And that's just hourly. I make much less because I don't work full time. I got signed up for my healthcare but I can't afford to pay the monthly premium and now I'm in debt to another corporation because we've got this fucked up version of what the poverty line is. I was forced out of the Bay Area, my home, because I couldn't afford to live there anymore. Someone I love dearly is regularly on the verge of suicide because a combination of student loans and an abused ex have destroyed any chance she had of getting a degree, which means she's stuck in dead end customer service jobs for the rest of her life.
Not that I've got it much better with a degree. I'm stuck in a "career" path that is as thankless as it is boring. I don't make enough to save anything, nor to pay back my student loans, but you'd never know that by my student loan schedule. Which is in default now, of course. I don't get my tax returns and I wouldn't bother filing at all but I could go to jail if I don't. They didn't even tell me who was garnished my returns last year.
All I really want at this point is to get out of the country and start over somewhere I can not have to worry about all this shit. Of course, that would mean leaving my partner unless I could find a job to support both of us overseas what with her never being able to get a degree now.
And I'm lucky enough to have some support from my family, although not a lot, just things here and there. Although I'd likely be much worse off without it. And the reduction in food stamps is noticeable, not the recent one, but the last one. They hardly last half the month now.
The rise in suicides is almost certainly driven by economic despair. And there's no relief in sight. None at all. Instead I'm a bad person if I don't vote for the party that's merely slowing the downward slide, or even speak ill of them because it might hurt them in the elections.
All of which completely leaves aside the oncoming environmental cotastrafuck that I'll live just long enough to really see the worst of.
But fuck me if I talk about revolution. That's unrealistic and the common person just can't relate to that. Fuck me if I speak out about this shit. Fuck me if I can hardly make it through the damn day sometimes without going to the store and getting blackout drunk because I just can't fucking deal anymore. Fuck me for being stuck in the middle of nowhere with hardly enough gas to make it to the post office to pick up my mail half the time.
But most of all, fuck me because there isn't shit I can do. I've been shown and told that again and again. I tried, I really did. Now I've got a bench warrant in New York and I had a gun held to my head in Oakland because of my political participation. But fuck me if I make that claim because it's conspiracy theory even though we know the feds had some unknown number of infiltrators in the occupy movement. But we're only allowed to talk about that when claiming terrorism is a threat. Never when we talk about mass surveillance. But it's okay because the least offensive part of mass surveillance is going to be slightly modified. Nevermind the collection of every email for the last twenty or so years. Because semantics. Yeah, it's not technically collection because they just collect it. But fuck me if I think they almost certainly have read my email.
And fuck me most of all because I actually had hope. Now I've got next to nothing. And I haven't even got the worst of it.
And fuck me one final time because this rant won't do anything except make me more angry.