Episode 2: Melissa Mays

Melissa Mays, Flint resident and public health advocate, speaks in depth about the efforts Flint residents made to bring attention to the water crisis and compel the State of Michigan to fix the problems it created in the city.  In our conversation, Melissa addresses the insult of paying for high-priced public water that has been tainted with heavy metals and other (undisclosed) contaminants. She also touches on the impact of the city’s sluggish recovery as well as Flint residents’ efforts to continue the fight for justice.

Transcript

Tainted Tap Podcast

Host by Dr. Katrinell M. Davis

Interview with Melissa Mays

Episode 2

Air Date: April 29, 2021

What prepared you for the fight for water equity justice in Flint?

Melissa Mays:   My Master's is in business. My background is in PR and marketing. That was my specialty. I managed touring bands, metal dance, by the way. I put on concerts. I was doing at the time PR and marketing for five different radio stations. That was my thing. I was not into politics. I voted [but] I didn't spend any extra time, like really focusing on it. I didn't really watch the news. We had our own life at the time; I had my three sons, my husband, I was raising my one-year-old niece at the time. And so, I had a lot going on and no idea [that] I'd ever get into any kind of actions because the media in movies portray activists like they're crazy. Now, I remember being just in love with the movie Erin Brockovich because I'm like, that's a regular person. That's awesome. But it didn't stick with me. I'm like this movie was great. Haha! You go! But then, years later, I’d be like, oh, well, remember when you watched Erin Brockovich, she was a regular person. You know, nobody took her seriously. She still got it done. Didn't even come back to me at all. I was just like, January 9th, 2015, I received the letter, this little tri-fold letter in the mail addressed to residents. At the time, like before 2014, when we heard they were switching us to the Flint River, I thought it was a joke because that river smelled terrible. And everybody knew that there were bodies and cars and junk and that is where everybody dumped their everything. And I think somebody had said that we were in the Guinness book of world records for having the most shopping carts in a body of water. I'm like, well, that's horrible... I'm not swimming in it. I'm not going anywhere touching that stuff. And also they're going to use it as our water source? But like, nobody will allow that. No, that was just a joke. We didn't realize how serious it was. And then, all of a sudden, they switched it. But then they said, Hey, we've got a really good one for you. Well, we know what we're doing, lie. We have enough people on staff that are experts, and we're gonna make sure that you're safe. 

                              So we, at that time, I'm like, okay, cool. You know, I mean, I pay my water bill, and I pay my taxes. I work hard, you know, it's going to work out. I pay my bill. I pay my gas bill, and I don't expect to have a fireball coming through to blow me up, you know? So I'm just like, okay, then that was the end of that. And then all of a sudden, you know, the hair started falling out, the rashes, but being a woman who was a busy woman, working, having a hundred billion kids and all these people and band practice in my house and stuff, like I had all these things going on, falling out and I started getting tired, and I started getting all swollen. And you know, I was like, it's gotta be stress. I should just sleep more and stress; that's not gonna happen. And I started getting rashes. I'm like, am I getting old? I'm like 36 at the time. I was like, this is aging. And then I had this mark on my cheekbone. I'm like, oh, if you put like lotion on it or whatever, it would just burn. I didn't realize at the time it was chemical burns going on. And I'm like, oh my God, it looks like I have leprosy. What is this? You know, I was like, oh, how do I cover this? Get makeup. Then I started noticing the other people who posted about it on Facebook. Anytime you saw anything with this colored water, they would just say, oh, those people have bad plumbing in their house. 

And, you're like, that's unfortunate. Like, oh, that's bad. And they're like just get some water softener. It's just harder. Water river water is harder water. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, you know, I came from having well water, so it's still way better, right? I thought, and so I'm like, okay, I guess I'll just get some expensive lotions. And then I started getting sick, and then, little things like my son fell off his bike, and his wrist shattered. Okay. So maybe the kid needs more milk? And just like, I must be mindful. I must be a failure of a parent, but I don't give my kids or anything. I make sure they drink plenty of water, but unfortunately, the most dangerous and deadly contaminants, including lead and other heavy metals bacteria, the disinfection byproducts don't have a color. 

                              They don't have a taste or smell in those cases. And so we had no idea that I was cooking at home and be trying to be a healthy mom, give him my kids water when they were playing. Instead of, you know, I probably should've given them Mountain Dew instead. And you know, but I had no idea. I thought I was trying. I was being a good mom doing the best I could…And the media always played it off. Like somebody who was just out of their minds, they were portrayed like these crazy black people who want free stuff. 

