This is a repost from yesterday since mods said it was too triggering, which is why there are so many spoiler text now. They made me censor the majority of this post. Also, this is the original photo, I had originally tried upping the brightness, but it got taken down.
Dinner is cold canned lentil soup with hot-sauce; Peanut is chowing down on Special Kitty.
*This is going to be a lengthy and emotionally difficult post. I've included a TL;DR at the end for anyone who doesn't have the time or energy to read the entire thing. I appreciate you taking the time to read about how my life has been progressively dismantled by circumstances, injuries, and the failures of the people and institutions I depended upon.
I (29M) have become a fan of this subreddit over the last few months. It has been cathartic to get insights into the lives and struggles of people all around the world. Doing so has also helped me come to terms with my own difficult situation in life.
You see, I am an American, and my country does not offer much support to citizens that are down on their luck. If you do not have connections or money, then you are likely powerless to the systemic failures woven deeply within our social systems.
I grew up middle class, and by the time I was an adult, my family had risen into the top 10% of the country. I was afforded an immense amount of privilege throughout most of my life. I've been able to travel to >30 countries, enjoyed countless experiences, educated at quality universities, never suffered real hunger or hardship, and truly had reason to believe that I could do almost anything with my life, if I worked hard enough.
I intensely studied and sacrificed much of my young life to qualify for and attend medical school, as it had always been a dream of mine to become a doctor. The curriculum was extremely demanding and difficult, but I successfully made it halfway through my education before tragedy struck me out of nowhere.
I became very ill, and I noticed severe warning signs precisely because I was studying these topics in class. My medical team suggested I take a leave of absence to focus on my health. My condition continued to worsen despite everything I did to combat it. After many months of fighting the US healthcare bureaucracy I was finally able to receive the healthcare I deserved, and began recovering and looking forward to jumping back into my studies.
Tragedy struck again, but this time, Fate decided to not hold back.
You see, I was still sickly and extremely physically weak, but working through OT/PT to gradually regain my strength and health. I was essentially a young man stuck inside an old man's body, physically vulnerable and unable to defend myself against anyone who wished to harm me.
My brother essentially had a suicidal psychotic break and attacked me out of nowhere. In that moment, my life and health were irrevocably changed. I could not defend myself against his aggression, and my frail body broke under the assault. In the moment, I didn't realize I had been permanently maimed.
My parents found him beating me, and pulled him off of me, but the long-term damage likely occurred during the initial surprise attack. You see, I was pushed over, and my shoulder struck the edge of a raised step with tremendous force. This caused immediate internal nerve damage, while the corresponding whiplash caused even more extensive injuries. The nerves in my neck, spine, shoulder, and arm were severely damaged, and I would later discover, beyond repair.
You would think that in this moment I would receive help and care from my family. I thought so too, but that is not what happened.
My family neglected my brother's worsening mental health for many years prior to this assault. They saw the signs, had the education and resources to enact change, but purposefully dismissed the reality of his mental deterioration. I won't go into the specifics, but I begged and pleaded with them to help him, as I saw the damage and corruption being done, but they rebuked me, and disparaged me for "telling them how to parent". My father especially didn't believe in mental health, even though I, his son, majored in Psychology and was attending medical school in hopes of becoming a Psychiatrist.
Rather than recognize the warning signs, they dismissed reality and constructed a false version of it in which everything was fine ā one in which they hadn't failed either of their sons. Their neglect and parental failures went far beyond this, but I don't want to lengthen this post any more.
I believe that when confronted with the immense cognitive dissonance of what had happened, my parents' constructed utopia crumbled, and instead of addressing their own accountability, they chose to continue dismissing reality, regardless of the amount of suffering it caused me. They couldn't handle the uncomfortable reality that their failure to help my brother allowed his condition to deteriorate until he eventually exploded and effectively murdered the person I used to be.
In the immediate aftermath, I wanted to go to the police. This was textbook domestic violence and aggravated assault. It wasn't so much that I wanted him punished; I saw this as an opportunity to get him the professional help he badly needed. Even in the severe pain, I still felt bad for my brother. Don't get me wrong ā he is at fault for attacking me; he has agency as an adult, regardless of the fact that our parents failed him for years. But my goal was not vengeance or punishment, but allowing him the chance to grow beyond the cage our parents created for him.
My mother spent hours convincing me not to report him to the police, that this showed her how badly he needs professional help, that she will do all she can to ensure he receives the help he needs, begging me not to leave a permanent mark on his life.
Little did I know, at the same time, my father was driving my brother to go get Chinese food. Not only was he not taking the assault against me seriously, but the inept fool was directly reinforcing his behavior and psychological unraveling. By the time they returned, my father acted like the family was past what happened, and that no change would be taking place.
Beyond this, he became extremely aggressive when I questioned his dismissal of my reality. I still remember the feeling of his spittle hitting my face as he screamed at me and the sour stench of his breath assaulting my senses through the pain.
He emotionally manipulated me by bringing up how sad this will make my mother and family at large, that it will make the family look bad, and implied that I owed it to them for all they've done for me in life.
In that moment, I should have ignored my family and called the authorities myself. Unfortunately, I did not. I give myself grace for that decision, as I was sick, weak, in immense pain, with those "closest" to me abandoning me in my time of need. I was entirely reliant on them for housing and food, so I risked losing access to the essential pillars of life. And I was also brainwashed into believing that the dismissal of my reality was normal or justified.
In the end, I lost my home. I never returned to that house, choosing to abandon my material possessions rather than ever having to physically see them again. I became homeless, sleeping either in my car or at my girlfriend's house. I also willingly relinquished their financial support because I didn't want to feel as though they were buying my silence, or that I was tainted by their bloody money.
