Beginnings

When I look back at my children's lives, I see myself having this huge, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I blew it.

For all of my children, but especially my oldest and youngest. I made choices that put them into danger. That created instability and fear within their hearts. That traumatized and shattered them, And really, it was all over what strong women around the world who know better now call "a stupid guy" ... and a stupid drug ... meth in a needle.

I chased the guy, well ... once he stopped chasing me, and caught me. You know how that typical tale goes. The quintessential bad boy who claimed to be my knight in shining armor. Turned out I went from one bad mistake to another when it came to men. I was severely co-dependent as well, thinking I needed to have someone in my life to validate me. And of course, he did not validate me. He was a classic, controlling, abusive type ... what I later learned in DV training is called the "Cobra."

At any rate, I wound up throwing away the opportunity to give my children the life they deserved and needed. I take ownership of that and sometimes feel as if I will always be punished on some level for failing them as I did. But in the context of this blog and how this all affected Ali in particular ...

Ali was so young when her father came out of drug treatment and moved back into the house, I want to say at age 2. Within 3 months of his return, he had relapsed and eventually convinced me to start using with him again as well. We started out smoking it this time, a control tactic that lasted about 2 months before we were slamming, and back into the whole rat race life that came with that.

Many stupid and pathetic choices later, we were living in hotels and on people's couches, always out of food, always without resources, always scrounging. People in and out of our lives, and having contact with our family, and having access to our home. It is true I did not personally make the worst of the choices, but I allowed them to happen. I may have been passive and gotten  swept along, but I chose to be that way.

Eventually the bottom fell out. He was arrested, I went to treatment, the younger kids were taken by CPS while my oldest son fell through the legal cracks. I divorced him, I got my kids back, and we all lived happily ever after.

Yeah right ...

My First Official Post is a RANT.

So I never, ever thought about health care as a child. It was something I tried to avoid and my parents paid for and took care of making sure I got. Then as an adult, once I had children, I was either medicaid eligible or had insurance through work. So again, if I needed healthcare, I was able to get it.

In recent years, as a social work student, I became interested in the topic of health care, as far as a topic for presentations and research essays, as I discovered that not everyone in America had it so easy. I became a proponent for universal healthcare, right along with Michael Moore and President Obama.

I know, I know ... people say that Obamacare is so bad, but in my opinion, it really should be HouseandSenatecare because they are the ones who f---d up his initial policy as it was set out. And that is all I will say about that.

But okay, meantime ... here it is. I personally do not have healthcare insurance and I pay out of pocket for it when I get scared or something that herbal/home remedies won't cure. That wouldn't be so bad, since I am fairly healthy in general, but ...

I have a daughter who has TWO TYPES of insurance (one of which her grandmother pays a hefty amount for monthly, might I add), and diagnoses of severe eating disorder/struggles with mental health/physical issues that are all possibly mortally dangerous for her.

This has been ongoing with insurance for a long time, and I am only speaking right now of the last couple of months.  Ali had been sent to residential treatment after a relapse brought on by a PTSD disassociative episode in which she cut herself several times and should have received stitches. After being there around 6 weeks and starting to stabilize, but still in no way ready to leave, Ali was informed that there were issues with insurance coverage and she would have to discharge from the facility until it was straightened out.

This happened over 3 weeks ago. She went from daily treatment for 9 months to absolutely no type of treatment. Needless to say, I am feeling desperate and hopeless at times myself, so I can only imagine how hard it is for her to keep going forward at this point.

NOTE: I have nothing against any individual who is working within the healthcare field. Hell, I work in it myself. I understand that clinical staff does the best they can with what they are given. My daughter has had amazing care when she was receiving it. 

 What I do have issue with is the United States healthcare "system" that has failed so many people, my family included.

However, at least we are not socialist. Hooray for that.

I see how people fall through the cracks. I feel as if my daughter is slowly falling through one, and I am being pulled through it with her. I do not understand from a moral and humanity standpoint but I do understand it from a financial standpoint. I just know that I need to get the word out that this is not right. Human lives being sacrificed for the almighty dollar is not right.

What am I supposed to say here ...? Well, this is a journal of a journey, a journey of a journal.