                              And I'm like, well, that's odd. That the guy's water's orange! But then they would have somebody from the state or the city say, wow, his water's just not reacting well to the change. And he's just going to have to change his interior plumbing. I'm like, are we gonna have to change our plumbing too? I was like, should we just budget for this? Because I can't afford that because I'm paying a couple hundred dollars a month for my water bill. I'm like, I don't understand. Because you know, they make these people like crazy black people out there, but I'm like, they're making sense. They're not crazy. 

                              So there's like these little pieces that kind of stuck with me, you know, I just, for whatever reason, women like to blame ourselves as you well know that, you know, it's like, okay, maybe I'm just looking too much into it. Maybe I'm just being nervous because I got all these kids, and oh, you know, I'm just an over-protective mother. And maybe I, you know, I, I'm not a scientist. What do I know? And that's exactly what it broke down to until January 9th. I got a letter in the mail that was not addressed to me but a resident. And it said that for the past nine months, um, the city has been in violation of the safe drinking water act because basically, we've been serving you up poison. We didn't have to tell you, but we did. And so when even though it's a carcinogen that causes cancer, total trihalomethanes, the state's drinking water, you'll probably be fine…

                              Then I started looking into it more and more. And I'm like, you are all the way lying. And you don't do that. Then I started going to these meetings. I went to a city council meeting, and I had this whole speech prepared. 

                              But then this lady went out before me, and she had cancer; she was going through treatment; she pulled up her pants and showed the rashes on her legs. I went off, and I told him, I was like, you know, I demand an epidemiological study. I demanded that they switched. I told them we were coming after all of them. I'm like, I sound like a crazy person. But then again, I realized, well, I got a white face. So guess what? You're gonna make me look like a crazy black person. And yeah, they definitely did, but instead of trying to make me look crazy, they made me look like a bored housewife who was poisoning my own discolored water. I just wanted attention, and I just wanted to make money off interviews. 

                              I'm like, wait; you get paid to do interviews? Like who's getting money? And they continue to say that she just wants to get her 15 minutes of fame. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get poisoned to go get fame? What are you talking about? Have you seen some of my photos on Google? If you Google me some of the worst photos, you're ever going to see. I'm like, I don't know. Who's getting famous off of this? Rich? I'm like, yeah, if I was rich, do you think I would be living in Flint? I'm going to be like all the other wealthy people and get on out of here. 

So it was funny because one of the best conversations I had was with Bob Babcock, who is a water expert that Erin Brockovich connected me with. He’s taught me everything I know about water science and chemistry and testing, and all these things. He's the one that warned us in February of 2015 to test for heavy metals. Cause at that time, we knew bacteria and cancer-causing byproducts were causing damage harm. We were worried about people dying. And this was before we knew about Legionnaires. We were just talking about e coli at that point. We knew people's pets were dying; we knew people were falling apart. And I had done some mapping, a map that I put up on our website because they were trying to just say it was one neighborhood. 

                              So then I said, okay, well, guess what? Guess what? We're going to use our tax return. And we're going to buy door hangers because I knew from my PR background, you can't put stuff in people's mailboxes. You can't put things on people's cars, but you can hang a door hanger that is not any kind of violation. So that's what we did. Then my husband, and again, I'm lucky because he's a graphic artist and a web designer. He actually came up with the Water you fighting for name cuz he's creative. I'm not. However, I came up with Flintgate for my Twitter handle because, you know, Watergate was taken. That’s the only creative thing I've done. But, then we're going door to door, and we're going to find out. We were videoing interviews with people. We also were having marches and protests.  I figured I had to organize these large music festivals. I did organize a March way different, you know, so I basically was, learning as I went. So many times, you get knocked out, and there was no roadmap for any of this. At this time, they tried to portray us as these polished people who knew exactly what we're doing now. So it has this incredible history of fighting back and, and we have these awesome advocates, like the leader of Flint rising, she's our director. And so I've learned so much from her and Claire McClinton and Bishop Jefferson and all of these amazing activists here in Flint because we have that history. 

