This is Not Pinterest

Found--where else?--Pinterest. Originally posted here.

Whenever I sit down to write after a blog absence, I want to be writing about something positive. But today, I am writing because I am really at the end of my rope. I realized that if I wait until something fantastic is happening, I might never get on here. And I realized that the blogs that I read, I generally read because they are helpful, and provide insight, or at least make me laugh. But I also realized that a lot of what we see online makes it appear that everyone’s lives are happy, shiny things and that’s obviously because that’s what people choose to show us—the Pinterest, ApartmentTherapy, Design*Sponge moments where everything is beautiful.

My life is not shiny and happy right now. And I’m not going to act like it is.

I don’t want to get into all the details, naturally, but we currently have no health insurance because I can no longer afford the health insurance my employer offers. I have been struggling for HOURS on the phone and sending documentation to Covered California to get “affordable” health insurance – since December. Yesterday I called Blue Shield to pay my premium for April and for the second time in as many months discovered that they have no record of my application and haven’t received any of the updated information I’ve been sending to Covered California.  

I have been trying to sort this out over the past few months, throughout flu season. Every time one of my kids sneezes I look at her with dread. What if, like last year, Viva got pneumonia? Or something worse? What if one of us develops something serious that needs serious medical care? Last year we dealt with cancer in my family and I thanked God every day for decent insurance. I pray that we stay healthy and that I can sort this insurance fiasco out in the next two weeks. If we don’t have insurance by April 1, I think we are pretty much screwed out of insurance until November. Completely bananas that I have a job—I work full-time—but we are so out here on the edge. I feel angry and somewhat ashamed and then angry again, because it’s not like I haven’t been jumping through every damn hoop they put in front of me.

There’s more to say – health insurance is only one of several issues that are eroding my stomach lining right now – but I will totally fall down the rabbit hole if I get started, and then where will we be?

At any rate:  I feel like we have been going through an extended rough patch which has now lasted years and so I am not posting pretty light-filled things. I am just hanging on, and I know I am not the only one out there.

 

Written:  March 19, 2015. Posted:  March 23, 2015. Updated Info:  coming soon (one hopes with a bit more zing).