Post Trump Stress Disorder

Since November 8^th, I’ve been suffering from Post Trump Stress Disorder.

I’ve been having trouble falling asleep at night and getting out of bed in the morning.

This has come on top of the depression I’d already been experiencing for the last year and a half due to being unemployed/underemployed.

And the situation is even worse if you’re a stand-up comedian, like I am.

For the last year and a half I haven’t felt funny.

While I live for Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression (as well as Kate McKinnon’s Kellyanne Conway and Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer), it was hard to me to joke about Trump even during his campaign, because I was always aware of the dangerous possibility that he could actually become our president.

Now that he actually is our president, the situation is even worse.

Beyond that, I’m not sure if being a comedian is the even best use of my time and abilities anymore.

And, at my age, time is of the essence.

How can I make jokes when keeping track of all the shit Trump is doing on a daily basis is a full time job in itself?

I thought I would feel better after I took part in the Women’s March in New York City. But I felt like, at best, we were preaching to the converted and, at worst, we were marching in a canyon of deserted office buildings.

I took some consolation from the protesters who showed up at airports all over the country, seemingly out of nowhere, after Trump’s Muslim ban.

And I’m heartened by Michael Flynn’s resignation and the rejection of Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor.

But, as I said, there’s so much shit happening on a daily basis, it’s hard to keep up.

And I feel like the clock is ticking.

If I really want to get depressed, I think about how different a Clinton presidency would have been and the progress we’d already be making.

I don’t even dare to think about what a Sanders presidency would have been like. That would push me over the edge. And I know he’d have to deal with a Republican majority in Congress—but still. At least we wouldn’t have this disastrous cabinet and Supreme Court pick, on top of all of Trump’s other executive orders/policy blunders.

That’s what’s also so frustrating. The thought that we were uniquely positioned for someone like Sanders to win the presidency and we may never have that chance again. The idea that there was clearly a populist uprising happening (you could see it in the size of Sanders’s rallies—if the media bothered to cover them) and that someone as singularly unqualified as Trump was able to take advantage of this, while someone as singularly experienced as Clinton was tragically blind to the evidence all around her.

I had been prepared to spend the next four years holding Clinton’s feet to the fire, making sure she delivered on the progressive promises she made, only after Sanders succeeded in pushing her to the left.

Instead, we have Trump, whose first month in office (can it possibly be only one month? It feels like an eternity!) has been worse than I ever could have imagined.

And that’s why I have trouble falling asleep at night and getting out of bed in the morning.

It’s the sinking feeling that this is what the next four years are going to be like.

If not worse.