I Cannot Consider My Body As Something Of Value, Because I Don’t Have The Resources / Hannah, Artist & Maker

So I grew up in a very rural, rural, I’m very southern so when I talk and I say a rural, it’s going to sound southern. Very rural North Carolina, where my mom made my own clothes, and my grandparents, my both sides grew all the food. My dad had a race car shop off to the side and my mom canned things, made food, and all of that. And we didn’t really have, I don’t know… We went to the dentist, and we had our basic needs taken care of. And then some kind of shift happened when my mom and dad split up and my mom started going to school. I don’t know because I was a kid whether I had health insurance or not. But there were several instances growing up where I did not… It wasn’t a part of how I was raised really, was to get your body taken care of, to get the things that are wrong with it fixed, largely because I think my mother and my father both had parents that were country people like country, and they were probably in an era where maybe you had a country doctor and that doctor necessarily wouldn’t know how to fix, say, a genetic problem with your feet or other issues. And so things that maybe other people in other socioeconomic settings or in more urban settings would have access to or even awareness that would be something that should be done.

So when I was 15, I went crowd-surfing a concert and broke my collarbone into two pieces. And my mother took me to the doctor. They said to shim it up, but it never fully fused into its correct position. And I think at that time I didn’t have health insurance and it just fused in a way that now if I break it again, I could lose the entire left arm rotation. I could suffer any number of things, there’s a nerve bundle that comes down from the neck and goes over that bone, and that bone is so sharp that if I do any heavy lifting above my head, those nerve bundles will cross over that sharp bone and send lightning down my arm. And that happened when I was 15, I was also raised with well water, which made me have really weird, bad teeth. Those were never things that were something that I should even consider taking care of it. They’re cavity-prone because of the condition of the water.

So I then was homeless for a period of time. When I turned 18, my mom kicked me out. I was homeless. I had two jobs. I kind of worked my way through a whole slew of stuff and got myself to New York City. And I earned a bachelor’s degree in fine art. I had to continue to say, my art is the first thing that comes. And if I had a cavity, I felt blessed that I could go to Columbia Dental and have doctors treat my teeth. Before it would’ve been, I guess I lose my tooth. This is just what happens. And I lived below the poverty line for 10 years in New York City. I got in bike wrecks. I stitched myself up. I stitched friends up. I literally, put stitches in my hand because I can’t afford to go to the doctor. I get frequent UTIs. I would take cranberry juice and just drown myself in it and get to the point where I had to go to the emergency room to get an IV because I couldn’t afford to see a doctor for a UTI to get antibiotics.

So it was always like, I know what first aid is. I have a cauterizing agent at home. I know how to stop blood flow. I know how to do everything that’s necessary to not have to go see a medical professional because I could not do both my art and the things like healthy food, much less healthcare. And in this instance, and I really don’t want to make it sociopolitical, the shaking in my voice is a ridiculous, sociopolitical statement but it cannot matter for me to be able to do the things that I need to do. I cannot consider my body as something of value because I don’t have the resources. And that was my life for 30, 35 years. That’s crazy. That’s something bananas.

Now, I had really bad bunions that progressively got worse and worse and worse. That ended up having two left toes crossing over the other toes. I walked on the sides of my feet at 45-degree angles, and I do a physical job. I lift things. I carry things. I move things. I build things. I bike. I walk. I’m active. And I just grin and bear it. And it’s because my brain does not go to, go to a doctor. I have health insurance and it’s amazing. Every time I go to the dentist and they’re like, going to stick me in with some numbing agent. And I’m like, yeah, thank you. This is amazing. Oh my God, I can get my tooth fixed. This is great. This is amazing. Yes, please. More dental work. Wait, I can take a half day off of work, not have been penalized for it, pay 100 bucks and get my teeth fixed? That’s freaking awesome. And some people have had this their entire freaking lies. And it’s like, I have to learn and remember that you can go and get some antibiotics from a doctor. You don’t have to sit there and suffer.

The one thing that I can’t give up from being poor, and I know it doesn’t make sense that most people who are smokers are poor people, but it’s kind of proven that socioeconomic stuff, smokers typically are lower on the socioeconomic scale of things. I can’t let that go. And I was thinking about my feet and how much they hurt. I mean, I was just limping for Christsakes. And this is something that I’ve had since childhood. I didn’t wear high heels. It was just genetic. And I’m thinking, and I’m processing how much pain it is to actually walk around and how much of that I’m actually actively suppressing. And I’m like, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with me? And 90% of the things that I think when I go out and say it’s smoke, it’s stress. And a lot of that stress is suppressing shit that’s wrong in my body that I’ve just dealt with for 30 years. And so it’s like a revelation to have access and to know that I can go and for 125 bucks I got a six-hour surgery. Six hours, 125 bucks. Wow. And then all the post-op stuff and all of that, I mean, I can afford that. I can afford that out of my paycheck. It’s just shocking, I guess.

