There’s Always Hope, Even When It’s Hard to See

Today was a fantastically emotionally exhausting day. I accompanied a patient downtown to housing court. I’ll leave out the details, but she lives in NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) and is getting evicted due to not following the rules. She’s had several chances, and this is sort of the last straw. It’s possible she’ll be able to stay, but also possible she’ll be kicked out. And then she would quite literally be homeless. This is a patient who I feel some strange pull towards–there are those people, you know, who you meet and just feel somewhat drawn to. I always (nearly) feel empathy for people, but she I feel more than most. She’s had a hard life–lots of abuse, shit that is just not fair, and despite that she has worked, gotten schooling to do some things, but it just sort of hasn’t worked out. She keeps such a positive-seeming attitude, but is also (I think) pretty depressed. Just that she has quite good reasons to be so.

Anyhow, it felt like a death march to me. And that was just kind of sad. She told me some more about her life, which was sad. And the actual hearing wasn’t so bad–I think she has a shot at keeping the apartment (though I’m really unclear as to how all of these things work). So we were on the train heading back, after she’d been a bit tearful on and off the whole trip, and she says to me, “thank you so much for coming with me, I would have froze up if you hadn’t been there.” And something about it just made me want to burst into tears. This woman has had such a hard time. And lord knows she’s made her own dumb decisions, and I certainly don’t think that deserves any kind of free and clear pass, but I think her biggest fault is letting people walk all over her, because she feels so powerless (and has been) to do anything about it. And I just went with her. Not even representing her in any legal way or anything (obviously, as I am not a lawyer), and she was so appreciative of my coming. By making this simple trip, I made her feel special. It just kind of broke my heart. And reminded me what a difference I can make. That part is nice.

After the trip downtown, I went to a meeting for a project I’ll be volunteering for that I’m actually pretty psyched about. It’s a microfinance consulting company who is doing a research project on illegal Mexican migrants’ remittances and how they might be better spent, particularly on insurance (life, health, lost wages due to illness). So we had a fun little brainstorming meeting about the survey we’ll be using, and I really got to be quite a huge part of the question development, which is kind of cool. I’m a bit disappointed I won’t be able to go to the regular meeting more (since I have to actually “work”), but I’ll be able at least to do the surveys on weekends and be sort of in the loop, and they said they may be able to schedule some meetings at times I could actually come. It was so fun to again be working out phrasing of questions, and talking about research questions and how to turn them into questions to really ask people. I missed that. And I get to be sort of the health care/insurance expert. Which is kind of awesome, and I strangely feel like I can totally do that, especially after paying so much attention to the debate over the past year+. It’s just exciting to be able to put that into a paper (even if it’s just a small part of the background). More later. Sleep now. I am exhausted. Finally I have a weekend to myself–I’m so so so excited to just relax. Just wish it were on my rooftop in Brooklyn….just not yet. But soon!