The “Humans of Macomb County” series was created after Macomb County, a place that has traditionally voted Democrat, almost unanimously voted for Donald Trump in this last election. The people behind the popular Humans of New York site traveled to Macomb County to hear the stories of the people who live here. Some of them are heartbreaking, profound, and some are even a little crazy. Wither you believe or can relate to the things these people are saying, it is interesting to see the perspective from someone else.

All photos and text come from the Humans of New York Facebook page which can be found here. And check out more of their photos and series at their website here.

“I think a lot of people live on the borderline of racism. I work in a machine shop with about thirty older guys. I don’t think there is one bad guy in the group. You’d like them if you met them. All of them love their families. But I’d say that I’ve heard eighty percent of them make racist comments of some sort. A lot of the older guys drop ‘n bombs.’ But if a black guy walks up, they’ll be friendly. They’ll even go out to lunch with him and share a meal. I honestly don’t think they see themselves as racist. Every one of them will deny it. They’ll point to the black guy that they’re friendly with. They won’t point to the things they say when he’s not around.”
“My sister moved in, her five cats moved in, and her ex-husband moved in. It’s driving me nuts. My sister watches those murder programs. And her ex-husband is Irish so he keeps talking about the potato famine. He loves that potato famine. Always the potato famine. And those cats. Little Louie is sweet, but the biggest cat looks like Garfield and won’t stop meowing. His name is Nitro. I’m trying to keep it together. I just picked up one of those positive thinking books.”
“My mom died of lung cancer on my sixteenth birthday. My birthday is actually coming up—this Saturday. Before she passed away, I was a good student and everything. I was probably going to get a scholarship for singing. But I stopped caring after that. My mom was my biggest fan. Even when she was really sick, she came to my singing recital in a wheelchair, with her hair falling out of her head, and she sat on the front row. I quit singing after she died. There was nobody to sing for anymore. My Dad raised us. And he was wonderful. You want to know how awesome my Dad is? He went to court and tried to legally change my birthday. Just so I wouldn’t have to go through it every year. It turns out you’re not allowed to do that. But he tried.”
“I’ve known since I was thirteen. It wasn’t a struggle for me. I didn’t question whether it was ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I just knew it was me. But I’m still completely closeted. I’m part of a very religious community. Even my choice to go to college was questioned. It’s seen as not trusting in God. If my family knew I was gay, I’d be cut off completely. Listen, they’re not bad. They aren’t bad people. It’s just what they believe. I’m not angry at them. I’m angry at the situation. If I choose to fall in love, then nobody that I’ve ever known will speak to me again.”
“I just think that people are looking to blame someone else for their problems. They’re worried about the wrong stuff. They’re too fixated on what other people are getting. I wasn’t able to go to college. My mom raised five kids on her own. I’ve had to work since I was sixteen. So I haven’t gotten to do all the things I wanted to do. But I’ve never complained. I’ve never been ‘too good’ for a job. I worked at Burger King. I worked at Walmart. Now I work at Chrysler. And I got promoted at all three places. I’ve never had a problem getting noticed. Managers notice things. If you don’t complain, and work hard, and pick up shifts, you’ll move up. So I don’t complain. I’m twenty-eight now. I have no debt. Chrysler even has a program where they’ll pay for my college. I’ve got enough to help out my mom. I’m actually picking her up a new dryer right now.”
“This racial stuff to me is BS and I’m tired of hearing it. I have it made because I’m a white male? I’m prejudiced? That shit is long ago. Way long ago. Enough of it. It’s all the media. It’s all for ratings. It’s this false racial shit that they keep pumping into everybody’s head. They’re keeping everyone on edge. If there’s a police shooting—it’s white versus black. Always white versus black. Who cares about the facts? Race is more important. Watching the news, you’d think there was a race war out there. But then I walk outside and I just don’t see it. I hold the door for the black guy. He holds the door for me. I wouldn’t even know there was a problem if it wasn’t for the television. They need to quit making shit out of nothing.”
