I needed to write this

My mom just laid some shit on me that absolutely made me hate the world. I said something about the fact that if someone had been there to take care of Danny regularly, this wouldn't have happened. She sounded sadder than I'd ever heard her when she said: "I always used to dream that I could win the lottery so I could hire someone to just care for Danny instead of these halfway homes and government people that were too busy to be able help him the way he needed".   


He was too normal for assisted living besides the kind populated with drug addicts and run by people just collecting money and not in any way trained or interested in helping the people that live there. He used to get his stuff stolen constantly, there were times where he would run away and just live on the street because he was happier there.  He moved up north because the programs were a little better, and in theory, my father would  "straighten his ass out".  Either way, I saw the pictures of him the last few years, and I see the ones of him when I lived there, and I see his rotten teeth and that he's barely groomed in his recent photos and I just think "all he needed was someone to remind him to do common sense shit".


... and what my mother said reverberated in a way that made me so sad and angry at everything:


 "We both had to work full time jobs, especially after the divorce, and we could still barely afford to support you guys"  


She's right.  I had to work and support myself too, and didn't have the money to hire private care either, it was just a fact of life... and Massachusetts and the rejection from my father made me suicidally depressed, so despite trying to be his caretaker for a year, I left him too. Because we were too poor to hire someone, and he was just normal enough that he fell through the cracks for other sorts of aid. My family on both sides worked for years to help him with whatever programs there were available, but there just wasn't help available for someone who was in his position and with his particularly odd disability. I know Danny worked against it sometimes, but goddamn it, wouldn't you if that was your life? Halfway homes or homeless shelters. My dad kicked him out or he left because he couldn't take it multiple times.




 The system failed him in the worst way possible. We say we love life so much as a country, but there is so little help for the mentally ill or challenged, and funding is being cut so rapidly that people like my baby brother fall through the cracks all the time. So when you guys get butthurt when I don't revere America as some infallible place that can do no wrong, forgive me for not having faith that our government will help those that need it to the extent they need. That measly 500 hundred or so dollars he got for the government paid for him to live and occasionally be sheltered. What kind of fucking life is that? We can bail out corporations that destroy us, we can fight wars we have no business being in that we can't afford to even pay our soldiers for, but we can't educate our kids, feed our homeless, and help our mentally ill?