✎ October 24th, 2025
I was watching my three daughters.
Aurora, one.
Phoebe, five.
Juliet, seven.
We were about to leave when the knock came.
A subcontractor from Spire stood there.
He didn’t ask.
He told me: I need to come in your house and change out a meter today.
I said, no, that doesn’t work for us.
He said, then I’ll have to shut off your gas.
Just like that.
Black and white.
No room for anything human in between.
I explained—widowed, raising three daughters on my own.
Trying to hold a house together with every ounce of breath I have left.
I offered to schedule. To work with him. To do this the right way.
He shrugged. Said his job was to change the meter or shut it off.
No in-between. Nothing else.
So I asked him if he had kids.
He said yes.
So you see how messed up this is, don’t you?
He nodded.
Said he was just trying to provide for his family too.
Eventually he backed off, left me a flyer.
I called the number.
Appointment scheduled—three weeks away.
But the fire didn’t leave my chest.
The adrenaline was still boiling.
Because here’s the truth:
I’ve been a Spire customer for fifteen years.
Two different properties.
Always on time.
Never delinquent.
And still I get reduced to a binary:
responded / didn’t respond.
complied / didn’t comply.
The unopened mail.
The door hanger I half-remember.
That was enough for them.
No history.
No loyalty.
No context.
So a man shows up at my door,
ready to shut off the gas
that heats the water
I bathe my daughters in.
They don’t know about CPTSD.
They don’t know my wife died of cancer.
They don’t know what it feels like
to be standing in a doorway
with a one-year-old,
a five-year-old,
and a seven-year-old
relying on you for everything—
and some stranger saying we’ll cut you off today if you don’t comply.
Because the system doesn’t care.
That’s what angers me.
That’s what sits in my gut like a stone.
It’s not just a meter.
It’s the reminder of how quickly
the world strips us down to numbers.
How fast compassion disappears
in the face of procedure.
I went papa bear because I had to.
I escalated because my daughters needed me to.
And I’ll keep doing it,
again and again,
in a world that too often forgets
we are human,
and fighting inner civil wars masked politely out of sight.
From my fire to yours.