Read Online Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado - Free Book Online
Authors: Linda Tirado
Tags: Social Science, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Social classes, Poverty & Homelessness
Ads: Link
money.
There is a price point for good health in America, and I have rarely been able to meet it. I choose not to pursue treatment if it will cost me more than it will gain me, and my cost-benefit is done in more than dollars. I have to think of whether I can afford any potential treatment emotionally, financially, and timewise. I have to sort out whether I can afford to change my life enough to make any treatment worth it—I’ve been told by more than one therapist that I’d be fine if I simply reduced the amount of stress in my life. It’s true, albeit unhelpful.Doctors are fans of telling you to sleep and eat properly, as though that were a thing one can simply do.
Now, I’m not saying the system doesn’t work at all. I’ve had lifesaving treatment, like when my throat swelled so much they had to put a tube in it to keep me breathing. I’ve got friends who can leave their houses only because they found a program to get them a wheelchair. Many people have needs that the system is built to meet, and it does that fairly efficiently to the extent that there’s money.
The trouble is that we’ve left so many holes in the safety net Moby-Dick could swim through it. The system can’t support everyone who needs the help, and it’s led to a pastiche of half-finished treatments and conflicting diagnoses. We have the technology. Maybe we can start using it? There are a lot of us that would be awfully pleased to get some antibiotics.
4
I’m Not Angry So Much as I’m ReallyTired
A lmost nothing is more degrading than standing in a welfare line. The people who are looking at you know exactly how much money you make, because they know how poor you have to be to qualify. And the workers are either lovely or the worst human beings you’d ever care to meet. I had a caseworker who called just to check in because she knew I’d gotten a new job. And I had one who ignored me completely, just had me sit silently at her desk until she needed me to verify my information. Then she ignored me some more, and then she told me I could go. I left, with no idea what had just happened. I called the state to find out what changes she’d made to my file the next day rather than speak up during that incredibly effective stonewall.
I’ve felt the poorest with the people who were supposed to be helping me. I get that their jobs suck and they’reoverworked, but I go out of my way to not be another asshole customer. I have my paperwork and a list of questions ready to go. I have all my references, my pay stubs, medical bills, everything. Indexed. Sometimes I don’t have a document, but then it’s on my list of questions, to find out what I can use as a substitute. But often, none of that matters, because I am poor and asking for the benefits that I am qualified for and entitled to as a citizen, and in some people’s eyes that makes me less than human.
Often enough, I
feel
less than human—or less than the human that I know myself to be. For example, I love to read. I’m a naturally curious person, apt to ask uncomfortable questions without realizing it because I just want to know something. But I don’t read when I’m working at minimum wage or near it. I’m too tired. I fall asleep because the effort of moving my eyes across the page and processing information is simply too much; my brain won’t allow me to use what little energy I have left on frivolities like self-improvement. It just wants me to stare blankly at a wall or flickering screen until I pass out.
Understand that when I say I am tired and in the same breath bitch about a lack of hours at work, it’s because I’m counting the totality of the shit that I have to deal with while being poor. It is super-inconvenient, all the time.
There’s one episode of my life in particular that was just the worst. I was working two jobs, with no car. I lived two miles from one job and three miles from the other. It wasn’t an inhuman amount of mileage; some people run that for
There is a price point for good health in America, and I have rarely been able to meet it. I choose not to pursue treatment if it will cost me more than it will gain me, and my cost-benefit is done in more than dollars. I have to think of whether I can afford any potential treatment emotionally, financially, and timewise. I have to sort out whether I can afford to change my life enough to make any treatment worth it—I’ve been told by more than one therapist that I’d be fine if I simply reduced the amount of stress in my life. It’s true, albeit unhelpful.Doctors are fans of telling you to sleep and eat properly, as though that were a thing one can simply do.
Now, I’m not saying the system doesn’t work at all. I’ve had lifesaving treatment, like when my throat swelled so much they had to put a tube in it to keep me breathing. I’ve got friends who can leave their houses only because they found a program to get them a wheelchair. Many people have needs that the system is built to meet, and it does that fairly efficiently to the extent that there’s money.
The trouble is that we’ve left so many holes in the safety net Moby-Dick could swim through it. The system can’t support everyone who needs the help, and it’s led to a pastiche of half-finished treatments and conflicting diagnoses. We have the technology. Maybe we can start using it? There are a lot of us that would be awfully pleased to get some antibiotics.
4
I’m Not Angry So Much as I’m ReallyTired
A lmost nothing is more degrading than standing in a welfare line. The people who are looking at you know exactly how much money you make, because they know how poor you have to be to qualify. And the workers are either lovely or the worst human beings you’d ever care to meet. I had a caseworker who called just to check in because she knew I’d gotten a new job. And I had one who ignored me completely, just had me sit silently at her desk until she needed me to verify my information. Then she ignored me some more, and then she told me I could go. I left, with no idea what had just happened. I called the state to find out what changes she’d made to my file the next day rather than speak up during that incredibly effective stonewall.
I’ve felt the poorest with the people who were supposed to be helping me. I get that their jobs suck and they’reoverworked, but I go out of my way to not be another asshole customer. I have my paperwork and a list of questions ready to go. I have all my references, my pay stubs, medical bills, everything. Indexed. Sometimes I don’t have a document, but then it’s on my list of questions, to find out what I can use as a substitute. But often, none of that matters, because I am poor and asking for the benefits that I am qualified for and entitled to as a citizen, and in some people’s eyes that makes me less than human.
Often enough, I
feel
less than human—or less than the human that I know myself to be. For example, I love to read. I’m a naturally curious person, apt to ask uncomfortable questions without realizing it because I just want to know something. But I don’t read when I’m working at minimum wage or near it. I’m too tired. I fall asleep because the effort of moving my eyes across the page and processing information is simply too much; my brain won’t allow me to use what little energy I have left on frivolities like self-improvement. It just wants me to stare blankly at a wall or flickering screen until I pass out.
Understand that when I say I am tired and in the same breath bitch about a lack of hours at work, it’s because I’m counting the totality of the shit that I have to deal with while being poor. It is super-inconvenient, all the time.
There’s one episode of my life in particular that was just the worst. I was working two jobs, with no car. I lived two miles from one job and three miles from the other. It wasn’t an inhuman amount of mileage; some people run that for
Similar Books
