I AM NOT THAT

Photo by Laurenz Kleinheider on Unsplash

I’ve tied to self worth to my bank account balance for most of my adult life. I think its what America does to people because we’ve been finacialized & commoditized and disposed of for so long!

Do you have an advanced degree?

Do you drive a new car?

Do you own a home?

Do you have a 401k for retirement?

Are you married with children?

Are you thin enough?

Did you keep your hair?

Did you go grey?

Measures of my manhood and success.

But any disaster of losing one’s business, having an illness, enduring recessions, family problems, illnesses in the family, all of these and more can kick the legs out from underneath a person.

Some turn to drinking, others to drugs, some meet sudden deaths as a result of the deadly fentynal today, others live lives of despair quietly, some turn to violence against themselves or others. Many die a decade earlier than people with financial stability & the basics of life do.

This country is setup to fit everyone into the right slot, round pegs in round holes, square pegs in square holes, workers, managers, owners, wifes, husbands, we must conform or we are broken, obsolete, discarded like yesterdays fashion.

But most don’t fit in. Most don’t have advanced degrees. Most are not young and pretty or handsome with the newest car & phone and their own homes and retirement accounts.

There really is a very thing safetynet system for the old, disabled, sick, traumatized and temporarily floundering human being in this country. You have to be exceedingly poor to even qualify and the moment you make a step up even a little you no longer qualify for help and you’re back to being desparately poor again.

All while millionaire business owners had hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of government loans forgiven with PPP, the richest oil companies in the world get $20 billion in free taxpayer money in the next five years for what? Helping to destroy our planet, choke us with toxic fumes? Enrich the already rich?

But we apparently have no money to provide affordable housing and over 500,000 Americans live…