Dear Internauts,
I find my ability to blog passing later and later in time, ideas harder to come by, and any confidence in the worth of what I might type slipping from my brain like something small in an ever-weakening grip.
How weird is it that such long hours add up so quickly to rushing days and stacking seasons? I'll be 27 in a few days short of a month, and yet I feel like I'm in much the same place as I was years ago. Everyone I knew has moved onto a kind of adulthood I can hardly fathom. Every semblance of certainty in my own identity broke down in a landslide to leave me hanging by my fingertips.
Are you fulfilled in your daily doings? Does life add up to at least the sum of its parts? I think the times in my life when I was absolutely sure I knew what I was doing were all times when I was doing exactly what was expected of me. Now even the lightest of possible expectations seem so far out of reach, I imagine I'd be of more use if someone else were to rent out the space I'm taking up.
I also think I may have dreamed that I'd already written this weeks blog. I was only reminded I hadn't when I realized I also had yet to renew the hosting subscription for my website. Since my website mainly only exists as a hub for social media and music-related posts, this blog being the most regularly updated, it all circles back around to a general lack of energy.
So I do the check-list in my head. Have I...
-Gotten enough sleep?
-Eaten recently/enough?
-Taken my medication?
Beyond those three, the real solution is usually simply mustering up the mechanical will to move. Such a thought exists in the strange, gaseous barrier between deeper cognitive functions and simple reflex. An atom of motivation in that protoplasmic goo is rarer than a meaningful deconstruction of the social and metaphysical ramifications of violence as a solution to the protagonist's issues in an action flick that syncs the sound of gun-fire to the percussion in the trailer's remix of a classic rock song.
Of course language and motor function are separate enough that I can think the word type as much as I want while still finding my fingers' inability to do so just as unfaltering.
Still, this numbing malaise is a comfort in how far it is from the world of torturous madness that results when I can't sleep or eat or take my meds. At my current age and lack of employment (employability), the only way I can get said meds is through an insurance system that cares more about my health as a human being than I'm able to manage most days.
So, for anyone who thinks that health care shouldn't be given to folks like me, while I can understand on a deep level why you may consider me unworthy, I will remind you that in the right light I can look down and still see the thin white lines carved into my arms. Mental illness is a weird thing sure, but if it makes it easier, let's think of it on the more streamlined form of any other illness that could kill without proper medication. Maybe you can't breathe in the ever-more-poisoned air? Maybe your guts shut down? Maybe the electricity in your brain got a little too excited and half your body went slack? Conservative thought might be that the companies who make and sell drugs to help with such issues should be able to make a profit off their work, thus enriching the economy enough that those or other businesses can afford to pay workers enough to afford those drugs. Liberal thought might be that the government should crack down and force drug companies to provide their drugs for a price reasonable enough that businesses won't have to pay their workers that much just so the workers can buy the drugs. These are both oversimplifications, and so is the idea that maybe the point of medicine shouldn't be who makes a profit but who gets to survive? Because right now, who gets to live is whoever can afford it.
If you only get to live in the system if you can succeed enough within it to
participate and enrich it, then the system is more important than its participants.
Maybe people are so mad about those they feel are leeching off the system because they think the system owes them something for all their hard work. Maybe they think acknowledging how much was handed to them somehow denies all the struggle they've put in to make the system keep working.
The problem isn't us or them, it's the system that makes the divide.
As long as we're fighting eachother, we'll be too busy to see that we've got options.
In college, I once had a pre-med major tell me they didn't want me to think they were selfish for wanting doctors and nurses and medical technicians to be paid a fair wage. I asked them why they thought I'd think they were selfish, and it was because the only way they could see a fair wage happening was at the expense of those who needed health care. I'd recently done a big project on universal health care, and the truth is I can understand why they thought I'd get angry. I was a jerk then, maybe even more than I am now. Still, what I couldn't articulate then is that the battle shouldn't ever be between those who need help and those who can give it. The journey should always be hand-in-hand trying to make it as easy as possible for those who can (and want to) help to give it to those who need it.
That has so much more going on to it than just money, but how often is money the constant barrier in the way of finding a better solution. Does that show the importance of money or reveal how big a distraction it is from the point?
While we beat on one another over misunderstandings, there are plenty who profit on keeping us from looking too closely.
So what do we do?
What do you want to do?
Thanks for reading,
Odist
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