Piercings

9 days ago I got two symmetrical lip piercings - a "snake bite" to the piercing-enthusiast. I've wanted to get them done for awhile and once I get it into my head, it must happen.

Before I got them done, my boyfriend and I had a couple discussions on why I wanted them. His only foray into body modification involved his left ear lobe and a piercing gun so he didn't (doesn't) understand.

It caused me to examine my motivations. *I* understood why I wanted them but verbalizing them to someone else required me to put things into words, to put nascent ideas into fully developed thought form. Why do I have the piercings I do? Why did I want two more? Moreover, it caused me to try to understand where he was coming from - why doesn't everyone have piercings?

I have lived my life being the odd one, the one who didn't fit in, the one on the outside looking in and at some point there was a paradigm shift and it didn't feel like I was the one on the outside looking in, my frame of reference became the "inside" and everyone else was alien. I allowed myself the luxury of feeling normal. So to question why I would do something as innocuous as put stainless steel in my bottom lip would be, I imagine, like your "average" person asking themselves why they would wear tennis shoes. Why not, right?

I can't speak for anyone else who has piercings, I don't know why they get them and I've never bothered to find out. Their flesh, their business. But I do know why I have them, why I get them.

I was 15 when I went on a class trip to the IU to check out their campus. Walking around I spotted a guy and I can't tell you anything about him except that he had the most gorgeous ears. More specifically, he had industrials. (And for the uninitiated, this refers to two cartilage piercings in the upper ear, through which a bar is frequently worn) I fell in love. With the piercing, not with him. I wanted them. Beauty - and that is as undefinable for me as I imagine it would be for anyone. Why do you find beauty where you do? Maybe because my self-identity was created more by my own endeavors than by the ideas of my peers and like a ship afloat, I landed on a foreign shore. They were exquisite and I knew I had to have them. Once I get something into my head, it must happen. So it did. Three years later, but it did happen. And I felt like I had found a little piece of myself. Or rather, that a little piece of myself on the inside was now on the outside. The thought of what anyone else would think never occurred to me. They were beautiful. Why would I not?

Over the following years I got a few more piercings, each carefully selected, mulled over, and an act of expression of my concept of beauty. 9 days ago I got two more. These were different. I believe that these changed something.

Before I had any facial piercings, before the lip and before the nose, I could play dress up, wear the cloths, put on make-up, look like everyone else and even the ladies at the purse department in Macy's would treat me like a normal customer. I could pass. Even after I got the nose ring, that's become common enough that it could be overlooked if I walked the walk and talked the talk. But there is something about the lip piercings...

I had a cashier that wouldn't make eye contact with me. The manager at Dominos that acted like I had insulted his mother when I asked about a pizza deal. The nervous smiles from other mothers at the library. I am not really taken aback by this - I understand it. What has really surprised me is the people who are still wonderful, the strangers who still smile and talk to me like I'm a person. The woman at the bank that was cheerful and helpful and chatted with me while she made my withdrawal. The waitress who treated me like I was one of her kids, cleaning up my spilled water and telling me I "did good" when I ate all my food.

It is a lovely thing to know that there are people who will be wonderful and warm toward me, not because they assume that I am like them, but regardless of the fact that they can see that I'm not.

Health and Liberty

I went without health insurance for 9 years. No dental visits, no physicals, no eye exams. When I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, the chances of me affording health insurance went from unlikely to impossible. I looked into getting medicaid, since I knew that I was going to need some medical care and there was no way I was going to be able to afford to pay out of pocket for it. Because of the condition I have, I am supposed to have my heart checked out every year to make sure that my valves aren't leaking and that my aorta isn't tearing open. Would be a good idea to keep an eye on that sort of thing.

