When politics gets personal...

(aren't all politics personal? Just wanted to share something here and then I'll shut up until after Tuesday.)

After I lost my job in 2008, I paid for COBRA for as long as I could legally do so. I did it on a freelancer's salary. I had little savings, which I was forced to use for stupid things like rent and food during the lean months. Then I moved to Austin for a job with a small agency that didn't offer health insurance (but hey, a regular salary and living in Austin? All good).

So in early 2010, my "healthcare" involved crossing my fingers, praying, and skipping medication (I take Metformin for Type 2 Diabetes) and meals to keep my blood sugar down. I lost 20 lbs. in the first couple of months after I moved, some due to stress and some from skipping meals to keep my BG low.

People who oppose "Obamacare" (mostly Republicans but I don't want to say ALL Republicans) think that people who don't have health insurance should just go to an emergency room if they get sick. There are a lot of problems with that logic, including the fact that taxpayers have to eat those costs when the uninsured person cannot pay an emergency room bill. Also, reactive healthcare is NOT THE SAME as proactive healthcare. I found out the hard way in March of 2010 when I ended up in the ER with acute pancreatitis.

I had been sick for weeks with nausea and pain in my abdomen. I was dizzy a lot, but attributed it to skipping meals. I had cut my dose of Metformin in half so I could make it last (my doctor in Charleston prescribed a few month's worth because she knew my COBRA ended the same month I moved to Austin). Even when it got so bad I could hardly stand up to take my dog outside, I didn't do anything. A few days later, I was working in my office at the agency when the pain in my abdomen was so bad I couldn't take a full breath. I called an "ask a nurse" hotline and they told me to get my ass to a hospital immediately.

I drove myself to the closest emergency room, which happened to be in the Catholic Healthcare system here in Austin. I don't remember a lot about it, other than I took my driver's license out of my bag and held it in my hand in case I passed out while driving. I remember parking in the garage, walking through the doors of the ER, handing the woman at the desk my ID, and nothing after that until I woke up with wires all over me hooked up to machines and tubes in my nose.

They took blood and x-rays and scans and finally told me I had pancreatitis. I knew it was something I was at risk for as a diabetic, but I didn't know how serious it was. Acute kidney failure. Respiratory distress syndrome. Heart failure. Before I even saw a doctor, the financial rep from the hospital came in and got my billing info. I was still in so much pain I was tearful, and even more so when I had to tell the money guy that I didn't have insurance. He told me not to worry because they "discount" bills for uninsured patients.

I had been in the hospital for less than four hours when they gave me some medication and told me I needed to stay overnight for observation. No. There was no way I could rack up an ER bill for an overnight stay and still keep my head above water financially. I wasn't keeping my head above water very well as it was. So after another hour of negotiating, they let me sign paperwork saying I wouldn't sue the hospital if I died and sent me home with medication and a three-page bill. For $4,500. I drove myself home and cried the whole way. I slept that night with the deadbolt unlocked and my phone in my hand in case I needed to call 911, but let me say at this point I had been sick and miserable for so long, I felt pretty ambivalent about whether or not I woke up in the morning. Just being honest.

So as a person without health insurance, the hospital also gave me information for one of its clinic affiliates so I could follow up and get medication and lab work for a co-pay based on my salary. I went to that clinic for almost two years, up until just a few months ago when I could use my new health insurance from my job (I had to pay into it for a year before using it because at the time they could still deny anything related to a pre-existing condition, in my case, diabetes). I was grateful to have any healthcare at all, but the healthcare you get at a "free" health clinic is vastly different from what you get when you have health insurance.

It wasn't waiting for hours for appointments, having my blood drawn by nursing students, or never seeing an actual doctor (I saw nurses and physicians assistants the entire time). I was accustomed to following doctor's instructions. When they prescribed a new medication, I took it. I had no other options.

Which leads me to now. Just a few months ago, I was able to make an appointment with a doctor in my preferred care plan with my health insurance. I found out a few things. One: I took two medications prescribed by the health clinic for over a year that are known to cause liver damage when taken together. Two: At one point earlier this year, I took a new medication for a couple of months (the clinic gave me a bag of samples) that my new doctor told me had been recalled in 2011.

I am lucky. I am OK. I have liver damage, but it isn't permanent because the liver is great at repairing itself. I have to give myself shots in my stomach for a month or two or three, depending on how long it takes, but I can afford the medication I have to inject myself with because I have health insurance. If I didn't? $470 a month for the medication, plus needles, sharps containers, etc.

