Playground of Love

Coachella | Feel Good Inc., originally uploaded by SisterSafetyPin.

This has been a summer of consistent challenges for me.

For the most part, I'd like to say I've been winning. But everyone has a moment of critical mass. The moment when you stop, truly look at your situation and feel overwhelmed.

The moment you get once you look around yourself, and you just have to ask whether you're truly accomplishing anything... Truly doing your best, surviving...

And if your like me, being forced to ask for help feels a lot like failure.

So today when I realized that I needed to ask for help, and had no immediate means to do so.. Meaning that I had to ask random neighbors to use their phone... Well...

Let's just say after the phone call there was a very cinematic break down involving me closing my front door, sliding down it and crying in frustration.

It was frustrating. But once it was over I realized quite a bit. After all, how fortunate am I to be able to call for help and immediately receive it?

Also, I realized that for all the talk of banking reform... It's still completely archaic. It's very easy to understand how quickly a person's life can be changed due to situations beyond their control. A person can go from a steady job, paying bills on time and having a nice nest egg in their savings account... To... Suddenly being without a job, bills automatically coming out of an empty account, and your bank calling to let you know that no matter how loyal you'd been in the past... Your single month of misfortune would soon be haunting you for the next 7 years.

Just... Crazy.

I read an article not to long ago that stated business that were hiring were not looking at the unemployed. Operating under the 'blame the victim' mentality. Saying that, the unemployed were that way for a reason. So they dedicate their time to stealing employed workers. While the unemployed fall deeper into debt.

How sad.

So I was thinking... I want to be self sufficient. Yes, I can accept that asking for help isn't a sin. However, I also accept that Money, while not the root of all evil... Is the means in which lives are built and destroyed.

Navigating life is such a curiously hard thing at times. I'll be 23 soon. I'm getting older, and yet my level of understanding of the world at large is ever changing. I wonder if I'll ever get it.