Hey Grandma, what did you do when democracy was dying?

Well kids, every single day, I went to work, and then I went outside to stare at trees until it was dark.

You must’ve gotten a lot of bug bites grandma.

I Sure did, kids. I sure did.

This dystopia is not at all what I expected. I don’t know what I wanted. Zombies? I thought Big Brother would try to sell us on an idea, like a permanent chip implant or something, and we would all go along willingly. I thought that we would all be riding badass motorcycles. Whatever this ( gestures to everything) is, it’s very disappointing.

Every day I go to my Medicaid funded job waiting for the other shoe to drop. Two remarkably short years ago I would call what I’m feeling paranoia. These days? We can’t be paranoid enough.

I work with Medicaid waiver programs. These are the entitlement programs that, at one point, were the last resort funding source for individuals with intellectual, developmental, or physical disabilities. Some of the adults I see have jobs, and some of them are job creators for others.

I hear a lot of sad stories.

So when I am done for the day, I clear my mind by sitting outside with my Merlin app identifying bird calls. I see mostly the garden variety birds and sometimes when I get lucky, I see a few special avian guests. I especially love Bluebirds and Goldfinches. According to my Merlin app, both varieties are hanging out around my house. I’ve seen the bluebird(s), but after weeks of hearing its call, I’ve yet to see that damn goldfinch and I’m officially pissed about it.

But I keep staring at the trees. Hope springs eternal even if it is in short supply lately. Plus the more time I spent staring at trees, the less time I spend staring into the void, doomscrolling.

Since I started working in the social services, I see what happens when folks “don’t want the government involved in their lives”. I’ve seen severely mentally ill individuals found living under bridges, and Alzheimer’s patients who end up on a freeway at 2am after a sincere attempt to walk back to their childhood home. I met a few disabled people with no identification paperwork because they were children of incest, or left by a long gone family member. Sometimes the real reason someone ends up “un scannable” would never be known. One particular person had somehow been enrolled in a public school for several years with no ID or SSN. (Full disclosure this person attended school decades ago, who knows if or when they had a birth certificate but I never found one.)

There are a million sad stories out there. Some situations are preventable, but not everything. Many people care for disabled family members until they find themselves incapable usually due to age or injury. Without assistance, these folks are burnt out, and they sometimes wait to ask for assistance until they are in a desperate situation. Some folks apply for assistance but are denied and don’t appeal (ALWAYS appeal) and have no guidance as to how to proceed. Folks wait months to get insurance, food stamps, and the elusive housing vouchers. In the meantime,if they have help, they are sleeping in shelters, or jail almost always without needed medication. You see these people everyday. No matter what, we are collectively paying for care for these individuals. Pretending that you don’t already support these people is stupid. You’ll pay exponentially more to take care of someone in an emergency situation rather than providing assistance in a timely manner. Instead of expanding help for caregivers, our country seems hell bent on defunding the very programs that need to expand. And, no matter what your libertarian Cousin Chuck tells you, this is not a “take care of our own” situation.

In my years of social service, Ive heard a lot of platitudes about how fulfilling my job is. It’s as if no one wants to hear about the very real challenges of caregiving and the systems that support them. It’s not do gooder type work. These jobs require crisis intervention training because you can walk into any type of situation. For a multitude of reasons, disabled Americans and Americans with mental illness are subjected to physical, mental, and emotional abuse. Case managers, conservators, and legal guardians have to represent vulnerable Americans every day, in jail, in shelters, in meetings, schools, hospitals, and in their own homes sometimes across all of these settings in one 8 hour day. Good luck finding the right wardrobe to go into a roach infested home and to court. It’s a neat trick!

I remember well an adult intellectually disabled person on my caseload years ago who was basically a punching bag for their family. I learned a lot about how to spot signs of abuse after having them on my caseload. The medical report talked about how they had wounds all over their body in various stages of healing. This person needed housing, medical care, protection from their own family, food, and something to do during the day. After a few months in the hospital, the agency I worked with secured benefits and placed them in an assisted living facility. At that time, Medicaid/Medicare took all but $40/month of their disability payments. That was all the money they had for clothing, special snacks or anything recreational. Many people like that way today. I find this situation unacceptable.

The wealthiest country in the world chooses making one man a trillionaire over helping those in need. These are indisputable facts. This is who we are.

The Medicaid cuts aren’t here yet, but they will be. An already over burdened system, a system that forces caregivers to continually advocate, worry, and retrofit their entire lives just to get by is certainly going to get worse.

We have money for entitlement programs. It doesn’t need to be this way. Frankly, I’m sick of being so angry, worried, and disappointed. So during the day I really focus on being compassionate and trying to be the human in the human services system.

Rich people can take a lot of things away from this country, like interesting architecture, public spaces, clean air, and water, and smart people. With a flash of their pen they will loosen regulations for big business. Easy peasy. However it’ll be pretty fucking hard for them to cut down every single tree, although they may try. Until then, you can find me out here, just looking at the trees, trying to find that asshole goldfinch.