“My father was on strike one Christmas. I think I was six years old. And whenever the union was on strike, we’d go without. So there weren’t many presents under the tree that year. Dad explained to us that he was standing up for everybody, and that he needed our help. He promised us that he’d get us more presents once he got back to work. Then the night before Christmas, somebody broke into our house. They slit the screen on one of the windows and stole everything. I woke up to my mom screaming. All our presents were gone. But that ended up being the best Christmas we ever had. Because a few hours later, six guys from the union showed up, and they were carrying bags and bags of presents.”
“I broke up with my girlfriend this morning. We’d been together for three years. But I’m Catholic, and she doesn’t know if she believes in God or not. I wanted to propose to her one day. I think she’d be a great mom and a great wife. But I feel like this might be something we can’t overcome. I want to get married in a Catholic church. I want to raise my children to be Catholic. It’s important to me and it’s something that we’d have to deal with eventually. So I didn’t think it would be a good idea to keep putting it off. But it really hurts to lose her. Both of us were bawling our eyes out. She was such a big part of my life. Every time something good happens, she is the first person I want to tell. And I do respect that she refuses to believe in something just because I do. But I don’t know what to do. I’m hoping God will give me an answer.”
“I thought we were happy. We had two kids. She was a great mom. But three or four years into our marriage, she started playing that Sims game online. You can be anyone in that game. She could be the perfect wife or whatever. She was always on that computer. Then she started playing this other game where you can marry, date, and screw people. All of it is fake, but people actually develop feelings for each other. In real life these guys are probably 450 lbs. but online they look like Superman. There was actually one guy that she called ‘her Superman.’ He even started mailing Superman trinkets to the house. She wouldn’t quit. I even tried to break her cellphone with my hand. I just wanted her to live her life with us. But we weren’t enough for her.”
(1/3) “I was nineteen. She was sixteen. Our dates were normally on Sunday. We didn’t do much of anything. We were conservative. I was a farmer. We weren’t those swinging type people. But every date was a little more cuddly. Then she took me to her senior prom. It was just ten miles from here—in Richmond. I was the only one there without a tuxedo. All those city folks didn’t know what to make of me. I can’t tell you when we fell in love. I can’t even tell you when I asked her to marry me. It was just natural. I think we were just sitting in the car and I gave her the ring. I don’t have many big moments to share. We were simple people. They were all happy days.”
(2/3) “We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in Branson, Missouri. On the drive home, she kept telling me that we were going the wrong way. She was very insistent. I didn’t fight her. I kept letting her turn around because I knew that eventually we’d hit the main road back to Michigan. I knew then. Her father had dementia. And so did his father. So I knew what was happening. Soon she started forgetting names. When it started getting really bad, she wanted to walk away. She was always trying to leave the house. I’d have to lie in front of the door to keep her from going. One morning I woke up and I couldn’t find her. I freaked out: ‘Where did she go? Where did she go?’ I ran outside and it was totally dark. Down the road there was a streetlight. And I could barely see her—crossing the road. I ran and I got her. But she fought me. She didn’t want to come back home.”
(3/3) “I miss that we can’t go out and dance. Or visit other people. We used to volunteer at the senior center every Wednesday. She’d play the piano, and I’d turn the pages for her. The hymns were some of the last things she remembered. Music was her life. But one day she wouldn’t play anymore. And I told the staff that they’d need to find someone else. So we stay here now. But I don’t see this as a curse. It’s an honor. This is what the Lord has given me to do. She has served this family her entire life. And now it’s my turn to serve her. I might not have her mentally. But I have her. I can still make her smile. I can make bubbly noises, and blow on her, and she’ll smile. Every morning we’ll sit in this chair and we’ll cuddle until noon. I rock this lady more than I rock my grandchildren. She likes to slip her hand under my shirt to feel my skin. And she still likes to kiss. Every once in awhile she’ll reach up and give me a kiss. Sometimes she starts ‘yakking.’ She doesn’t say actual words. And it doesn’t make any sense. But I never tell her to be quiet, because it’s better than nothing at all.”