                              We just don't sit down and take it. So I had to learn because I had no idea what I was doing. I can speak publicly because I've spoken on stage in front of hundreds of people at concerts. But I wanted to make sure that I didn't sound like an idiot. So I spent as much time reading as I could. And when trying to break these big words down, I would have like a scientific article open, and then I would have a dictionary open on the other tab because I'm like, oh, that one sounds bad. What in the world is this? So I just did my own research. Then I learned to break it down to where everybody could understand it because one of the things you'll see is that these quote-unquote experts like talking over everybody's head so they can feel like they're smart. 

                              So when you break that down, then you can get a good understanding of what's going on. And that's the thing I tell people. It's like, yeah, we're all poisoned here, but you're going to find the smartest people you ever met. We may have an average third-grade education level here in Flint, but they can run circles around you concerning water chemistry…

                              It's just hard. And especially if you're a woman and you were like, we beat ourselves up for our perceived failures. Like the times that we've had lawsuits tossed out of court. With the current settlement for $642 million, I have to focus on the fact that while it is not enough by far, because you've got to figure $642 million, take 20 million off. Cause it's going to the people whose family members died of Legionnaires, and then the other 20 million supposed to go towards water bills; we'll see what happens. But then you take off the attorney's fees, which for our attorneys that have been fighting with us since 2015, I don't mind, I mean they deserve it because they have done, we've had 15 appeals that we've won. We've gone to the state and federal Supreme courts multiple times, all the countless hearings, the expensive experts...

So we are making history, and we have to remember that we are making history, and yes, we're getting the residents of Flint a little bit of money. It's not enough, but we still have Veolia land, two engineering firms, and the federal government out there as defendants. So that's not finished yet. There'll be more if they ever get the sense about them to settle; but also, the state of Michigan has never paid this much money out in the losses. So we've made history in these aspects because what we wanted to do is one get money because I mean our residents, we deserve this. We deserve money. We deserve to be able to rebuild our lives the way we want to because, so far, any government recovery efforts, quote-unquote, have been piecemeal. They don't listen to what our demands are at Flint Rising. 

                              We went door to door to every single home and collected what the demands were and picked the top three that everybody, for the most part, had asked for. And it's real simple to replace every piece of plumbing in Flint with Flint's hands because we should not have unemployed plumbers during a water crisis.  Provide everybody, holistic health care, educational support, and mental health services for the rest of their life, no matter where they move, because we did get a Medicaid expansion for kids, but it ends when they turn 21, even though the poisoning does not end when they move. That's not fair for people who want to move or go to college or however, and so we should have it for the rest of our lives. And then also refund our money for all of our poisoned water bills. 

                              We've been paying since April 25, 2014. Since I'm a consumer, why am I paying for a broken product? And you're making me do this. Otherwise, you're going to harm me further by shutting off my water. And I can't wash my hands during a pandemic. And then also all the things that come into it, the tax liens, because there are over 60,000 people that lost their homes because the city had sent unpaid water bills over to the county and they placed a tax lien on the properties that people couldn't pay. So not that they didn't want to, it was just, they couldn't afford it. It's a lot of money. So even if their house was paid off, they could still lose it to tax auctions and foreclosure auctions. Then you're going to be homeless. So there's a lot of punishments that come into play, [especially] if you're too poor to pay for your poison, which is eight times the national average.

How did state action hurt Flint before and after the crisis? 

Melissa Mays:   Thanks to former governor Snyder, cutting revenue sharing. So, you know, if forced cities like Flint and, um, uh, Detroit to go under emergency management, I mean they set us up to fail basically financially and decided to take over. And in that law, the state runs everything. And that's why the state has, um, hit so heavy with all these lawsuits. Because at the end of the day, they decided governor Snyder had decided that he was going to take over and he was going to be the hero that saves Flint and Detroit. Well, his emergency manager law forced Detroit into bankruptcy. So that made history in a terrible way. But then also they're under receiver shifts. The state still gets to watch where all that goes. In the meantime, they privatized everything. So they're making sure that all the rich are getting all of the resources out of Detroit, and they're doing the same thing to flip. 

                              They're trying to gentrify-push everybody out. And we see it coming because we know what's happening to Detroit. They do these mass water shops with people who can't afford it because they want that land. They want to develop that land...Same thing with Flint. They see, even though the river is just horrific, they see that as an asset, and they're like, ah, we're going to get that blue gold. We're going to get that money. And they're going to put us on these privatized pipelines. So all of it has been, we're going to drain these people dry, and we're going to push the poor and minorities out of the area. So the wealthy investors can make us more money and buy more things from us, but not have to look at those people. 

