It's clear: They hate poor people.

So much that they don't care whether they live or die.

Hey. It’s been a few months, I know, but not for lack of trying to create a new post. My drafts folder has been filling up with things I’ve started to write to share on this platform. Some only have titles. Others go as far as a few photos, captions, and opening sentences. I have pieces about finding compassion for your former self, my “writing process” when I’m not actually writing, and finally some kind of attempt at an update because so much time has passed. Every time I start to write, I mentally trail off, lose motivation, and the despondence sets in: What’s the fucking use? I start to ask myself.

When they announced the election results, I woke up at 3am in a panic. At first I thought it was for an unknown reason, and realized why when I heard my phone buzzing from text messages. My friends were panicking, too. We all had different reasons to be awake at that hour, our hearts racing. Some of us had daughters, battled chronic illness, lived in large cities, and worried about aging parents. All of us were terrified.

For a while after that, I couldn’t watch the news. The chaos was impossible to keep up with, and I saw the intended spread of fear the new administration thrived on. Maybe that part of it was triggering for me. I’ve lived with too many people who wanted me to be afraid of what they might do.

As the months passed, I saw how much that fear was valid. People in the margins of society were in danger of losing their livelihoods, and thousands did as jobs were cut and employers were forced to cut back because of high tariffs, losing grant funds, and insecurity. Every day brought living nightmare-like scenes of people being forced to the ground and taken to detention centers. There are countless examples of how this administration’s ending people’s abilities to thrive or survive.

Then. Today’s vote to cut funds for Medicaid and SNAP.

When this bill was first announced, or when the details of it first became known toward the end of May, I was about to spend the day recording audio for my essay The Shelter Within that would be published in June. To add to my inability to unfocus, the day before I had told my spouse of nearly six years that he needed to move out. Not as another separation. Not to figure things out. For good. Sitting there with my headset on, the microphone inches from my face, I fought for the foam-covered walls of the studio to not cave in and suffocate me. I fought to take full breaths. I fought to stay focused on the summer of 2014, when my youngest daughter was an infant, and I had struggled to survive.

Early summer of 2014 with Coraline.

Ten pages into the 12,000 word essay, I finally started to pick up and find my groove. Then, I heard myself read this passage:

“Every memory from the first weeks of Coraline’s life contains mixed feelings of pride and sadness. In my mind, I had chosen to have a baby on my own so I must not ask for help unless our situation became positively dire—and the bar I’d set for my version of “dire” was extremely high, because otherwise I would be asking for help all the time. In the years since, I have grieved for what that belief did to me physically, but I also feel a sense of accomplishment: I can’t believe I did all of that; I can’t believe I had to do that.

I filled my day planner with numbers of potential resources and employers. I emailed people frantically to ask if they knew of any assistance or opportunity that might be available, whether it was a job or an organization that might have whatever I was looking for. Being able to work two jobs two days after I gave birth was, at the time, something I felt deeply grateful for and proud of, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. I’d spent a very precious amount of money on a lawyer to help me fight for adequate child support for Emilia. Medicaid and food stamps were the only forms of assistance I qualified for with Coraline.”

Eleven years later, even though I am now in a much different place, my body remembers this feeling of desperation. It remembers how it felt when the floor metaphorically fell out from under me and I saw nothing to catch me. Now, because of this bill, millions are going to fall. An estimated 51,000 a year will die. The suffering will be unimaginable. And our elected officials applauded. They celebrated.

They all have blood on their hands.

Until next time.

xo,

-step.