Does anyone give any fucks anymore?

OR: The Waiting Game

As I write this, my father-in-law, Will, is in an ambulance on the way to the emergency room. After more than six months of failed diagnosis and other healthcare bullshit, “bad” might be getting “worse.” While his wife and son sit in the emergency waiting room, hoping, praying that there is still something more to be done, I am sitting in a silent house while my two-and-a-half-year-old sleeps, waiting.

2024 has been a year of waiting.

For the first half of the year, we were waiting for our wedding day (June 8, 2024).

In April, we waited to see if I was having a miscarriage (I was).

In May, we waited for test results, waited to see if my father-in-law would get better (he didn’t).

In June, we got married, despite the gaping absence of my in-laws (life must go on…?) and waited to see if the doctors could find a diagnosis (they couldn’t).

In July, Will was transferred to a world-renowned teaching hospital in Boston to see if the world’s greatest specialists could do better. I went to New Hampshire to watch my in-laws’ misanthropic twelve-year-old cat while my mother-in-law went to Boston to care for her suddenly ailing spouse. Because there was nothing else I could do that felt remotely helpful, I cooked meatballs (a food I do not eat), mashing the ground pork and beef together in an effort to try to turn the endless waiting into some kind of good I could attempt to freeze into edible love.

The Boston doctors couldn’t do much better than the Concord doctors. By August, Will seemed to have reached a kind of unsatisfying stasis: he had lost his vision, his ability to walk, and most of his lower body strength. The Boston doctors had thrown up their hands.

He was discharged to rehab.

After months walking hundreds of training miles, my new husband and I held our breath, crossed our fingers for no further health complications while we were away, and flew to Spain to walk the last 100km of the Portuguese Camino, from Vigo to Santiago with our three children. Every day, the milestones counted down the remaining distance to our destination, the heat and the muscle soreness a distraction from the bigger waiting game still happening back home. The excitement of finally, almost arriving at such an anticipated destination momentarily overtook the mind-numbing waiting.

Amidst all this kerfuffle, between Will being admitted to the hospital and planning a DIY wedding and training to walk a Camino carrying a 30-pound toddler, I unexpectedly lost my job. Adding “a job” to the list of things I was waiting for made the year both more tedious and more challenging. The upside of not having a job meant I had endless schedule flexibility to be anywhere I needed to be. The downside was my toddler had to come with me.

I spent the fall waiting for prospective employers to (mostly) not respond to my applications and waiting for my unemployment direct deposit to drop so I could barely cover the bills. Mostly unable to afford childcare, I wrote in the in-between moments when my toddler was asleep.

I waited to see if the Democrats had gotten it as wrong as they did in 2016 (yup) and waited for SOMEONE in the goddamn gerontocracy to come to a thoughtful conclusion about a different kind of politics (still waiting — more on this soon?).

Now, as we watch the proposed Trump nominations come rolling in, we are waiting to see what will happen in the Autocratic States of America.

After months in rehab, Will is back in the hospital, which is a kind of good-news, bad-news: bad news is he’s in physical pain again, and no one knows why. The good news is he’s back in the care of doctors who are once again trying to figure out what’s wrong.

Twelve days ago, the UHC CEO was shot in midtown Manhattan, which came just a month after UHC had denied a claim for Will’s care, and all I could think was what a red hot bitch karma can be.

I read Jia Tolentino’s searing analysis of the public reaction and I thought, that seems about right.

Eddie Huang offered the kind of pointed social commentary only an underemployed comedian can, inciting the disenfranchised to form a political party around the UHC Shooter. And while I agree with almost everything Eddie said, only an ignoramus would suggest a third party as a path for effective change in American politics. It’s been tried. It has failed. Especially in an age of Trump, it has no runway. (Sorry Eddie, I know you don’t actually mean it).

A Low-key Proposal

The Rich who are making bank off the Poors, as Eddie so helpfully points out, are the people running our government. They’ve got all the keys to all the castles. I’m unsure how anyone breaks out of this prison.

I’m tired of reaching for ways to explain this to people who really don’t seem to care, but here goes:

Do you know what it's like to be poor?

The people in America with household incomes under $100,000 are suffering. And the people with household incomes over $200,000 don’t give a fuck. The politicians who allow this reality to continue year over year can’t be trusted to change anything that matters. And sorry Bernie, but student loan forgiveness and free college for everyone is not it.

Pulling up to the end of my 39th year on planet Earth (Jan 4, y’all, get ready), a few things are looking up. Unemployment ends tomorrow and the new job, which will cost me at least $6,000 in commuting expenses, will at least allow me to escape the hell that is an under-$100k lifestyle, even if it won’t quite let me reach the $200k+ echelon.

Yet, seeing so clearly the suffering happening everywhere, and having had a taste of it myself, I’m struggling to summon excitement at my own salvation. It sucks to be the one on the Titanic getting a life raft. But I can’t bring myself to let my family drown.

Buddhism says that pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I am preparing to trade the financial pain of unemployment for the logistical pain of a job with a four-hour twice-weekly commute. Under capitalism, one is decidedly better than the other, but I can’t shake the deep despair that these are our only options.

We need new political technology

I’ve been working for weeks on yet another essay about politics and the Democratic Party, one that weaves together two decades of political experience and understanding into a coherent narrative about What We Do Now. But I’m deafened by how many people are doing this and how little anyone seems to care.

Does anyone care what I think about politics? Does it matter all? Is it worth the calories burned? Much less the blood, sweat, and tears?

I’ve grown numb to the demands life makes of me, and I imagine others living the under-$100k life have, too. It’s not living, it’s surviving. My father-in-law being back in the hospital is just one of a million excuses that justify the delay.

And yet. The philosopher in me resists the temptation to throw two middle fingers at the thing. There is truth asking for expression. It must be said. Tomorrow, if not today.

It’s the full moon in Taurus — anything is possible.

Let’s make a pact: I’ll publish this god-forsaken essay next weekend if you promise to read it. Deal?

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