Compassion

A few days ago, I was at the doctor's office with Dan. It was 8:30 in the morning and I was half asleep. We were stuck in the waiting room for about half an hour before he got called in. I grabbed a magazine and buried my face behind it to both stifle my yawns and ease my boredom without wasting precious battery life on my phone (seriously, the battery life on my phone sucks).

Shortly after we sat down in the waiting room, an older couple came in. They signed in and also took a seat. A couple minutes later, a nurse came out to talk to them. The older couple hugged and kissed her, so I wondered if this was a family friend or if they have a very close relationship with the nurse. The nurse talked to the gentleman about what they were going to do today. I don't know much about doctors offices but from the way she was talking, it sounded like some major surgery was about to be had.

Then they started talking about Obamacare. The nurse was 100% vehemently against it. She said that this building WILL (she stressed that word) go out of business, which kind of striked me as odd because it is a University Hospital branch. But I digress.

She said that she thinks it's great that Obama is trying to reach out to the younger generation, but that she didn't want to pay tax money for all the lazy slobs out there who won't get jobs.

I hear this argument all the time and it pisses me off, but I will get to that later.

The older lady went to open her mouth. The nurse said,

"No, I don't want to get into a political debate with you. I'm just saying what I feel and I'm done with it. Time to move on now."

First of all, if someone started talking to me like that I would pop them in the mouth. Seriously? I think it's totally fine to give your opinion, but be prepared for feedback. Your ignorance is showing if you don't want to listen to someone else's opinion. Now, by posting this I am opening myself up for political debate. I am going to be completely honest - I don't know a lot about politics. At all. And a lot of people are against Obama because "he isn't getting a lot done." I disagree with people that say this. But again, this is beside the point so I'm not going to expand on this further.

Now to touch base on the "Spending tax money" bullshit.

I can't even begin to stress how selfish people sound when they say this. It's like people assume that when someone is unemployed they're lazy drug addicts that want to do nothing but sit on their ass all day. Are there people like this? Well, yeah. But is this always the case? No.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a full-time job? I'm sure most of you reading this either have one or need one. In either case, they're incredibly difficult to get. When I got into my bicycle accident, I vowed to get a full-time job. I was under the impression that I was not under my mom's insurance since you had to be a full-time student. At night, I would often stay up late having anxiety attacks and crying myself to sleep because I didn't know how I was going to pay for all of this.

Once I was able to get around a lot more, I started searching for full-time jobs. I'd get interviews, but I wouldn't get hired. Offices nowadays look for a few things: experience, college degrees, and sadly physical attributes: they want people that are young and pretty. Now, of course, it's possible I fit into that last category. I'm certainly young enough. But I've only had temp positions in terms of experience and I didn't graduate from Kent State. I got overlooked a lot. But that's not to say that I wasn't trying. Once I was able, I'd bust my ass looking for jobs. I would send my resume to 10 places PER DAY. I tried. And I know other people are trying too.

I ended up swallowing my pride and going back to retail. I started working for Target again in the beginning of December. They offer health care for part-time workers, but they don't get you full coverage. You have to pay for that as well and at only 27 hours a week making minimum wage, it's not affordable in the slightest.

When my mom got laid off from her job six or seven years ago, she tried too. And once SHE was laid off, we were all fucked for insurance since she was the subscriber. But she kept looking for six months until she landed at the job where she is currently at now.

There are people out there who are either physically, mentally, or both unable to hold a job. And yes, they may have Medicaid  but who knows? Maybe there are some people that aren't.

What happened to us? Where are peoples' compassion for others and willingness to help others? When did we become a society based on greed? It disgusts me. Republicans whine about free healthcare being "socialist". U mad bro? My best friend lives in Canada and right now she's got to have a shitton of tests to do. Tests, that down here, would cost hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars. But it's free up there. If we had free health care, it wouldn't make us "socialist". If John McCain had won the Presidential race and believed in free healthcare he'd be a goddamned hero to both Republicans AND Democrats. How DARE President Obama care about this country and the people's well-being! My dad was diagnosed with cancer last year. He is fine now because they caught it incredibly early. But either way with the treatment he chose, he is still (maybe, I'm not sure) paying off the medical bills. It shouldn't cost a fortune and then some TO FUCKING STAY ALIVE.

People disgust me. Nobody wants to help anymore. It shouldn't be this way. Obviously there are people out there that smoke drugs and don't give a shit, but that isn't everyone. People try. But nobody cares anymore. Get over yourselves, please.

I hope that one day if a girl falls off her bicycle and has the top of her knee pop off like a Tupperware lid, she won't have to panic, stress, and cry herself to sleep every night for the next 2 months because she can't pay her medical bills. I hope that one day she can get into an ambulance, get CT scans and X-rays done on her and go to sleep easy at night knowing that it's all (or mostly) paid for. One can only dream.