52 Essays, Week 4: Post Inaugural Panic

“Chickity Check Yaself Before Ya Wreck Ya Self, Cause BUMS with Red Hair Is Bad For Ya Health”

TWO. DAMN. DAYS. IN.

Less than a week into that man’s term and I’ve already suffered the first anxiety attack of 2017, it came to a head at the end of official day two. I was enjoying the New Edition miniseries with the rest of my twitter family when I see a tweet from that man that read he would send in the Feds if we didn’t clean up our act concerning “inner city crime.” That’s what started the panic, in my mind, in many of our minds as we have since November 9^th,  I pictured the worst case scenario. A man who has constantly, with braggadocio, checked off the dictator’s checklist turns Chicago into a western Tiananmen Square flood my mind, my heart rate increases, my skin heats up and I am teetering.

“He can’t do that can he?” I ask myself. I’m trying not to cave in on myself as my breathing started to speed up. I close my eyes and begin deep breathing in order to get the jump on my panic attack before it could really damage my sanity. I inhaled and took notice of the environment I was in, Exhaled and I took notice of the noise of which there was none. He wasn’t in my home or on my screen. He was on my phone, yes, but I could simply block him into the abyss where he belonged. I then opened my eyes and then resolved to reinstate my twitter sabbatical.

“I knew this was a possibility,” my mind now dissecting that man’s words, “I knew it the moment we sent him running in the summer.” I sat on the couch in my Chicago Bears PJs and drank my decaf reminiscing on how proud I was that my city said, “Nah joe, keep that fuckshit over there.” However, with that pride came a knowing that if he made it to the Oval Office it would be HELL on us. I really feel that tweet had less to do with the violent crime that continues to plague our city, and more to do with the fact that Chicago has constantly been a foil in his plans and he wants to shake everybody down for daring insult him. Most recently, with the summer Anti-that man protests, being the home of the President and Lady Obama who have dealt him embarrassment after embarrassment, as well as a council and citizenship that fought like hell to keep him from building another shrine to himself.

“So, do I plan my California escape plans, or what?” I think to myself as I dance around my living room to MAAD’s Black Ice. I run my fingers through the crunchy ringlets of my wash N go, I move my spine like a slinky as my mind continues to wander more slowly and rationally. “Nah, at least not yet,” I think.  Unfortunately, I have to stay here for the time being, the one thing that I’ve become acutely aware of is that I have to protect others that don’t look or believe as I do. I start one of my favorite J-Sette 8-counts, swaying from the left then to the right swing my arms up, down with a Rosie Perez pump dance. By the end of the song, and by proxy my dancing, I’m left with my final thoughts on the subject, “Okay, so he says he’ll send the Feds, ultra-worse the military gets involved somehow, realistically more FBI or DEA surveillance, yet that almost seems too optimistic.” I sigh, then make sure to schedule a meeting with one of the psychiatrists my therapist gave me to discuss starting anti-depressants to combat the effects of my depression under a regressive administration.

I’ve noticed that with every move that man has made in the last few days it has managed to have a negative effect on my mental health. If that man is having this much of a negative effect on my mind and several friends and colleagues less than a week in office, it’s definitely no small thing to say that that man’s presidency, aside from all the other bullets in the barrel, could be the largest mental health crisis in our history. With a head of state who bullies and gaslights the public, I have to be prepared to fight back and help those like me.