“I work at a machine tool automation company. We build the machines that build the cars. High school wasn’t for me. I didn’t respond well to being lectured and having things jammed into my brain. So I started out sweeping floors at the factory, then I got moved into the saw shop, and now I do electrical installation. I’m up to $17 an hour now. And I’ve started studying PLC so I can move up even further. There’s actually a lot of opportunity in my field. There’s not much competition. Nobody my age wants to do this stuff. They all want to go to art school or make video games or something. I think maybe it’s because too many people are being told to do whatever they want. Because no matter what you think you can be, there’s still gotta be people like me.”
“This isn’t the first time I’ve owned a flower shop. I owned another store twenty years ago, but it went bankrupt. I was devastated. I’d just gotten divorced. I felt like a complete failure. For months I couldn’t even drive down the street where the shop had been. But one day a friend told me that I’d been looking at it all wrong. He told me: ‘You’re focused too much on the closing. Think of all the years that the shop was open. Think of all the jobs you provided, the flowers that you sold, and all the people that you served. You were open for twenty years. It was happening. And just because it didn’t happen forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t valuable.’”
“I fostered thirteen little babies in my life. It’s just a passion I have in my heart. Often they’d just come wrapped in a blanket. I could only foster one at a time because I had five children of my own. But one time a mother dropped three children off on my doorstep. She had just given them chocolate ice cream. I’ll never forget how the ice cream was dripping off their faces. Most of the time I’d only have the children for a few months. And once they were adopted, I’d never contact them again. But I often wonder what happened to them. Maybe we’ll meet again in heaven.”
“I thought I was going to work until I died. But they came in and told me that I was too old and that I didn’t know the computer. They thought I was obsolete. If that’s true—then how did I get so far without the computer? I’ve got that computer in my head. I can design the whole process. I can start with a blank sheet of paper and cycle the whole line: the robots, the tooling, everything. That was my life. At night when I go to sleep, I’m still building welding lines. There were only 1800 of us in this town that could do it. And each of us had our own style. People could recognize Norm Szewsky’s work. But you know what happened? They took all 1800 of our brains, and they put them in a computer. So now a guy who don’t know nothing can just press a button, and out comes a clamp. Oh well, I don’t really give a shit. I’m checking out soon.”
“If I think back, I get depressed. If I think ahead, I get afraid.”
“I feel homeless. Like this isn’t the place that I thought it was. I feel like I don’t understand where I am. Where we all are. Last week students started chanting ‘build the wall’ in the lunchroom of a local middle school. Some of the Hispanic children started crying. If you’re the principal– how are you supposed to stop that behavior? If the president can behave in a certain way, how are you supposed to tell a child that it’s unacceptable? How does that hold up? It breaks my heart. I’ve had friends reach out to me. They’ve told me: ‘I understand the reasons that you’re upset. But those aren’t the reasons I voted for him.’ And I’m just starting to understand that. I’m realizing that a lot of people wanted change more than they wanted kids not to cry. We all have our own code of ethics. My bottom line happened to be tolerance. Their bottom line was abortion. Or the Supreme Court. I guess we all have the right to choose our own bottom line.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I want everyone to get along. And I don’t want to sound racist. But they’re coming into our country. If you ask me, that makes them racist. There’s something going on with the Muslims. There’s something going on there. There’s a lot we don’t know about. They have a game plan. They want all the businesses. They want control. They want my grandchildren to work for them. I’m hoping he can do something about it. We need somebody to say no.”
“My grandmother got me a violin when I was thirteen. Whenever people were fighting, and I wanted to get away, I’d just go in my room and play. Sometimes I’d play for four or five hours per night. It gave me a lot of confidence. I started playing in front of the church, in front of the school— it made me feel good about myself. But my mom struggled a lot. She made a lot of mistakes. She got in some bad relationships and we lived in a lot of different places. Sometimes we’d go weeks without having power. One time it got really bad and we had to start selling our stuff. She didn’t ask me to sell my violin. But we’d already sold our TV. And she just asked if I had any ideas. I ended up selling it to a friend for $145. I was really upset for a while. I’m a Christian, and God knew how much I loved the violin. So I was confused why he’d make me sell it. For a few months, I tried to keep playing in the music room at school. But eventually I had to stop so I could focus on paying the bills. I got a real job at the grocery store.”
