1:00PM
I wonder how much stress all these secrets are causing to us. I wonder how much we withhold at the thought it will cause a problem, but really, the withholding is what causes the problem?
Last year, I lost my health insurance. I wasn’t able to afford it anyway, as I’ve had a rough go with finances over the years, which could be a topic for another entry. I delayed to open the letters because I was afraid to see what they would say and when I finally did, they said it was cancelled. I felt so ashamed. Here I was, at 34 years old, not able to pay for basic health insurance in the US and now possibly having to go on Medicaid. I grew up in a family where my dad worked for General Motors for 46 years as an engineer and didn’t spend a lot of money. So as a family, we’ve had enough money. Yet, I didn’t and I felt ashamed and still somewhat do until today.
I didn’t tell my parents that I lost the health insurance. Let me rephrase, I haven’t told my parents that I lost it. I think somehow I got put on the public plan, and I’m still somewhat ashamed to look at those letters—I guess I haven’t learned my lesson. I got kicked off the first one because I was late on payments—it was quite complex, in that I would normally have three months of grace period to pay, but because I was receiving subsidies from the federal government, the grace period switched to one month, and well, I was looking at the letters two months into it. Regardless, I haven’t told them yet.
I think every time I would get a letter in the mail, I would freeze. I’d see it on the table (as they often retrieve the mail) and know that they saw it, but scurry it away in some corner, without letting them see it. I didn’t want them to know how much their son had failed. I didn’t want them to see me messing up even more than they may have already thought. I still shudder when I think about telling them now.
And yet, maybe they will be OK with it. Maybe they’ll think nothing of it, or even be grateful that I got on the free program and don’t have to pay for it anymore. Maybe they’ll be angry, but still loving. I don’t know.
All I can really tell is how I’ve been feeling about it. I’ve felt suffocated. It seems like such a small thing and I almost feel embarrassed to say how large of an impact it has had on me, and yet it seems true. It has taken a lot of my energy to skirt the conversations, to pretend as if everything were OK with it, and that was before the world went into a health crisis.
I think we often think about the problems of opening up but I wonder if we overlook the problems of staying closed. By this, I mean with information, secrets, aspects of our lives. Sometimes just saying what we want to say can feel so freeing, even if it gets us into trouble. I think I remember reading a book called Opening Up by James Pennebaker in which he said that sometimes criminals feel better after confessing crimes, even if it will lead to them being in more trouble. Getting that monkey off the back, so they say, or something off one’s chest.
I wonder how much of the struggles I’ve had last year have come from being a 34-year-old living in the childhood home with my parents, having secrets about being an adult human and not wanting to share them with my parents. I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who is struggling with this, so I wanted to be words to it to maybe help you realize you’re not alone.
1:10PM
