One of the things I was so excited for with Medicare for All, besides almost everything about it, was the mental health component. I've spent a lot of my life in the outskirts, the edges, and with other outsides and as a result a lot of my friends aren't here anymore. 1/

Heroin, suicide, and just a bad string of fucking luck. I'll occasionally look someone up from the old days when I was living a lot harder than I am now and I'll see obituaries that don't state a cause of death or a memorial page. 2/

And I just fucking know. This one lost a battle with schizophrenia and a bad breakup. This one couldn't take it anymore and killed herself. This one was taking the slow road to drinking themselves to death until she ran her car off the fucking road.
3/

The teenage runaways, the tragic women, the overburdened men, and everyone in between. The sweetest people I knew when they took their fucking meds, and some of the smartest. Some died of exposure because they were living out in an abandoned factory on the edge of town. 4/

And the most kindness, the most concern they've probably ever gotten was on the day they fucking died. A lot of that shit could've been me if the fire in me was a little bit different. And our society just threw these people away.
5/

Dental is great. Heart checkups, everything else. But I'd love to know that the people who I loved were still somewhere out there & not put in the fucking ground or scatted around a lake or harbor. Kept on a shelf because their parents have no clue where to put them. 6/6.