"I Have Had It with These Motherfuckin' Snakes on This Motherfuckin' Plane!"

(title courtesy of Samuel L. Jackson--see his "giddy" appearance on The Daily Show)

The closer it has gotten to August 29 ("anniversary" is too marital and positive), the worse I feel physically. The past week my insomnia has "flared" (instead of waking at 4 a.m., I've been wide-eyed, and pissed, at 2); my stomach is unsure, impossible to fill, empty or please; muscles so coiled I live on the verge of a tension headache or migraine (need a tequila IV); my other PTSD and PKSD symptoms are also worse, stronger, more bewildering and/or annoying. Used to living with a certain constant of tiredness, I can't get it going (relatively speaking).

Judith Herman quotes 5a and b apply. It's not as much what happened to us as much as what didn’t and hasn't happened--help, assistance or rescue; attention, funding, oversight, decision-making; apologies, restitution, healing. Even folks with no or minimal damage (and I hear a heartbreaking number of folks say their damage was minimal because they "only" lost a whole floor or half the roof) are in limbo, waiting, waiting with the rest of the city. Until insurance companies stop their bullshit, until folks are no longer camping out in half-gutted or gutted homes or piece-of-shit expensive-as-white-gold trailers (in the Ninth Ward, Lakeview, Gentilly, Broadmoor, the Seventh Ward), until those who want to come back can and those who want to stay don’t feel cornered into leaving, until we have enough open and functioning public schools and hospitals, until all are "okay" none are "okay."

tags: We Are Not Okay, New Orleans, New Orleans rebuilding