Again, I was grateful to have access to ANY healthcare when I was uninsured. I finally finished paying off my ER bill early this year. And I survived. What makes me angry - furious, actually - is the way many people dismiss Obamacare by saying uninsured people can go to an emergency room or free clinic. The clinic I went to wasn't out to murder me, they have such a large patient load that they literally cannot keep up with things like recalled medication or which medications interact negatively with others. The PA I saw probably met with upwards of 50 patients a day. They're doing the best they can under the weight of a huge increase in uninsured patients (job losses = people who cannot afford COBRA, lengthy unemployment = COBRA runs out after 18 months). I am by no means a worst case scenario. I almost died. I was so sick I wanted to die. But other people without insurance really do die every single day because they don't have access to adequate healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act fixes these things at the root of the problem: Insurance and pharmaceutical companies. If it had gone into effect a year before it did, I would have been able to get my own insurance without being denied for having diabetes. I wouldn't have been charged more than a man my age for the same insurance. The medication I need to take would have been affordable. Every damn time I hear a politician dismiss Obamacare by talking about the "uninsured masses" that should just go to an emergency room when they get sick, I think about the people I saw in the waiting room every time I had an appointment at the free health clinic. Sick elderly people, pregnant women, children...I want every politician who opposes Obamacare to give up their own health insurance for one year and try to get healthcare. I want to see them with their sick kids, tearfully waiting for hours to see a nurse who may or may not help. I want to see them give up their fucking Ambien and Viagra and try to get help from an ER when they cannot sleep because they voted NO on a "let's help the poor people please" bill.

I haven't told a lot of people what happened to me when I was uninsured and what I am dealing with now as a result, so I think sometimes people get confused as to why I so adamantly support President Obama and his healthcare plan. To the Republican politicians who dispute the fact that uninsured people often DIE WHILE THEY ARE TRYING TO GET CARE, I say fuck you. Fuck you and your white collar golden fucking parachute health insurance. Fuck you and your salary. Fuck you and your summer home. Fuck you, your private plane, your wife's facelifts, your show horses, and your complete inability to relate to what the American public is going through every single day.

There are a lot of reasons why I voted for President Obama in 2008 and during early voting last week. The fact that he has a workable plan and genuinely cares about what the average person in the U.S. faces on a regular basis is just one. It will probably take more than four more years to fix the mess the Bush administration created, but I know he'll do his level best. For me, and so many, many others like me, it can mean the difference between life and death.

End rant. Thanks for listening. This is just my story and I'm glad I'm still here to tell it.

On diving into the wreck...and climbing out of it

I've loved the poetry of Adrienne Rich since high school. I discovered her work around the same time as Plath and Sexton and read her poems with the same morbid fascination (and wondering how she survived when the other two did not). When I heard the news of Rich's death in March of this year, it struck me again, how she lived on to write the obits of moody colleagues suffering the same dark disease, diving over and over into the depths, making it farther and longer each time, being the only one who knew how to rise again. She published her last work just a year before her death.

In my own writing, I always knew when it was good. It was good when it hurt, when it felt like hell. I wallow in nostalgia, dipping down and then rising again to find bleak humor in failure, in embarrassment, in broken hearts. Diving into the wreck for material, surfacing to turn words into paragraphs into essays. I've carried a copy of Rich's "Diving Into the Wreck" with me for years. It's what I think of every time I have to do the work of dredging up my own past, and often what I share with writers with whom I work when they are struggling over and over to plumb their own depths. The wreck is always there, I tell them. But you don't have to live there. You don't have to drown.

Rich meant something different, we learned in Lit 101. It's about patriarchy, gender politics, feminine bondage. Says the professor, but I choose to believe that it's a metaphor for returning to our own crime scenes, picking over the husk of memory to find the gold, taking care not to run out of oxygen and become part of the wreck. You can decide for yourself.

Diving Into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

It has been a struggle for the past few years, trying to find my voice again, wondering if it was gone forever. I spent more time than I should have diving into that wreck, deeper than I had gone before. I set up house there for a while. I sank to the bottom and let the water fill my lungs and take over. I am tearful as I write this, remembering how hard it was to find it and stay whole, the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck.

I wanted to write about the damage that has been done. The evidence of damage. I want to write about what surrender felt like. It was easy to let go. It was easy to live down there, so much harder to climb out. And besides, you breathe differently down here. 

But I did. Climb out. And I find it harder every day to go back. By cowardice or courage. I still know the way down. The ladder is always there. I try to stick close to the surface, skimming the water, not allowing myself to sink this time. We know what it is for, we who have used it.

I love my neighborhood but it is getting on my nerves today...

I live in gorgeous Wagener Terrace about 3 blocks away from Hampton Park and 2 blocks from the water. I love it here and, despite having to make cutbacks due to lack of a regular day job, I'm making do with freelancing so I can keep paying rent here just so I won't have to move. That's how much I love it. My neighbors are great (even though I never spoke to a single one until I got the puppy in December - now I know at least the ones with dogs) and it's such a diverse neighborhood with lots of "creatives" close to my age working from home too.