I was told that because I was a full-time student I didn't qualify. I was told that if I could go to school full time, I could work full time - the assumption being that if I had a full time job, I would either have health insurance through my employer or I would be able to afford health insurance. Without a degree, the sort of work I could get would be an entry level, unskilled position at minimum wage. Try paying for high risk health insurance on that income. Those were my options - stay in school, finish my degree and become an asset to my country, or drop-out (student loans in tow) and take a minimum wage job and hope that an employer would allow me to work full time, assuming they even offered health insurance. I wasn't about to sacrifice my education. In high school, I was an honor student and graduated at 16. I was on the Dean's List, doing research in a lab on campus and had even had one of my experiments published in paper in a virology journal - would my best contribution to my country be to take a job at Taco Bell? I didn't think so. I stayed in school and I went without health insurance. I went without medical care. I didn't have my heart looked at. I chose food and shelter.

I had joked that the only way I would ever get health insurance would be if I got pregnant. One errant ovulation and that's exactly what happened. I applied for Medicaid. I was approved, but because of clerical errors on the part of government workers, I didn't get coverage until the day I had my son. I still have never been reimbursed for the money his father and I paid out of pocket for the medical care I needed while pregnant. I suppose that's another clerical error.

I finally had my heart looked at - turns out I do have leaky valves. I finally went to the dentist - I had fillings that had degraded years ago and had to have some painful work done.

Fast forward...

My son is going to be 18 months old soon. His father and I split up, I moved out, I met someone else and we're living together. Medicaid sent me some paperwork to fill out. I needed to update my information. They want my boyfriend's financial information, his pay stubs, a statement from his employer. They want to know how much money he makes because his income now counts as my household income. Their income guidelines will disqualify me and my son because of what my boyfriend earns. I will lose my health insurance in 3 days. My son will, too.

If I were married and it was possible for me to get health insurance through my husband's employer, I would understand why his employment would affect my ability to get assistance. But I'm not married. And there is no way for me to get health insurance. Is my boyfriend responsible for my health insurance? I don't think so. Even if he was, there is no way he could afford the several hundred dollars a month it would cost. Is he responsible for my son's health insurance? I don't think anyone could justify saying he is. And yet, his finances disqualify my son.

So, this year, I won't be able to get my heart checked. Because my local Planned Parenthood has lost its funding, I won't have any help getting my annual check up. Lucky my boyfriend had a vasectomy, or I would be scrambling to try to afford birth control, too. I'd have to scrape by to afford birth control, but if I got pregnant again, I'd have health insurance. Nice.

If you have health insurance, you're lucky. It has nothing to do with skill and nothing to do with character. Quite simply, you got lucky.

Why is health care a luxury but public education a right? Why does my son have a right to be educated but not a right to go to the doctor? Are his future aptitude in math and English more important than his health?

Why do we have the right to call 911 when our house is on fire? We can deliberately set fire to our homes, call 911, and the tax payers will pay to put that fire out. But when I had to have an emergency appendectomy, that was all on me. $10,000 all on me. I was 18, unemployed and had to have emergency surgery. Guess I should have gone to work at Wal-Mart, given up on going to college, and worked to pay off that bill at the hospital.

Instead, you want to know what I did? I never paid. You know what else? I don't even care who got stuck with that bill. The hospital? Good. They can afford it. The taxpayers? Good. I'm going to school to be an asset to my country, I think I deserve a helping hand.

So next time my son gets an ear infection, and I can't afford to take him to the doctor, I guess I'll be lining up in the emergency room with the rest of the uninsured, the marginalized, the ugly underclass that seems to have been left out of this American ideal of the pursuit of happiness.

There is a distinction, and an important one, between the idea of "freedom to" and "freedom from." We have freedom to vote, to own a gun, to voice our opinions. But what of freedom from? Freedom from ignorance, disease and poverty? These are culture-killers. These can destroy a nation. These cripple free minds and silence open discourse. These are antithetical to democracy. Liberty is built on these twin principles, the freedom TO and the freedom FROM and to neglect one is to endanger liberty itself. Liberty cannot be a luxury of the rich. Health cannot be a commodity.

8 million American children do not have health insurance. 8 million. A study done by John Hopkin's researchers showed than a child in the hospital is 60% more likely to die if he or she does not have health insurance. We are the most powerful nation in the world and yet we fail to provide basic liberties and I argue that if we continue to fail to provide a most rudimentary liberty to our citizens, we will not be able to maintain that position. And we will not deserve to.