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Day 20 of 107: Generational Trauma
I had lunch and a great, deep, wide-ranging conversation with a friend yesterday. He lives about a block away from us but we rarely see each other for a few reasons. He and R. don't quite get along because they both have strong opinions about a lot of things and default to challenging the strong opinions of others. There's a lot of "polite" butting heads.
He spent three years in Texas sorting out his family's situation and it's clear the experience took a toll on him. I didn't recognize how big a toll until yesterday, when he talked more about the specifics of the situation. His father was suffering from lymphoma, he watched his mother die of cancer, and had to organize interventions for his sister, whose untreated mental illness made it very difficult for the house to be in a good state for his father to receive home care.
It's an awful lot to deal with alone. Not only did he have to deal with all of that family tragedy, he had to deal with the COVID pandemic living in Texas. His father is obviously immuno-compromised, so it must have been enraging to see everyone around you not taking things seriously, refusing to mask, and filling the hospitals with people who got sick through their own negligence. It explains a lot about why he's such a hard-liner about social responsibility, and why seeing posts about folks in his friend group going to conventions makes him so angry.
He, and a lot of other people, don't get to opt out of contact when a pandemic rages around them. His father was in the hospital where contracting COVID is practically a death sentence -- if not from the infection itself, from one of the secondary infections that can ride behind it, or a complication from Long COVID that we still don't quite understand. So when someone decides to engage in risky behavior -- like traveling to a convention to hang out with hundreds of folks from all around the country -- he's thinking of the airport workers, the service workers, the friends, family, and roommates of those people who are automatically exposed to the consequences of that risky behavior. I imagine that every one of those is his father, narrowly avoiding the fate of his mother, who could die because "someone wants to get their dick wet".
It enabled me to see that his response isn't arrogance or an inability to see the perspective of someone else. It's a trauma response. He's gone through this scarring experience, saw some serious shit go down first-hand, and almost everyone around him isn't taking the situation seriously enough. He's a poor kid from Texas who made it in Silicon Valley, and he's seen how disconnected those with privilege can be even in the best of times. It doesn't matter what reason someone else has to engage in risky behavior. The fundamental problem is that most people just don't give a shit about others. And the pandemic is an enormous Exhibit A.
He's heading back to Texas for 12 weeks to help his sister, who is also dealing with (early) cancer and will need help managing her after-care along with her mental health. He's admitted to some PTSD symptoms, but he won't be able to talk to a therapist about it because his health insurance is based in CA and there's a weird barrier to access for "interstate" patients. Honestly, it makes me worry about him. He needs help processing the last three years, but he won't get to while he's going right back into the thick of things.
I'd like to devote some time this week and next trying to find local resources for him. He's fairly thorough, so I doubt I'll be able to find a therapist in El Paso who'll work with him, but at the very least I can find some kind of support group for caretakers of cancer patients. Even if it's not quite as helpful as a professional therapist, it can at least help him feel a bit less alone.
Applied for two other positions yesterday. One, for UC Santa Cruz, is a hybrid position that would see me heading down there once or twice a week I suppose. It's a bit of a stretch, but I think I can handle it. The drive would be gorgeous, anyway. :)
The application had this very annoying process where in addition to uploading my resume and cover letter I had to manually input my work history. It turns out that it's a kludgy system designed for multiple people to screen it. That makes sense for an under-funded university, and it honestly helped ease the annoyance.
Three weeks of being laid off tomorrow. I'm averaging about four applications a week, which isn't bad. But I ought to step it up.
He spent three years in Texas sorting out his family's situation and it's clear the experience took a toll on him. I didn't recognize how big a toll until yesterday, when he talked more about the specifics of the situation. His father was suffering from lymphoma, he watched his mother die of cancer, and had to organize interventions for his sister, whose untreated mental illness made it very difficult for the house to be in a good state for his father to receive home care.
It's an awful lot to deal with alone. Not only did he have to deal with all of that family tragedy, he had to deal with the COVID pandemic living in Texas. His father is obviously immuno-compromised, so it must have been enraging to see everyone around you not taking things seriously, refusing to mask, and filling the hospitals with people who got sick through their own negligence. It explains a lot about why he's such a hard-liner about social responsibility, and why seeing posts about folks in his friend group going to conventions makes him so angry.
He, and a lot of other people, don't get to opt out of contact when a pandemic rages around them. His father was in the hospital where contracting COVID is practically a death sentence -- if not from the infection itself, from one of the secondary infections that can ride behind it, or a complication from Long COVID that we still don't quite understand. So when someone decides to engage in risky behavior -- like traveling to a convention to hang out with hundreds of folks from all around the country -- he's thinking of the airport workers, the service workers, the friends, family, and roommates of those people who are automatically exposed to the consequences of that risky behavior. I imagine that every one of those is his father, narrowly avoiding the fate of his mother, who could die because "someone wants to get their dick wet".
It enabled me to see that his response isn't arrogance or an inability to see the perspective of someone else. It's a trauma response. He's gone through this scarring experience, saw some serious shit go down first-hand, and almost everyone around him isn't taking the situation seriously enough. He's a poor kid from Texas who made it in Silicon Valley, and he's seen how disconnected those with privilege can be even in the best of times. It doesn't matter what reason someone else has to engage in risky behavior. The fundamental problem is that most people just don't give a shit about others. And the pandemic is an enormous Exhibit A.
He's heading back to Texas for 12 weeks to help his sister, who is also dealing with (early) cancer and will need help managing her after-care along with her mental health. He's admitted to some PTSD symptoms, but he won't be able to talk to a therapist about it because his health insurance is based in CA and there's a weird barrier to access for "interstate" patients. Honestly, it makes me worry about him. He needs help processing the last three years, but he won't get to while he's going right back into the thick of things.
I'd like to devote some time this week and next trying to find local resources for him. He's fairly thorough, so I doubt I'll be able to find a therapist in El Paso who'll work with him, but at the very least I can find some kind of support group for caretakers of cancer patients. Even if it's not quite as helpful as a professional therapist, it can at least help him feel a bit less alone.
Applied for two other positions yesterday. One, for UC Santa Cruz, is a hybrid position that would see me heading down there once or twice a week I suppose. It's a bit of a stretch, but I think I can handle it. The drive would be gorgeous, anyway. :)
The application had this very annoying process where in addition to uploading my resume and cover letter I had to manually input my work history. It turns out that it's a kludgy system designed for multiple people to screen it. That makes sense for an under-funded university, and it honestly helped ease the annoyance.
Three weeks of being laid off tomorrow. I'm averaging about four applications a week, which isn't bad. But I ought to step it up.