Letters to Daniel

Dear Daniel,

On a night like to night I weep. My anxiety amps up and I fear for the feature of the mentally ill in my state. I count myself as one of those people. I weep for the people who voted in an idiot who could care less for them and their troubles. A man who believes in destroying and taking the government apart instead of trying to fix what’s wrong with it.

I know there are a great many who will disagree with me. Who will compare his opponent to Obama (who I proudly voted for, twice). When in reality our president can’t run for a third term.

I weep for myself.

I have come a long way since October of 1999. This year marks sixteen years since I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Thanks to government funded programs like Seven Counties I was able to receive desperately needed medical and psychiatric treatment. Without it I would have lost my battle with a vicious disease that really takes no prisoners and leaves victims in its wake.

I thank god, the therapists, the nurses, the psychiatrists, and my friends and family who acted as my support network.

Not everyone always understood what was going on with me. There’s that damn stigma attached to mental illness. When I see people floating around, lost in their disease, it physically pains me to see it. I literally want to take them by the hand and get them to an intake nurse and have them evaluated.

With people like the man whom my fellow Kentuckians elected as governor I fear that all the progress that has been made will be turned back like a clock like a hand on a daylights savings clock.

I talk about daylight savings on mental health issues but as a woman I fear other issues will be turned back further.

Right now it’s the right to choose.

Gay marriage.

Medical insurance for everyone.

Want to know why medical insurance is as high as it is even in this system? Insurance lobbyists saw to that.

Money makes the world go round folks. And Matt Bevin just dumped enough money into 30 and 60 second spots with sound bites that make him look like the kind of man or woman you want to run your state.

Congratulation fellow residents of Kentucky, you just elected a man who is going to gut the programs that people need most. And education is going to be at the top of that list.

I’m not really a religious person, but in the coming days, months and years I will be praying that if there is a God he or she will be looking over us because we are doing such a shit job of it ourselves.

Sincerely.

Amy McCorkle