To know that there are people still who, I can’t believe my voice, who are living like this, where their bodies are secondary to existence because they are poor. And that sucks. And I hear people from other countries with full access, to government healthcare, and they’re like, yeah, but lines, and yeah, but this. And I’m like, yeah, but you don’t understand, you’re trained when you’re poor you can’t get sick. You can’t fix the things that cause you pain. You can’t do that because God forbid you to get stuck with some crazy bill that comes out of nowhere that’s going to make you not eat for six months. You know what I’m saying?

I remember once I went over the handlebars on my bicycle and I commuted by bike because I could not afford the fucking train. And I went over the handlebars and I had the chins flaps. And I was like, I guess I got to go to the emergency room. And so the ambulance comes and I’m like, how much is this going to be? I get in the fucking ambulance and I’m bleeding out. And I’m like, how much is this ambulance riding going to cost? And they were like, okay, well it’s this and this. And I was like, well, make sure you take me to Woodhull because they’re further away but I know for a fact that they’re going to work on payment plans for you.

I had to tell the fucking ambulance guy to not take me to a private hospital because I couldn’t afford it as I’m bleeding out with my chin flap open. And then I get in there and I’m asking the admitting person, they put me in the [inaudible 00:10:53] and they’re like, we need to X-ray you. And I’m like, how much is that? And they’re like, I don’t know. And I’m like, well, is it absolutely necessary? And they’re like, no. And I’m like, okay, I can’t afford an x-ray. Like if there’s a crack in my mandala or my chin bone, that thing, you know what I mean? What are you going to do about it? If it’s nothing, I don’t need to know. And when the doctor came in, he stitched me up and I said, by the way, I’m not coming back to get them out. Can I have the tool to take them out and tell me when? And he gave me one.

I would go for a UTI and I would tell the doctor, look, I don’t have health insurance. I can’t really afford this. Can you give me a couple extra prescriptions? I know what a UTI feels like. I will only take it for that, please. And I would beg people for just bare-bones basic care. And it sucks.

My journey is my journey. And I think a lot of who… Wow, the breakup in my voice on this is ridiculous. A lot of who I am, a lot of the vigilance and diligence. It’s like I try to be the best I can be in all situations, both empathetic, and extremely, but also hard on myself because I know that I’m the only person who’s responsible for me. And I think those experiences have really given me resilience. I guess that empowers me to a certain extent. But privilege is sometimes more difficult than other times. But my main thing is to always be extremely transparent because I think people hide their lack of privilege. I think it’s common that people want to obfuscate if they don’t have privilege, the fact that they don’t. And I don’t think that that is something that would be healthy for me. Because I don’t know how I’m perceived by other people and I’m empowered by the fact that I really don’t care. I don’t care how you see me. It doesn’t matter to me. If you like me for who I am, great. Maybe I like you for who you are. Maybe I don’t. These are all totally acceptable things.
And so being transparent about where I come from, I think allows a conversation to happen, allows others who maybe had different trials and tribulations to feel not as isolated. Awareness of the body I’m highly tuned, in because if I got a little sick or if I got a little whatever, I’m very aware of that and know how to kind of stave it off before it becomes something critical because I never had that safety net to actually get pneumonia or something. Not that you get pneumonia because you don’t take care of yourself, but more like I know how to be hyper-diligent about taking care of myself to ensure that I don’t have to be hospitalized.

But, now that I have health insurance, I’m like, I’m a little sick. It’s cool. I don’t have to be this hyper-diligent. But the fact that I’ve given myself stitches, I feel good that I don’t have to have that as my choice, my default selection of sewing my finger up. I can tell you another story of how I slashed my finger and super glued my wound open like this, and then had to take the super glue off. It had healed onto the nerve and then I had to superglue it. And now when I hit that finger, it’s right on a nerve. If I hit it just right, it’s like white lightning in my finger. It’s like, great. Poverty did that. And I don’t begrudge it. I don’t begrudge those experiences because I feel like, girl, you made it. You hit your finger and you get the white lightning and it’s “ow” – You’re not there anymore. It’s okay. You’re okay.