However, I've been trying to work all morning (since 7am, BTW) over the noise of my neighbors across the street with a hired crew jack-hammering their walkways so they can build new ones. There are two huge work trucks right across from where my home office is and between the jackhammers, the trucks beeping, and the workmen shouting, my usual lovely day with windows wide open has turned into Noise City. Also, the puppy has gone completely insane from the noise and won't stop barking, so I can't even make phone calls.

Two, there's a sort of meth-head older dude from down the street who is living in a house while he "fixes it up" (that's code for smoking crack in a house that someone is letting him "borrow"). He walks up and down the street during the day and I've said hi/bye in passing just to be nice, but last week he started asking me for cigarettes. This morning, he came over when I had Lou out in the yard and asked for money for the bus. And to use my cell phone. And for a ride somewhere (because I told him I didn't have any cash, which is true - I rarely carry cash). He stood in my front yard scratching his arms while I was ON MY CELL PHONE asking me to use it. Um...no, no, and no. One of my other neighbors told me he's like a stray dog - give him anything and he'll camp out on your doorstep. Don't get me wrong: I have feelings. I feel for his being in a poor financial situation. I feel for him not having reliable transportation. But I don't like to feel like I'm being taken advantage of for being nice. So I had to show my bitch side this morning and that's not a great start to my day.

Today feels like a wash. I can't concentrate to work and am afraid to hang out in the yard because I'd rather avoid Johnny Crackhead than have to tell him to f*ck off.

On a positive note, it could be worse. If I lived a few houses up I'd be next to the duplex that rents to college students who have nightly front AND backyard hootenannies that go on until the wee hours. I've walked Lou late at night past that place and there are college girls puking in the front yard, drunk frat douchebags screaming "I love you man," and 50 cars parked half on the road, half on the sidewalk. I feel for the people who live next door to those assholes. I know them and they've called the police multiple times, but apparently one of the college kid's mom owns the building so they're not in danger of being evicted.

So all I have to deal with is a day of heavy construction (god, I hope it's just today) and avoiding Johnny Crackhead. And I still love my neighborhood.

Update p.s.: So not kidding. Five minutes after I wrote this and posted it, I took Lou out and Johnny Crackhead made a beeline down the street towards my house. He apparently didn't get enough bitch this morning. We're going to change our walk route today.

I get it. Sadly, but I do get it...

Author David Foster Wallace hanged himself on Friday. I just spent twenty minutes writing that sentence, but there is no prettier way to say it. I was in the car when I heard and broke down in tears, partly because the person I most wanted to call and tell first is no longer part of my life. And I have tears in my eyes writing this now.

I fell a little bit in love with Wallace in 1996 after reading Infinite Jest. I cannot count how many copies of that book I bought and passed along to friends. I wanted them to see a part of me through it. I loved him darkly; I loved his darkness. I didn't see the humor in the book that so many reviewers saw - the same book that won him a genius grant - but I did see the genius. And I remember how many times I told fellow writers and friends, "I want to be a writer like that." I meant it.

And I'm sad to have to revise the statement. I've been to some dark places, I've pulled myself out of them more times than I'd like to admit. I know how I get when I allow myself to wade in too deep, when I'm writing fiction, what I'm like when I start acting like the character I'm writing for.

My heart hurts because I do get it, and at the same time I also understand the impact suicide has on the people who love the person who takes his own life.

I don't want to be a writer like that.

It happens to me every year...

I grieve all over again. Every year I think it won't happen again. But it does. And in honor of thinking just last night that I needed to tell him something and realizing he wouldn't pick up the phone when I called and feeling like it was the first time I believed it, I post this poem.

HOW IT WILL HAPPEN, WHEN
There you are, exhausted from a night of crying, curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed, anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry anymore. And there they are, his socks, his shirt, your underwear and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again. Someday, years from now, things will be different, the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows shining, sun coming in easily now, sliding across the high shine of wax on the wood floor. You'll be peeling an orange or watching a bird spring from the edge of the rooftop next door, noticing how, for an instant, its body is stopped on the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly into the ruff at its wings and then doing it: flying. You'll be reading, and for a moment there will be a word you don't understand, a simple word like now or what or is and you'll ponder over it like a child discovering language. Is you'll say over and over until it begins to make sense, and that's when you'll say it, for the first time, out loud: He's dead. He's not coming back. And it will be the first time you believe it.
-Dorianne Laux

Hate. Springing. Forward.

This time of year always gives me a case of the Mean Reds, and I've felt this one coming on for weeks. The change in seasons, the getting up earlier, the morning darkness, the spring in the air that makes me feel afraid and disturbingly nostalgic for things I don't want to think about anymore.

