Survivor's guilt is when one feels guilty for making it through a traumatic event or period while others aren't so lucky. Things that can cause it include surviving a round of layoffs, surviving while others die and so on.
I was laid off twice in a year due to tough economic conditions before coming out here. Despite that, I still get survivor's guilt while observing the one-state recession bleed into a one-state depression back in my home state of Michigan.
Back on Oct. 7, I found out about the most ridiculous event in a long line of them since things went from bad in 2003-04 to worse. For two years now, it's like a certain something hits the fan on some level there on a daily basis.
The city of Detroit got money for a federal program providing temporary assistance to people who are homeless or in danger of becoming homeless. Detroit handed out 25,000 applications and was going to make 5,000 more available on Oct. 6. What it got that day was a total meltdown in downtown Detroit. Estimates ranging from 50,000 to 65,000 people swarmed Cobo Hall downtown.
Fights broke out, people literally trampled each other, with even some reports of children and baby strollers being knocked over. Some people printed out fake photocopies and were scalping applications at $20 a pop.
Seeing those scenes made me think: Wait a minute, this is 2009. Not 1932. This kind of thing shouldn't happen.
As it stands, the city's unemployment rate is over 30 percent. Between August 2008 and August 2009, the city's workforce lost a staggering 160,900 jobs.
Mind you, this is in a city of roughly 900,000. That was in only 12 months.
Seeing that hurts, coming from that region. Seeing reports of things getting "better" from various news sources makes me want to scream.
I pray some sort of "better" eventually finds its way there. The survivor's guilt, and seeing and feeling for what's happening to others, are getting old really fast.
Comments
Kris wrote on Oct 23, 2009 9:14 AM:
All that being said, when my husband retired from the Air Force, moving to Michigan was not even on our radar.
While I love the people of Michigan and it pains me to see them, including some members of my husband's family, suffer, there comes a point where you have to say "we can do better than this". There comes a point where you have to take charge and responsibility for your own destiny and make a decision to take back your state from failed govt and business policies.
It wasn't just the car companies that ran the economy to the ground. It was also the unions(my fil is retired from GM) and the govt that didn't think about what they would create in the future and now are reaping what they spent years sowing.
It is only now that the state is trying to diversify their economy in a meaningful way, and that may be a day late and a dollar short. They need to take a lesson from North Dakota who had to learn the hard way that diversifying your economy, living within your means and planning for the future is the only way to flourish.
The people of Michigan are wonderful, smart and hard working. Michigan can be a great state again, but it is going to take the residents to rise up and make some hard decisions that will pay off in the future.
From the wife of an escaped Michigander, and a person who is a Californian by birth(another spectacular failure) but a North Dakotan by choice, welcome to ND :) "