                              So, all the things that they've done, like, when governor Snyder had said, here's my 75 point plan to help flip it was sure it wasn't about places, service lines, or water meters. It was about giving money to down the downtown development and putting up parking meters and oh, and giving $5 million to the Capitol theater, a theater that none of us can afford to go to in Flint, but also us to sit here and drink poison water, and poison fountains and be poisoned while we're watching the show... And we're like, yeah, we see you. So the thing is, that's the best thing about Flint residents is that they view us as disposable people. We don't view ourselves that way. I mean, we, and we don't, we can't, we can't let them win. 

                              So what's best is when these annoying Housewives, crazy black ladies, disposable people, terrible immigrant brown people are paying more taxes than they are, and all these people, however, they want to categorize us as the disposable, the poor, and the minorities. They don't want to hear the women. That doesn't mean anything. We are the thorns that are stuck in their sides. We are the ones forcing them to pay for what they did. Is it enough? No, but hopefully it sets a precedent that, Hey, maybe you might want to think twice before you poison poor people because don't ever underestimate the fact that we might think that we might not have the wherewithal to organize because we're not smart or that they've kept us divided by racial lines, um, income, geography, any of those things. Cause in Flint, we crossed all those lines and shattered them because there are people that I'd never met and would never have met if it wasn't for the water. 

                              I mean, we live five minutes apart, but our lives were totally different. And now we're inseparable, you know? The thing is, we're inseparable based on we're going to make you pay, we're going to make you fix this, or we're going to make you do what's right for Flint. Yes. It's taken forever. Yes. For tired. Yes. There was Trump. Yes. There's coronavirus. Yes. There are all these things that are, you know, speed bumps along the way. But there was a time that it finally dawned on us that this is not a make the world know and we'll all be okay. This is a long-term thing because it's not just the water. It's systemic racism and classism. Like you wouldn't believe all of this is economic and race-based. It's the people they feel are worth the least that they can do the worst too. 

                              They are going to speak up. They're not going to have the time, the energy, or the intelligence to do it, where we prove them wrong. And we continue to do that. And that's what we have to keep in mind is, and just not letting them ever even though they talk about us and it calls cockroaches, and they call us all these names. It's fun to see the boy at emails where they're just talking trash about us and complaining because, like, or what are you fighting for? Website has more information on the mirrors. I'm like, where are you? The health department. Maybe you should have fixed that. You know, all these complaints they have, and nobody wants to be like slim, but that's the thing. Guess what, if you continue on this path to privatize public assets and to ignore the people, to push them off, to make them think they're crazy to portray them as that they're out of our minds. 

Settlement on the table could be considered, at the least, 

partial compensation to Flint residents. What other resources 

might the city need to rebound from the water crisis?

Melissa Mays:   Mean, no, you're right. It is a band-aid. It's one piece because for most of us, one of the things that the Attorney General's office screamed at me on stage about, I asked them if they've asked, when they talk about what, justice for Flint recovery, I asked if they've ever actually even bothered to sit down with a Flint resident and ask them what justice and recovery meant to them. And, of course, they had not. So it means something different to each of us. But overall, what we want is to be normal again.  Or whatever normal is, meaning we would like the water that we pay for it to not hurt us. We would like to know that all new pipes are in there because no matter what they say, they dump whatever chemicals, and we know better. 

                              We know that the problem will not be fixed until all of the corroded tainted, contaminated infrastructure that their decisions and their water did damage. We know that as long as that's in the ground, in our homes, connected to our taps, our faucets, our water heaters, or dishwashers or washing machines, we're not going to be safe. And you could put God's perfect spring water through it. And the contaminated infrastructure will damage it. And so w we want to be able to just open our tap and not freak out because the filter cartridge is full or because we're out of bottled water, not feel like we have to make a life and death decision between paying our water bill and paying medication. We want to be treated with dignity. Like we deserve, we want a proper fist. They broke it. They should fix it. Like we teach our children, you break it, you buy it, you break it, you fix it. 

