I wish I could truthfully say I'm done with any sort of local political issues. I wish I could say enough is enough. I wish I could promise to never write of or get involved in local politics again. My leaps into "political discussion" always bring me pain. I often target the wrong people and the collateral damage to myself and others is simply unacceptable.

I got an e-mail from a man this morning inquiring of something I wrote about him. It was a reality check. I spent well over an hour trying to find the post he spoke of and I do remember his name but so far I've been unable to find where I wrote anything about him. That said, I probably did write something about him and I'm almost certain I wrote something about him but I've lost a great number of posts while in the process of moving my old Muscrafters blog to the blog you're reading now.

It's not that his e-mail scared me as I'm more scared of myself and what I might do than of other people. Living in the sort of place where people die violent deaths on a pretty regular basis tens to make one immune from a lot that would scare ordinary people but it also makes one quite callous and careless when it comes to hurting other people and I've spent many years trying to put my violent youth behind me. As one who suffers from PTSD I can tell you that it doesn't always manifest itself in fear as much as it does in violent reactions to that fear.

I don't want to hurt others physically or emotionally but sometimes I do. Had I done something about it years ago all might be fine today but I hung on to my pride and kept it inside for too long. Sadly, the people I love the most are the ones I hurt most often. The man who e-mailed me this morning gets attacked once but those closest to me get attacked often, hence the reason I let so few close to me.

I look around and see so much apathy in local politics. No one seems to care that local political leaders are corrupted not by the system as is so often implied but are only involved in local politics because they think they have something to gain from controlling the message. There is not one person on any of our local elected boards that I feel we can trust-- not one.

My forays into local politics simply aren't healthy for myself or our community as a whole. They even cause drops in my blog readership. They push me further into the depths of clinical depression and because I have no health insurance and a several year backlog of cases at our local County Mental Health Agencies I simply can't get any help. Besides, I gave up on Guilford County Mental Health several years ago when they kept loosing my appointments even though I had the paper they gave me in my hand.

There will be no promises that I'll not write about local political issues in the future as I never know from day to day how well the Prozac will work or if I'll have enough money to continue to refill my prescriptions but I will try to avoid the subject at least on days when sanity reigns,

I know I'll never become Mayor of Greensboro and I never wanted to become mayor of anything. My write-in campaign last year was designed solely to make the existing candidates talk about the real issues and spend 10s of thousands of campaign dollars they would have otherwise never spent. I'm happy to say they were both forced to talk about the issues and that collectively my 30 votes cost my opponents almost $30,000 dollars from the pockets of those who buy their loyalty.

As for what I might do next... Maybe I'll write a poem.