The House Next Door: a diary

All the house reports died in April, and I’m sorry about that.  I was worried for legal reasons about putting so much information out here. Things have finally improved, I’m glad to say, but it has taken a lot of money, a lot of patience and careful work. We are at the moment safe and the house isn’t about to fall down.  

Sadly, the insurance company has been useless, the contractors and developers have been absolutely silent (no one has still apologized), and most of my legal/governmental sources of protection proved useless. We ended up using our own money to put in a drain and replace our water heater and furnace.  I’m in the process of refinancing the house, which is something I should’ve done before, to renovate the house.  Maybe we’ll sell in a year when M graduates and hits the job market. 

Still, the amount of silence from so many quarters was startling, frustrating, and humbling. These silences were largely male and completely white, I need to mark. I came to understand why certain people come to believe that government is of no help to them, that their tax dollars are disappearing into vast silences, behind closed and indifferent doors. 

Some days I despaired. Some days I raged. Some nights I was sure I was having a heart attack. Some days I feared I was going insane. Some people live whole lives there. Some people virtually shut down in order to get through life. They certainly stop thinking anyone else can help. 

If I hadn’t had an inheritance, if I didn’t have my family who offered help if we needed it, if I didn’t have my work to distract me, if my work didn’t pay me enough money to keep my bills paid, if I didn’t have my husband to talk things out with, or the dog to walk… 

Or if I had had access to a gun or had had no mindfulness practices….

I spent an enormous amount of time self-medicating by playing Skyrim or binge-watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.  Both those things require a certain access to technology and culture.

Meanwhile, we read constantly about the raising of rates on epi-pens and basic prescription drugs, of the loss of basic health services, of the enormous salaries and bonuses given to CEOs who leave after doing bad jobs. The beneficiaries of all this money are largely white, rich, men, who work hard to keep attention away from themselves. Look at those people of color, they say, that’s where the real problem is. Look at those gay people trying to act like real people and be married, they say. Can you believe all those women using tax money to kill babies? Those lazy people wanting to be paid for their inactivity? 

I do feel the return to the days when Silence=Death. I’ve resisted it, because I hate any simple equation like that. Silence has often equaled rest, pleasure, relief, and thought. We can’t be silent, however, about the losses about to be inflicted upon us, our neighbors, and our communities. 

One gift is this: we’ll know more in the end. I know more about my own house now, about building codes, refinancing, about the need to go and protest virtually every development you have any question about. It is awful, mind-numbing work, but it has to be done; we have to dedicate ourselves to it, even make art out of it, if we can.