                              So we want our infrastructure fixed. We want healthcare. We want mental health care because they've damaged us on levels that people will never be able to see if caused moral injury by parents trusting the government and handing their kids water, thinking they were doing what's right for them. When in reality, they were leaving permanent damage on their kids. We want to be treated like actual parts of our own recovery. We want them to listen to us. So we also want the people who did this in jail; will that fix it? No, but what that will tell us is just because we're poor majority-minority, undereducated, whatever you want to label us as disposable folks, just because just how you see us, doesn't make it okay to poison us. It's actually against the law to poison Flint residents; stop proving to us that rich white people get away with anything because they're rich white people because in no way, shape or form, should governor Snyder be sitting out there when again, he took full control over our city, and he's going to take accolades for any successes that he likes to see things as a success, but yet he won't take responsibility for the ethics failures that led to people's deaths. 

                              And the fact that his charge is basically, it's a misdemeanor, and it's a thousand dollars fine as one penny per person, he poisoned, it's a, it's a parking ticket. And it is, it's like, you did this. Well, what about us? I, I'm happy to say, like, I'm seeing all these cities that are actually paying attention to their water testing now. And they're like talking about changing out the service lines and all that stuff. And that's great for those cities. Who've never been poisoned good for them. I'm glad because the last thing I want is for anybody to be like us. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 45 minutes down the road, that's where governor Snyder, former governor cider, lives. That's where the University of Michigan is. That's where a lot of wealthy white folks live. And a lot of wealthy folks in general. So university town, you know, I mean worth a lot of money. 

                              They found out that they had like 110 or a hundred led goes next. Basically, on the city side, led connection pipes. They yanked all of them out of the ground. Before one pipe was replaced in Flint, they didn't have a water crisis. They didn't have a lead crisis. They didn't have a corrosion crisis, but those were done. They found the money for that real, super quick. But yet we're still over here waiting after all these years for our service lines that we wanted for that; we're waiting on them to be replaced. And we're like, okay, so that's not, that's not racist. That's not classist? I mean, why did y'all get to Flint first? How did they find the money to do that?...

                              And our schools give us autism supports. We need, give us a special education, behavioral health we need for adults and children and seniors, everybody that was impacted fix what you broke. How much money and time this would have saved. Do you know what I mean? People would probably be doing far better off. Now, if they got the supports they needed in 2015, mean people that they just would have told the truth wouldn't be dead. I mean, that's the thing. And also, the answer to that is no. We don't know how many because they tried to say only 12 or 14 people died of Legionnaires. But the former special investigator, the prosecutor, Todd Flood, had found hundreds of death certificates of people that died during that same time that marked the cause of death as bacterial pneumonia because they were never tested for Legionnaires' because nobody was told to test them.  

Water in Flint is still expensive. Why is this the case?

Melissa Mays:   The state, through the emergency manager law and Governor Snyder's many, many, many terrible actions, have privatized all of our public assets and revenue streams. So our garbage trucks, you know, all of the things that we're bringing money into the city toward the only thing left to bring money into the city is the water. And even though there is a law that says you cannot run a city government on the water revenue, they still do…You've taken their homes and foreclosed them. And then because they can't afford to pay your poisoned water bills, but then you turn around and complain that there's not enough population here to pay the taxes, to support the city. Well, you did it. The state did it. Y'all allowed it to happen. 

                              And this is the thing. When you continue to cut resources, cut public state, do you mean most of the time? We're like, wow. You know, I started my gut broke into, and he's like, I don't even think I'm gonna call 9 1 1 because there are not even any cops. I mean, we've got four police officers in an unsafe city. They're trying to recruit fire department trainees for 10 to $12 an hour. I'm like, are you out of your mind? I mean, they've cut the public safety budget. They've cut the school budgets. So they're closing schools down and combining them to where there's even more overcrowding in our classrooms. They're not funding all of our things. And then they complain a number of people live here. Well, they can't go to school. They can't drive on our streets. 

                              We don't have great public transportation. We, let's see, don't have enough grocery stores, and we don't have enough supports for the stable, the home-bound, elderly. We don't have enough supports for the kids. We don't have afterschool activities for the kids. We don't have police. We don't have fire people; you've done this, and then you poisoned the water. Oh. And then you raise taxes. I'm like, I don't know how our house, our property value keeps going up every year. Apparently, it does. So then they, you know, raise our property taxes. And so it's like, you, you know what you're doing? You're taxing us for living in this city that we're doing everything we can to hold on to you. And then you're complaining, and not enough people are here paying, and then you try to turn us on what it would be like. 

