By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

It’s early November in the dark heart of my Rust Belt swing state and I am getting dangerously close to the end of a very short rope. Or maybe it’s a lit fuse. Attached to a dangerously explosive skull. Either way it’s burning and I find myself in desperate need of drugs. Hard drugs. Schedule IV narcotics. Name brand benzodiazepines. I’m talking Valium, Xanax, Halcion, Ativan, Klonopin, Rohypnal. The kind of Halloween candy they feed senator’s wives after they’ve learned about the fourth underage mistress. That’s the good stuff. That’s my poison. Two or three weirdly shaped elephant pills and I’m fucking sailing over mountains and valleys. To some corner of this fucked up country where that incessant swarm of super PAC fueled adds can’t fucking find me. That’s what I need now. Where the fuck did I put my pills? Take me away, Joey Ramone. I wanna be sedated.

I haven’t felt this unhinged and desperate for oblivion since the first weeks of the lockdown and that shit was kid stuff compared to the last weeks of the 2020 presidential abortion. The most important election of my life, I’m told. I’ve been sold that bill of goods every four years for the entirety of my short and painful life and it’s beginning to ring a bit hollow. Then again, there does seem to be something extra special about this years campaign season. It’s never felt more unhinged. Both sides have adopted the tactics of the Manson Family to get their chosen mentally depraved scion of scumfuckery in the White House. Scrawling their names in blood across suburban doorways with subtle threats to take back America and make it heinous again. I’m starting to believe them. I can feel the fear and loathing closing in.

This post isn’t about the election. It isn’t about Biden or Trump. By the time you read this, one of those two rapidly disintegrating conmen will likely be our president-elect and I could honestly give five fucks and hardy shit which one it is. They’re two different flavors of the same goddamn hand grenade. Cram either one in your mouth and your skull won’t know the difference. No dearest motherfuckers, this is a post about America’s national mental illness, election fatigue. Some fancy fuckers in white lab coats on cable news call it Election Stress Disorder, and ain’t that just swell. Another clever word salad for the next installation of the DSM. America is supposedly the freest country on earth and voting is supposedly our most sacred right. Then how did this right become a mental illness? And how many sticks of Xanax do I have to down with Two-Buck-Chuck to make it go away? Four? Five? Better double it and chase it down with a shot of Robitussin.

In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t need this shit. I have enough mental illness’ to fucking deal with. Depression, anxiety, OCD, ADD, PTSD, gender dysphoria, and all that shit is on top of Chronic Lyme Disease and the numerous Cronenbergian digestive disorders caused by the mountains of antibiotics I shoveled down in a failed attempt to murder that fucking sickness. Long story short, I’m already fucking crazy. I make Ted Kaczynski look well adjusted. I write about war crimes and state sponsored terrorism to get away from that shit. But 2020 has been stalking my dearly demented ass with three nails and a crucifix since 2019.

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