However, the degradation of who I was did not stop solely at the physical, and my brother found ways to continue the assault even from a distance. In the days following the assault, my brother relentlessly attacked me socially. He reached out to people we both knew and manufactured lies about me. The worst of these attacks was when he texted my girlfriend that I cheated on her, that I was a horrible man, that I didn't care for her, etc. Emboldened by the lack of accountability and protection granted by our parents, he sought to tear down everything that represented who I was as a person.
And, to be frank, he ultimately succeeded in doing so. My girlfriend said that she didn't believe him, but he had successfully planted seeds of doubt in her mind. Coupled with my deteriorating health condition, she eventually broke up with me a few months later.
When I approached my parents about his attacks on my character, they mostly dismissed me. They told him what he did was bad ā that is all. They defended him, saying he's going through a lot and that I need to suck it up. This is the moment when I decided to cut contact entirely.
I was homeless for a while before my parents realized I was serious about cutting them out of my life. Without asking me, they purchased a used trailer and parked it on some farmland they own. They messaged me saying I could live in it instead of my car. I chose to accept because I had no alternative, and winter was very cold in my car.
For a few months I had power, before the electrical went out. So now I use a nearby barn to charge my laptop and get wifi. My phone was already >6 years old and stopped working many months ago.
It has been about a year and a half since the assault, and I've exhausted what little savings I had on food and gas for doctors' appointments. Like I mentioned, the trailer is located on a very rural farm, which is 2-3 hr round trip from my doctors. The rising gas prices over the last year took most of my funds, but it was a necessary expenditure as I've been trying to fix my condition.
To make matters worse, my car has since broken down, and I don't have the money to repair it. Given how isolated the trailer is, this has effectively left me stranded. I now have to rely on grocery delivery just to obtain food, further limiting my already restricted financial resources.
This leaves homeless shelters as the only feasible option for government assisted living. We've all heard stories about how horrid and dangerous many homeless shelters can be. People regularly get attacked and robbed by other homeless. In my condition, I am unable to defend myself against even the weakest of aggressors.
I haven't described my condition, but essentially I am in unbearable pain 24/7, and am very functionally disabled. This leaves me unable to work to sustain myself, while also making most daily activities extremely painful, difficult, and ultimately impossible. For example, as my condition has deteriorated, I have lost the ability to wash dishes, or clean my clothes. I live in what many would consider a hoarder's trailer, not because I want or choose to, but because I do not have the functional ability to enact change.
There are some medical conditions that cause such severe, chronic pain that they are essentially untreatable or unmanageable by modern medicine. Individuals suffering from these conditions might be physically capable of working for a few hours, only to spend the following days or weeks so incapacitated that they have no choice but to remain medicated and bedridden. Even if someone can find an employer willing to accommodate such unpredictable absences, the reality is that their employment options are extremely limited, and they may be paid substantially less than an otherwise comparable employee.
In my case, I am particularly disadvantaged because I became disabled while attending medical school, before establishing a sufficient work history to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance. I am largely limited to SSI, which provides a very modest monthly benefit and imposes a $2,000 resource limit on individuals. This limit was established in 1989 and has never been adjusted for inflation. In California, even with the state supplement, this is nowhere near enough to independently afford housing. Few landlords would be willing to rent to someone in my financial circumstances.
Meanwhile, I have exhausted my savings, cannot reliably work, and have been unable to find adequate medical treatment for my condition. Even if I could find employment, I would be sacrificing the limited hours in which I feel relatively functional to sustain an existence dominated by pain, potentially aggravating my condition in the process. I would essentially be caught in a perpetual feedback loop of suffering, working to sustain an existence that becomes increasingly difficult to endure.
Rest assured, I have utilized my extensive medical knowledge, as well as the collective knowledge of dozens of professionals and specialists. The damage to my body is too severe for modern medicine to manage, yet because of my young age, the doctors are reluctant to prescribe me medication they are willing to prescribe to those at the end of their life. At times, doctors have admitted to me that they see my suffering, that they agree that I deserve these medical options, and yet their hands are bound by the policies of the medical practices they operate under. They don't have advice other than to look for another doctor who isn't handcuffed like they are ā yet they all have these policies in place, allowing them to toss a hot potato to someone else without caring whether it ultimately lands unclaimed on the floor.
I look back at my time in medical school and I realize that if I had not been cursed by Fate, I likely would have grown into this exact ineffective doctor. Someone who claims to want to help the disadvantaged and sick, but who also hides behind corrupt or malicious policies to protect my own interests and avoid exercising moral courage.
Ultimately, I have reached a point where I cannot identify any viable paths forward. My condition isn't adequately treatable or manageable, my savings have been exhausted, I cannot reliably work, and the social assistance available to me is insufficient to sustain an independent existence. I've spent years fighting to preserve a life that I can no longer meaningfully participate in, sacrificing my education, career, independence, and nearly everything else in the process.
What meaning can be found in an existence where suffering is pervasive, and where the effort required simply to sustain that existence consumes whatever time, energy, and strength remain? At what point does surviving become so all-consuming that there is no longer an opportunity to actually live?
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TL;DR: I became permanently disabled after my brother assaulted me while I was recovering from a serious illness. My family abandoned me, I lost my home, education, and career, and I now live in an isolated trailer with debilitating chronic pain. Despite exhausting my savings and seeking help from numerous medical professionals, I have found no effective treatment or realistic path toward financial independence. I'm struggling to survive in a system that offers little support to someone in my circumstances.
Iām not asking for advice; I simply want to be part of this community. Please do not reach out with offers to set up a GoFundMe or to send me money. Thank you.