Since my life is in total disarray (I'm not exaggerating), I'm trying to decide which would be more effective: finding a new shrink or re-hiring my cleaning lady. They both cost about the same, but the shrink won't clean my house or fold my laundry or make the dust bunnies in the corners go away. On the other hand, my cleaning lady won't tell me to get the f*ck off the couch and start living my life. Or figure out why I go through these phases of hating myself that literally incapacitate me.

I detest myself even more for complaining, because so many other things in my life are so great. I have everything I've wished for since I can remember. I have wonderful friends & family, a job I adore, and a book deal. I have more things to be grateful for than I ever have in my whole life, therefore I suck for lying on the couch all weekend watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy on DVD and weeping every 45 minutes or so.

I know it isn't depression; it's fear. Fear of death, success, loss, letting go, failure, dirt, outdoors, people, food, life...everything is worthy of dread. The good news is that I've been here before and I know it won't last. I always get through, push it aside, suck it up, and move on with my life. I need a good yoga class, bike ride, shopping spree, house cleaning, or sharp rap to the back of my head to get going again. And I think I'm going to try and make all of those happen this week.

"... the blues are because you're getting fat or because it's been raining too long. You're just sad, that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?"
~Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffanys

The last CD I made for him, and why...

Reading Rob Sheffield's memoir, Love is a Mix Tape, brings back a lot of memories. Before CDs there were mix tapes, the pre-CD ones recorded from radio when I was in high school. I once made a tape of nothing but Metallica songs, simply titled "Metallica Rules and You Don't." I pressed "record" every time I heard the opening bars of "Enter Sandman," "Last Caress/Green Hell," or "And Justice for All." I think one whole side was "Last Caress" with different DJ intros. The other side featured five minutes of me talking about why Metallica is the best band EVER. Fascinating stuff. I also had a "make out" tape that was (embarrassingly) heavy with Journey and REO Speedwagon. Every time I gave someone a mix tape or CD, it was loaded with meaning. When my best friend in high school moved to Florida, I made him a tape called "I Will Not Carry On." It was very melodramatic and featured two versions (regular & dance) of "Angel of the Morning" by Juice Newton. I think half of the songs were by The Cure.

When I first discovered Napster it was like Mix CD Heaven. I made tons of "theme CDs," like "Saddest Songs in the World Wallow Mix" and "How Punk Rock Saved My Life in 1989." Then iTunes came along and I fell in love all over again with those 99-cent legal downloads.

When you make a mix CD for someone you love, it's usually loaded with meaning. Sometimes it was the only way I could communicate. Looking back on some of the song lists, I wonder if I was channeling spirits or tapping into psychic abilities; they're just so telling. Why didn't I see it before?

This is a list of songs from the last CD I made for him (the last him that I loved) with the not-so-subtle title "Ten Ways I Feel About You":

• "Wish You Were Here," Pink Floyd. Why: We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year...
• "Almost Blue," Elvis Costello. Why: Flirting with this disaster became me...It named me as the fool who only aimed to be...
• "Leather," Tori Amos. Why: Look, I'm standing naked before you; Don't you want more than my sex?
• "I Will Remember You," Sarah McLachlan. Why: I’m so afraid to love you, but more afraid to lose; Clinging to a past that doesn’t let me choose...
• "In Your Eyes," Peter Gabriel. Why: Do I have to explain this one?
• "If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man," Cowboy Junkies. Why: Would I laugh if you came to me with your heart in your hand?
• "Sandwiches," Detroit Grand Pubahs. Why: (it was a joke he would get) You can be the bun and I can be the burger girl...I know you wanna do it and we can make sandwiches.
• "Dancing Barefoot," Patti Smith. Why: Could it be he´s taking over me?
• "Do You Feel Loved," U2. Why: It looks like the sun but feels like the rain.
• "La Vie En Rose," Edith Piaf. Why: Il me dit des mots d'amour, Des mots de tous les jours, Et ca me fait quelque chose. (He tells me words of love, words of everyday, and that made me something.)

See? I think my heart knew he was leaving before he did.

When it comes right down to it, it's just sad...

I wanted to write something about Anna Nicole Smith, who died yesterday at the age of 39. Here are the various beginnings and bits I scrapped:
With a mother like that, of course she was f*cked up...
Do you expect better from someone who has always been treated like a commodity? I can't say I wouldn't give up if I became a punch line. I hope I wouldn't, but... ...proof that being in the public eye is not a place for fragile people...
Maybe they'll stop making fun of her now.

One of the saddest things I read today was a quote from my friend MK, who posted it as a bulletin on her MySpace page.

"I learned everything I needed to know in life as a stripper...One man plus two beers equals twenty dollars."~Anna Nicole Smith

What a gal.

What a gal, indeed. I hope you can still be a blonde bombshell in the afterlife.