                              Well, if your neighbor paid their water bill, I'm like, no, we all pay our water bill. You know how I know if we didn't pay our water bill, our water would be shut off. So we wouldn't be getting poisoned. So it was one thing it's like…bringing it, any kind of revenue. 

Advice for cities like Flint?

Melissa Mays:   Best thing I would do is take a walk or a drive around your city, but don't do the normal thing to where, you know, you're just driving from point a to point B actually just take a cruise, look through all the things that are happening. Just kind of take note of the things that you noticed that have changed things that maybe you have overlooked because we all have busy lives to go about your day, but then also look outside of your little bubble. And that's probably one of the things that I can tell people the most is that we're all busy. We have our own lives. The last thing I want anybody to do is get blindsided by this because you have this long to-do list every day. You're a busy mother. You're a busy father. You've got work; you've got all these things. 

                              Take a step back and look outside your bubble at what's happening around you. Because if you're in a post-industrial city, it's probably already happening, and people want to label gentrification, which it is. But what it is that the people that are in charge are taking away the assets of your community to make it a less pleasurable place to live, to push people. But what's going to happen is in what they're going to do when they're going to dice it up. They're going to dissect what's left of your city, and they're going to sell it off. They're going to privatize it up, and they're going to make money off of your loss. So even though that seems like this huge thing, find something that you see that strikes you like hits your heart, hit a chord in your heart or your gut. 

                              That's like, Hey, wait a second. I love that park. That's our park. What are they doing? Privatizing it, or what are they doing? Tear that down. And actually, just start there, start with something, find the things you love about your city. Cuz we can all complain about like all the stuff that we let you know in the towns, communities, cities that we live in, but find something that you love and then start looking for other people that have that same love. Because the worst thing is to do what we've had to do in Flint, which is to fight after the fact after it's already been done and damage is being done. If I would've known this, if I could have around the time, I would have started fighting for my city, starting with the art community, starting with the music cuz that's what I was into the music community and the defunding of the schools. 

                              I would have said, Hey, wait a second. You can't do this. Let me protect my city. This is my city. And also, keep that in mind. This is your city. It's your home, your neighbors. So don't just take for granted that the people that are in charge are going to do the right thing by you because maybe they will, maybe they won't. But also remember they worked for you, and you can have a say in making sure things get fixed properly before they turn out to be like us in Flint before, you know, you realize, oh my God, all of this has been going on for years around me. And I had no idea. So I wish I would've looked around sooner. If I wouldn't have laughed about the switch to the Flint River. If I would have taken it seriously, then like, Hey, wait a second. 

                              But then again, none of us know how things could possibly turn out. But if you can learn anything from us in Flint, things can turn out quite badly. Somebody doesn't want to treat the water properly. Somebody wants to change a law. Somebody doesn't want to make a road safer. Things like that. Find something that you love in your community and invest your time in it and fight for it. Even if it's on a small scale, every little thing helps every little person, every little thing that people can fight back on and protect can help call, maybe stop or lessen this overwhelming capitalism, privatization, tsunami that ends up harming people. And then it just becomes more grounded in your community. Always remember that it's worth fighting for. There are people, things, communities, and sides to your city that are worth fighting for, and that you are worth fighting for, and you deserve better…

                              So there's a lot of advice, but just fight for what you love, find something in your community that you love, find something your kids love, find something that means something to you and fight for it. And that's the thing, once you start protecting your hometown, maybe it'll make them back off. Maybe it'll make it more difficult for them to do it. You never know. But every little action matters. Every little stone that gets dropped in the water makes the ripples. So don't ever think you can’t do anything. You're not smart enough. Tough enough, big enough. Cause you can do something. You can annoy the crap out of him, if anything, and that's what I pride myself…

                              At times, people are going to tap out, or there's another fight that will pull people away. We found a lot of that with police brutality and racial justice right now. And I can't fault him for it, and then that's when I'll help them, and I'll support as best as I can, but some people have left. Some people have died, so it's the thing is like, you gotta be prepared to stand alone. If that's what ends up happening, you just got to keep pushing forward. And that's the thing about finding a thing that you love because no matter who comes and goes, and we've had people come and go. It's been good. It's been bad. It's been whatever; some people are just terrible. Some people are wonderful, but they're all human as well. So find something that you love that you're not that you don't want to give up on, even if you don't have anybody standing by.