Anxious

 I was alerted to the the most recent assault on our freedom by a friend who asked if I had heard about the plan. I confessed that with so many assaults on our freedoms these days, it was hard to know for sure to which one she was referring. She went on to describe the notion "Junior" has to send all those of us who are using anti-depressants to a camp to reparent us. 

Which had the initial effect of putting me in a panic. A great swath of my emotional well-being is tied directly to not being sent anywhere. I didn't go to summer camp for that reason. I didn't enjoy any of the "fun" of sleepovers as a child. When I went away to college the first time, I bailed in spectacular fashion. Even my move to California as an adult came with a massive asterisk when it came time to put down roots anywhere other than the thirty or so square miles which served as my base of operations for thirty years. Happily, that initial response was easily dampened because these days I live a life that is not without worry or stress, but it is contained. As my doctor explained, it took that feeling of an emotional pendulum inside me that continues to swing, but it just doesn't hit the sides of the box anymore. 

Would a stay in one of "Junior's" rehab holiday camps fix me? Would his twelve-step/faith-based program put me on a path to the straight and narrow? I cannot say for certain. What I can say is that I am skeptical about a cure coming from a recovering addict who studied law and political science in college and talks openly about the worm that was living inside his own brain. I also know that he sees his mission as getting everyone off drugs. Faith isn't a bad place to land, but not everyone has the same faith. I understand this is the kind of backward thinking that got me "hooked" in the first place. 

Of course, I am also a recovering addict. Leaving my besotted years behind me now for decades, I can honestly say that the first day was the hardest, followed by the second. And the third. And so on. If you got to go to camp in some bucolic setting where you could focus on things like canoeing and making lanyards, maybe this would be easier. This is not the image of camp that comes to mind when I hear "government sponsored." I'm thinking something along the lines of razor wire and armed guards. That seems to be a little more in the wheelhouse of this administration. 

Because all of those questions raised about transporting animal carcasses and brain worms and anti-vaccination wasn't enough to wash this failed presidential candidate and friend of Roseanne out, we are stuck. 

It's only been a month since the inauguration.