You'll have to forgive me. I'm not a writer -- and I'm certainly not up to the quality of diaries you'll find every day here on DailyKos. This diary is a mixture of my own frustrations and, in some ways, a plea for help. I don't know what to do -- I don't know what anyone can do in the face of some of the daily struggles we find ourselves in. And I know what we're going through doesn't even hold a candle to some of the difficult choices others are going through every day.
Indeed, I feel guilty just thinking about it, so I hope you'll forgive my somewhat self-indulgent first diary here.
I am a thirty year old man. I live with my parents, as embaressing as that is. It's their struggle to cling to that last dream of what's left of our middle class that they're struggling, and finally failing, to cling to at this hour.
There are seven days before we're under threat of eviction. Technically, it is believed they can evict us at any time after that and we just don't know when it's coming. They won't even talk to us.
My parents bought a home, twenty years ago. Times were better for them, then, but poor decisions have cost them. Let it not be said that their own decisions, and mine as well, have not compounded things. They were decisions made of pride, a decision made to cling to a quality of life that was expected. My father was and is the kind of man who believes you ought to do it on your own, as much as possible. He worked hours of overtime to put his first son through college for seven years, paying for every dime of his tuition to leave his son free of th crippling debts so many college students today suffer with when it comes to their student loans.
In time, the work he did took its toll on his body. He became disabled, overweight, diabetic. Arthritis in his neck and spine. Blood pressure too high. One hip went bad and had to be replaced. Another hip went bad and it too had to be replaced. Then a shoulder went bad and it had to be replaced. And today, he's staring in the eye of a fourth surgery to replace his other shoulder at some time in his life. This is a man who was born with one and a half lungs, who survived fulminant hepatitis in the 80s at a time when the death rate for it was in the ninetieth percentile.
...and the social security administration, in its infinite wisdom, denied him disability. This was well after he was told his services would no longer be required by the company he was working for on the day of George Bush's selection by the Supreme Court. He has never believed it was a coincidence. These two things, the loss of his job as he was just beginning to become disabled, and then the denial of his social security claim when he needed it, are the two pillars that set my family on its current path.
This was man who did the damndest he could to provide a life for his family that measured up to what he believed was -right- for them. Mistakes were made on that path -- a mortage was refinanced and then done again when times were lean during the battle for his diability. He worked all his life. Medical bills, vetrinary bills for a beloved cat, a beloved grandparent on the other side of the country dying, surgeries and more all took place in the 2000s. And it never let up. A car that had to be nursed along because there was never enough money to pay for a new one, but regular mechanics bills ensuring there was never a chance to do so. The cost of life goes up, but nothing else changes.
And now, after struggle after struggle, even with the disability checks he finally got, it still hasn't been enough to save things. We stand here today, at this time, on the precipice of losing everything he worked for in his life, with nowhere else to go. We've surrendered to the process. We're in the middle of packing. There is nothing to be done except to find a place here in Oregon that will take us and what little we have left -- one that we hope will allow us to bring our German Shepherd. He's about the only thing I, personally, cling to in these harder times. I saw an article in the news -- spending up on pets in these lean times. And why not? They bring us joy in these hard times.
As I stare into this rapidly approaching, uncertain future I wonder: where is hope?
I stare at my parents and I see that that hope for a future has drained out of their eyes. Indeed, as times have gotten harder, they've begun to turn their frustrations towards the targets advocated by the right. On illegal immigrants, who get free SUVs, a job, free health caure, education, and more (or so they say), on 'Obama', who's only 'helping the blacks and the mexicans', on the democrats, who aren't doing anything for them, and, yes, on the republicans too for being only for 'big business'. They weren't always like this -- but frustration, uncertainy, and change can bring out the worst in people -- even in those you love. Add a major 'news' network and radio broadcasting a message of hate seemingly 24/7 and its amazing how much even the smartest people can pick up. It reminds me of a line from Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, where Shirer said the propaganda was so pervasive that he didn't realize how much even he, a supposedly astute observer, had bought into some of its underlying assumptions.
Hard times have changed them and sometimes I feel, as I stay with them, that I don't really know them anymore even as I struggle to help them find a new place as we begin to say goodbye to our home.
Some nights, I feel that way about my country, too.