tiny island in a sea of white.

I beg your indulgence, this may meander a bit. After so many dry months, my thoughts are bursting through my typing fingers like a deluge during an August Florida thunderstorm where raindrops strike the scorched asphalt so hard and with such fury, steam rises up like a wraith.

I can claim many excuses for my absence. In the last of weeks of August, a very dear aunt lost her battle with cancer and I've been absolutely heartsick and depressed. It came as quite a shock, until the very last, my mind refused to accept the chance of defeat and I truly believed she would recover. The greatest compliment I could pay her is the fact that she had such a sweetness and gentleness of character that she put me in mind several times of my own grandmother. As the pattern often goes, grief turned to depression and depression turned to a stony and unrelenting anger. The childhood anger of, 'it isn't fair'.

I guess, 'it isn't fair' would be the recurring theme of my thought patterns of late...

I have hesitated so many times over what to write in these blogs, how deeply I would share, fearing that my true nature or inclinations would 'turn off' my readership. And then this morning, as is my wont, I had an epiphany...'do I really even have a readership'? So why the hell am I so afraid of offending 'them', if there is even a 'them'. So here goes...

I was very invested in this election. I am a 38 year old single, childless woman and an ardent conservative. I guess those words in of themselves are a contradiction. Despite all this, I've never supported a candidate to the extent I backed Mitt Romney. In my case, it's personal. If you've ever read this blog, you know about my nearly 4 year employment odyssey. Just the other day, I agreed to another 6 month contract extension of a nearly 2 1/2 year  (if you count my former assignment there in a different department) assignment at my company. So I can honestly say that the four years Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Sotero or whatever the hell his name is, has been the leader of this country have been the four worst of my entire life.

Yes, I know that I am amongst the fortunate who have a job at all. However, I had the audacity to hope that maybe just maybe if we elected different leadership in this country, that I might have the chance of securing a more permanent situation where my salary might be closer to the +25% higher pay rate I earned just 6 years ago! I am frequently told that I 'just have to accept that things are different now' 'companies just aren't going to hire anymore when they can contract out labor and save themselves tax and insurance costs'.

What I have been the most devastated about, is the loss of my hope, my inherent belief in the American Dream.  To get even more personal and uncomfortable, because of my salary losses, and lack of insurance, I've been living with my 65 year old father. And my father, because of the fact that he cannot exist on the small amount social security pays him, is still running after business and trying to work the hours that most 20 year olds would balk at! In the years where I should be looking after him, I can barely afford to keep myself.

I really thought Mitt Romney was the solution to this countries' woes. This is not about party, or sour grapes in anyway. It is about my inherent fears about the defecit we have incurred, the raiding of my father and mother's medicare and social security to fund Obamacare. It is the fact that as a country, we don't seem to mind when our leadership sits back and watches the assasination, and subsequent torture and sodomization of our Libyan Ambassador and the brave men of our armed forces who defied orders to try and come to his aid. When we just stay quiet and accept the status quo.

It is having to sit by and watch as these things happen while most of my fellow countrymen put more time and thought into drafting their fantasy football team and worry more about who is getting kicked off what reality show, than to think the fact that our country is drifting into economic penury, that our children are going to inherit an unsustainable crushing debt, that is if there is even an America left once the Islamic groups in this country one by one become radicalized and overcome our increasingly reduced military.

So many times, everything inside of me, is crying out, 'Why...Why don't you Care? People will say, 'I'm busy', or 'I am just one person, what can I do?' or worse, 'Oh, it's not really that bad...we've survived worse things'.  Then they marginalize you and make you feel that if you really express all of these 'gloomy' thoughts that you are some kind of a weirdo, an alarmist. Just another opininated wacko....now go away, 'the Steelers are about to meet the Patriots' and I've got $50.00 riding on this game.'

I hope that will still be a comfort when your employer pays you in rice noodles and a few paltry yuan, and you get on your bicycle and peddle to your government apartment to watch state sponsored football which by the way...is what you call soccer...

Where I've been...the buses are afraid to run.