I live in Appalachia. Our people have dogs. Because they help keep us safe. Because we are afraid. For many of us, dogs are all we have.

It’s difficult for people who live in parts of the country where things at least sometimes work. Can you imagine a place where nothing works. Nothing. Every moment of every day – addiction. We overdose. It isn’t worth being here – alive. We commonly give up because we have zero to give back. What is wrong with us. What is wrong with Appalachia.

Do not talk to me about hope or god or faith or education or poverty or hunger or education or jobs or how are we going to live to the end of the day and then get up to confront the enormous abyss that surviving is. Again and again. Do people really think that those who overdose and die on the sidewalks aren’t killing themselves.

You can develop drugs that block the affects of let us say – heroin. But we do not invent the next great fix that can fix a place as twisted in agony as Appalachia. Now, another disease. Dis. Ease.

We hole up in our hollows and homes just like we always have. We don’t go anywhere because we never go anywhere. We gather herbs from the woods to sell. Even that is gone to shreds. I worked in an animal hospital. It will disabuse you of any notion that humanity is something we share. That is a fantasy. The number of dogs we were confronted with that had been shot corresponded to what losing our connections was about. They just wanted to be loved as they died.

The eyes.