Topix Questions 15 "Important Truth Few People Agree With You On" & 16 "Life Changes in the Past 5 Years?"

Question 15/424:  What important truth do few people agree with you on?

The first thing that comes to my mind is a project my friend Sarah started back in 2014 where she made pies and gave out pieces for free in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  It started out as a local project and then evolved into a cross-country road trip funded by the generosity of others and fueled by pie.  During the trip across the USA she started a t-shirt campaign where the logo reflected symbols for four things:  Food/Water, Shelter, Education, and Medicine.  The message behind the t-shirt, as well as her non-profit, was food, water, shelter, education and medicine are fundamental rights and should be offered to anyone regardless of social status or affluence.  I think there could be an argument that this is socialism, and I guess I can’t really argue that it isn’t.  I do think it’s important to remind people, however, that a lot of these human rights are in fact offered to a large portion of our population through government programs, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. 

I think the most interesting part about believing in this truth and finding myself in conversations with people who adamantly oppose this concept is that to be opposed you have to ask yourself, “What makes a person unworthy of receiving food, water, shelter, education, and medicine?”  I come from a hard working blue collar family and my family worked for everything we ever had, and I’ve had family members challenge me with “Why should someone get for free what I work for every day?”  And ultimately I think it again comes down to the core belief that people – humans – are worthy of basic essentials.  I’m not saying that the government should be building mansions and gifting them to people without reason, but I also don’t believe that anyone should be forced to sleep outside on cement because there aren’t enough resources for homelessness.  I don’t think anyone deserves to go hungry or thirsty because they didn’t or couldn’t work enough to provide for themselves.  I don’t think anyone deserves to be denied medical care because they don’t carry insurance or aren’t able to pay for the service.  It’s interesting, too, because our society deems all of these rights as a given, as long as we are speaking about children. 

Children, regardless of their parents’ status, are always given the opportunity to have food, water, shelter, medicine, and education.  There are numerous programs that children are eligible for even when their parents aren’t.  Growing up there were many years where my siblings and I were on government medical insurance while my parents went without coverage simply because they couldn’t afford the premiums.  Children are offered public schooling for twelve years but once we start talking about community college the dialogue does a complete one-eighty.  Families with children receive numerous opportunities for government assistance via food stamps, cash assistance, child tax credits, all aimed at helping the adults provide a better environment for their children.  At the end of the day, though, if the parents are still going without, the whole family unit will suffer.  The children being in good health only means so much if the parents are sickly and can’t take care of them. 

To clarify, I am and can only speak to my experience living in the USA and learning more and more about how flawed our systems are.  It’s shocking to hear from so many people how “unfair it is that people can abuse these systems” when ultimately most people looking for services to provide food, water, shelter, medicine, and education, are simply looking for ways to survive, to care for themselves and those around them – sometimes children, sometimes not.  I find it jarring how fast we are to turn our backs on fellow humans for reasons that are so superficial.  We are so fast to pass judgement on addicts, on cultures that feel different from us, from religions that feel blasphemous to us, on people with disabilities be it mental or physical.  At the end of the day, we are all humans and we are all worthy of love and safety.

 

Question 16/424:  How has your life changed in the past five years?

I’m answering this question in March of 2023 so 5 years ago would be 2018.  In 2018 I was in the middle of my most toxic relationship with a narcissist which has undoubtedly caused trauma within me that continues to affect my ongoing relationships.  I went from being a loud, sometimes bossy, but boundary setting person to having my self-esteem plummet and became an over-apologizing guilt-ridden mess that I am still trying untrain myself from.  Getting out of that relationship was one of the best things I ever did but it was also one of the more difficult.  Not from an emotional standpoint, I had no love for him for the last half of our relationship, but literally he wouldn’t leave most of the time.  I would try to break up and he would just stay and talk me out of it.  I did eventually get out, and while that was the best thing I could’ve done, I wish I could say that 4 years later I was a stronger person.  I’m trying to be, and I’ve gone through three therapists trying to work on myself, but it’s still a progression.

In 2019 I started trying to find myself again, I was going out more often and spending plenty of time with friends while also trying to commit to living by myself (something I had tried and failed to do multiple times before).  Then my dear friend Courtney passed away suddenly.  It wasn’t’ the first sudden loss I had experienced, but it did remind me that life is short and that we shouldn’t take anything for granted.  Towards the end of the year I started a new relationship with someone who is not a narcissist and he ultimately moved in with me.  He’s a better partner than any I’ve been with before and he actually helps out financially which was huge, because my ex not only left me with a bundle of emotional trauma but he also helped me get into yet another huge pile of debt.  I in no way expected my new boyfriend to pay off my debt, but having someone help with the regular ongoing monthly bills has helped to alleviate my stress in so many ways as I have finally started to see the end of the tunnel of paying off debt.

In 2020 all of our lives took a drastic turn and changed how we all do things forever.  I think my living alone in 2019 in addition to the forced isolation that was the pandemic, finally showed me the true value of self-care and alone time.  In my earlier teens, I always thought people were just wrong when they would say I needed to learn to appreciate time to myself and to learn how to be alone with my own thoughts.  Prior to 2020 I believed that I needed to be around other people to be happy and secure, that left on my own too long would only lead to self destruction.  After 2020 though I’ve learned that sometimes the only thing I need is to be left alone and allowed to do nothing, actually and literally nothing.  Not worrying about what someone else needs, or doing chores that have been put off, or seeking out a social event but to literally just relax and be present in that moment.  2020 also helped to reinvigorate my love of cooking – something that had been taken away from me by Leo because he preferred things made from a box “so they always turn out perfectly”.  Trying to stay away from the food made by other people pushed me to learn new things and be more confident in the kitchen and realize that most things you can buy are simply not that difficult to make at home, just more time consuming (which in 2020 we had in excess).

2021 was tough, I think almost tougher than 2020 for me.  In 2020 it was easy to just fall into the routine of staying home and not going out, even though that was hard for me, it was a pretty straightforward rule to follow.  In 2021 however things started opening back up, the COVID vaccine was being rolled out and people were starting to get a little itchy for “normalcy”.  I resisted the vaccine for a while, until I found myself with a lot of people who were acting like things were back to normal and so I felt like the only way to truly protect myself was to voluntarily isolate away from everyone or to get vaccinated, so I did.  It’s still an ongoing conversation in my social circles, I have people who are happily vaccinated and I have people who are still adamantly opposed to it.  I think though that having experienced the isolation, and moving back into a social life it definitely taught me to appreciate the opportunities to be around people you love and to make the most of them.  It resulted in me taking a sort of impromptu road trip to Chicago and just really inspired me to try and make the most of the time we have, because it really can be over sooner than you ever imagine.

2022 in a lot of ways felt like my most stagnant.  I had a few setbacks when it comes to finances and paying off debt while simultaneously trying to make the most of life and still have plenty of experiences.  A lot of my friends turned 30 this year, myself included, and I think there’s a certain amount of pressure that comes with that both externally and internally.  I think it’s hard to remember to think about how far you’ve come while you’re still in the same apartment at the same job and it feels like your life has not had the upward trajectory you expected or see other people having.  It’s nice to actually look back at photos and memories to be reminded of the good that comes along with the daily grind.

Sorry if this was more of an overview or recap versus an explanation of how I’ve changed but I think those two things kind of go hand in hand.  Overall, the person I was in 2018 versus the person I am in 2023 I would have to say I am more patient, more open minded, more understanding.  I am now in a place where I can find the balance between being responsible while also having experiences instead of having those experiences causing setbacks.  Above all I think it’s mostly just that now I’m willing to accept that I actually know nothing about life and success and that’s okay.