RAD

I want to tell you how fucking strong we had to be to make it through what we did—for as long as we did.

I know you’re not here to see what I see, but it struck me today as I drove through the River Arts District: block after block of trash bags piled high, mounds of muddy disaster debris. The entrails of buildings and infrastructure. Sodden furniture and office equipment. Oddities—like a yellow Post-it note peeking out from the mud.

Each day I trek through the devastation left by Hurricane Helene—my brain melting, tears streaming, slack-jawed at the wreckage.

Today I realized these scenes are a metaphor for much of what our life felt like.

Walls of water. Massive tangles of trees and cars jammed into gutted buildings. The sheer destructive force mirrors what the U.S. medical-industrial complex unleashed on our lives. Everything we knew—everything familiar and recognizable—was swept away or smashed to pieces by the juggernaut of a profoundly fucked-up healthcare system.

Financial devastation. Irreparable physical harm.

We were swirling and sinking and rising and clinging to passing flotsam in a flood of ongoing neglect and abuse.

Jumbled, filthy piles of cars, eighteen-wheelers, rail cars, and tankers. Splintered trees. Disintegrated bridges and buildings. Trash mixed with the remnants of people’s lives and dreams. The perfect metaphor.

For nineteen years, all of my energy and resources were consumed by withstanding the destructive forces of a brutal, trauma-inducing system. Day after day. Year after year. The carnage I faced—constantly.

Frantically flailing to keep my head above water. Battered by debris. Shoveling and sorting while the storm kept barreling over us.

There is a mountain of muck and wreckage from that trauma that I am now picking through in the grieving process. Relentless medical errors. Tyrannical systems. Complete disrespect for our time, our bodies, our resources—all coated in mud and grime and toxicity: profit, failed policy, and dehumanization.

Driving along with tears streaming, I found myself forgiving myself—for not having done better, for not having been more tender.

What a colossal fucking mess I was dealing with.

It is a fucking miracle that we survived as well as we did.

“Never forget: we walk on hell, gazing at flowers.” ― Kobayashi Issa