come home to my heart

awbrainno:

Say it with me, kiddos: “I can’t get health insurance” doesn’t mean “man, I guess going to the doctor will be expensive.“ 

“I can’t get health insurance” means “I will no longer go to the doctor. I may never go to the doctor again.”

“I can’t get health insurance” means “I know I’m at high risk for ear infections, and I know I have an ear infection, and I can’t sleep because of the pain in my ears, and I’m crying and puking because of the pain in my ears, and there is scar tissue developing on my ear drums, and I’m only 22 years old and I’m losing my hearing, but I would sooner die than go to the ER because I can’t bear to hear my mother cry about medical bills anymore.”

“I can’t get health insurance” means “I have chronic, debilitating migraines that get so bad that I can’t remember my name or feel my tongue, so bad that I can taste sounds and feel light, and sometimes I beg my friends for their leftover prescription opiates so that I can get some relief, because I don’t have access to the medications I need.”

“I can’t get health insurance” means “I will spend the next year of my life surviving off of half a packet of ramen per day, working 35 hours a week, taking 18 college credits, and spending every single cent of my income desperately trying to pay off my hospital bills after spending my entire life’s savings on an ambulance ride the night I attempted suicide.”

“I can’t get health insurance” means “I will attempt suicide, because I am transgender and the health care it would take to alleviate my dysphoria and treat my mental health conditions and care for me are so prohibitively expensive that I can’t envision a world in which I will ever want to continue living.”

I am 22 years old, and I never had it as bad as the generation before me, but even I know that not having health insurance means learning how to DIY solutions to problems that, given a sliver of an opportunity, anyone with a shred of self-preservation would see a doctor to fix. 

Stick together. Teach each other. Help each other. Care for each other. Fight this. Resist this. For all our sakes.