An Ode to West Virginia

The forgotten place

Where I am from,

Where my family lives,

Where I will never forget,

And you, an outsider, will never know.

You may experience the Appalachian Mountains I know,

You may come for university and live here four years,

You may know every word to Country Roads,

But that song isn’t about my home

And that university, in the most homogenized northern region of the state,

Will never be a representation of the real West Virginia.

No, no, no.

Do not claim to love West Virginia if you haven’t truly experienced it.

Being a real West Virginian is about always being defensive,

Always being defensive so you aren’t forgotten.

No West Virginia is not an area near Richmond, but its own state.

No West Virginia has no beaches, has no ~real~ cities, and gets no recognition for anything positive but hangs on to every strand of recognition received.

It is being the northern most southern state, and the southern most northern state all at once.

West Virginia is living less than an hour from the states capital and living in a major food desert at the same time.

West Virginia is accepting the practice of flattening our mountains, the only positive identifier we have, poisoning our waters, and the highest asthma, cancer, and addiction rates in our children in this country, all in the name of keeping a dying industry limping along.

But you cannot point this out to any real West Virginian.

Don’t you dare ever insult a miner or a miner’s daughter in coal country now, ya hear?

Coal is king, coal is coming back, and coal is the future,

But the execs and mine owners done gone and moved out,

Their gated mansions among a sea the sea of trailers sit empty,

Yes, all those promising a better tomorrow have moved away.

And us, those left in the rubble, never blame those hands that fed us.

Never place blame on those that ruined towns with the promise of riches to its peoples,

Who they themselves grew richer, while the locals grew nothing except complacent.

We watched few get rich, we watched those rich send their children away for school – to get a real education - instead of investing making local schools better.

To make local anything better.

No, to be a real West Virginian is to be proud.

Proud of the identity given to us by our one, sole industry.

Proud to be from a little piece of nowhere, where everyone knows your name.

And too proud to realize that this slice of life is slowly dying.

Pride in West Virginians is rapidly being replaced by a feeling of desperation.

Desperate for acknowledgement, for enough just to exist, and desperate for the past.

Being a West Virginian is also never admitting that you need help.

It is filling out hundreds of applications to minimum wage jobs at places like Subway because the industry that held you by the throat starting at age 15 has betrayed you and now you just need something/anything to feed your family.

 It is stealing copper wiring from your own cities water treatment system, from power companies, and from abandoned factories – risking electrocution and community health for a few hundred dollars.

It is being prescribed 3 hydrocodone pills a day at the age of 15 by a doctor for back pain

to make it through the day, to feel better, to escape this reality,

and developing an addiction you carry to your untimely grave.

But don’t you ever ask for help for that.

Don’t you ever place blame on doctors when the pills don’t work anymore and become too expensive,

When your friend says they have something cheaper and stronger, and you know heroin is bad but the pain you feel without your medicine is worse so you take it.

You don’t shoot it up, so you don’t need help.

You shoot up between your toes so no one sees, so you don’t need help.

If someone does see or ask, you don’t need help, it’s not like your addicted or anything.

This doesn’t control you.

Until it does.

And you realize that in only the past year alone you could have been to 20 funerals.

20 funerals of people in their twenties, and who your graduated high school with.

And we can’t pray this away.

How many of us will make it to our 10 year reunion?

Who will be here for it expect for those who cannot leave and go elsewhere.

Those who the heroin hasn’t killed yet.

What is a junkie except someone you loved before their addiction?

When do you consider someone a junkie?

I often hear those not from here talk about this epidemic like it is a disease,

And I believe it is partly a disease but mostly I believe it is a response.

A response to all that is being a West Virginian

To not being acknowledged

A response to watching few get rich, build gates around their mansions, and leaving nothing in their wake.

A response to not being able to leave yourself, and the need for escape,

A response to the new culture created by big pharma to take the place of coal,

And a response to having the same life expectancy of someone from an undeveloped nation.

 Why would we value our lives when no one else does?

Even in our most valued years in those mines, the loss of our human lives was considered an acceptable risk factor.

Being a West Virginian is wrestling with the struggle to stay.

Knowing that you love this state and everyone in it, but knowing that if you try and stimulate any sort of change you will be met with nothing but resistance.

Knowing that things must change in West Virginia,

They have to,

But change here cannot be achieved by any outsider.

Do not come here with an Ivy League degree and tell us how we are living wrong,

Do not tell us about how, whatever new thing will be the silver bullet for this state.

There is no silver bullet, and you are no savior.

To be West Virginian is to be waiting.

Waiting on the next industry to save our economy,

Waiting on business men turned politicians to deliver on their promises,

Waiting to bury another loved one because help didn’t come soon enough,

Waiting on the road to the only grocery store in the area to be rebuilt after a flood, and it taking over a year.

Waiting for someone who posts about West Virginia from North Carolina and beyond every time there is a WVU football game or a memory of their WVU graduation to do more than refuse to acknowledge that they came here for barely any time to benefit off of our cheap college tuition.

Waiting for a slot in the few, all faith based, rehab centers in the state to open up before you lose another friend.

It’s waiting for better jobs in the state to open up so that the struggle to stay is not so hard.

It is waiting for your mom to wake up and make biscuits and gravy.

It’s waiting for all those out-of-state people from college to ever truly acknowledge West Virginia for more than just the number one party school.

It’s waiting on better days,

While remembering when the days were good.

But really, being a West Virginian is as simple as this.

It is like screaming at the top of your lungs WE EXIST, WE ARE HERE, WE ARE DESPERATE, AND WE NEED YOUR HELP

And no one hearing you.

Because they already know. They lived here for 4 years in college remember?

Or they read about us in articles circulated on Facebook about this opioid crisis, about the dying coal industry, about the states natural beauty.

They visited the Greenbrier or the New River Gorge once and milked their pictures for all the likes they could.

Or they know West Virginians are the "salt of the Earth" and the most friendly individuals, right?

Yes, so desperate for your acknowledgement and your friendship,

and yes very good at putting on our masks and making that "down home" food for you to post on your Instagram.

And ya’ll come back round now,

Ya hear?