I exist crippled in a state of fear, awaiting the outcome of the November election. Our nation is sitting on a weakened foundation where its people are hurt and broken. In a time when we need to come together to heal and strengthen, we seem to have divided.

We co-exist as patriots of this vast magnificent country and yet we have never been a country more separated. Don’t we all inherently want the same things? A country where we feel at peace. A government that is accountable for ensuring we have a nation of educated and healthy people. A nation where healthcare isn’t a privilege for ONLY those who could afford it. We want a country that takes care of its veterans and a country that is kind to its neighbors. We want America the Beautiful, Sweet Land of Liberty.

Politics, to me, has always seemed to be a Hollywood movie gone live – a show they put on for everyone else. When Governor Sarah Palin became Vice Presidential nominee, it certainly felt like we were witnessing a live reenactment of Wag the Dog.

This election seems surreal. The bipartisan system was created at a time when it served the purpose, when the world was more black and white than it is today. Yesterday’s solution may not fit today’s organically changing multi-cultural world. People vote dutifully with their party, too locked in on the way things WERE rather than the way things should be. The government is spending too much time trying to fix one thing by breaking another.

The saddest part is that Americans are falling for it. We seem to sit behind a veil of lights and mirrors – so desperate to see what we want to see, believe what we want to believe. We want change but we’re scared of change. We want something different but we want it delivered from the same package.

Media often dictates Americans’ perceptions, brainwashing us with stereotypical images of right and wrong. Family values means a traditional heterosexual, married household breeding children. The enemy is whoever they tell us it is; one year’s ally is the next year’s enemy — take Afghanistan and Russia as examples. There seems to be many missing links in the logic of our recent history.

Our country needs a President who is brilliant, logical, ethical, strategic and honest. We mandate a President who will command and who will listen. We need a leader with courage, resolve and integrity and we all sit in trepidation that the wrong leader will claim his throne.

It’s frightening to be an educated and experienced, yet still unemployed, single mother with no healthcare. I feel like I am at the prelude to a much longer, sadder story and I’m waiting for the election to determine its outcome. I sit watching the historical saga unfold. They yell at me to vote, but I couldn’t feel more powerless.