“I’ve been on my own since the age of twelve. My mom decided that her drug-dealing boyfriend was more important than me. One night I came home from playing and the key wouldn’t turn. I started banging on the door but nobody answered. I lived with friends for the next few years. I went from house to house, couch to couch. My friend’s mom was a bartender so she got me a job washing dishes. I saved enough money to get a car when I turned sixteen, and I drove out to Arizona. I was pregnant by the time I was twenty-one. My son changed my life. I didn’t turn into Mother Theresa overnight. I had to unlearn everything I’d ever known. I had to learn how to do things the right way, not sell drugs, not cut corners. Right now I’m trying to finish college while being a single mother. I’m taking care of my eighty-three year old grandmother. I just beat cancer for the second time in four years. But things seem to be quiet now. I’m always holding my breath, though. The story of my life has been the calm before the storm.”
“My ninety-year-old mother just moved in with us. So I’ve become a full time caretaker. I’m all she’s got. My father passed away and I’m her only child. So I’m it. Right now she has a lot of negativity. She seems to fixate on the negative side of things. If I suggest going outside, she’ll say it’s too cold. If I suggest that we go shopping, she’ll say there’s too much traffic. She wants her independence, but when she has it, she gets lonely. It’s hard for me. Because I’m a positive person by nature. And it’s hard to deal with so much negative energy. My husband is worried about me. He thinks it’s too much to deal with. I have a family, a life, and a business. But I’d be even more of a wreck if I put her in assisted living. I need to know for sure that she’s getting the proper care. Because for all her negativity, my mother always taught us respect. Respect your toys. Respect your parents. Respect other people. Respect their property. Respect is the basis for everything. Without it, everything falls apart.”
“This was supposed to be a regular “hi mom” visit. It was my first time coming home in five years. I was expecting my mother to pick me up from the airport, but my sister-in-law was there when I landed. She told me that my mother was in the hospital. She was bleeding internally and had a blood clot in her leg. Right after we arrived, two surgeons sat me down, and told me they needed a decision immediately. They’d given my mother eleven units of blood and they wanted to amputate her leg and give her a colonoscopy bag. At first I asked if we could do nothing. But then I told them to go ahead and do it. And I think I made the wrong decision. She’s recovering now, and it’s becoming apparent that she’ll never be able to do basic things by herself. And I know my mother. She’s a very independent woman. She rakes her own leaves and blows the snow off her own driveway. She wouldn’t want to live like this. She’d never say this to me, but I think she feels that I let her down.”
“All the bosses care about is getting the job done. So if you have a good work ethic, the work falls on you more. The bosses know that it’s easier to push a good worker than it is to get a bad worker to do their job. It’s the path of least resistance. Especially when the boss happens to be friends with the bad workers. It used to really bother me. I couldn’t stand the injustice of it. But I’ve had to learn to let it go. I was bringing the stress home with me. I’d get mad at little things and slam drawers. I was even having rage dreams. I abhor violence, but I was having dreams where the boss would criticize my work and my hands would go around his neck. So I had to learn to let it go. I used to really care about the job. But I’ve had to just start viewing it as a paycheck.”
“We’ve been together for twenty years. I’ve never dated anyone else. But there’s no intimacy. There’s no ring on the finger. He doesn’t even want his family to know we’re together. Maybe it’s my weight. Maybe it’s a status thing. But he keeps me away from his family. I accidentally sat by his sister at a basketball game, and his jaw nearly dropped to the floor. We’ve only made love once. That was twelve years ago. He won’t kiss me or touch me. I’ve just stopped asking. But he insists that we’re in a relationship. He got mad when I tried to change my relationship status to ‘single.’ He got on my computer and changed it back. I didn’t even know that he knew my password. I told myself that I was OK with it. I told myself that I’m OK with not being touched. But I don’t think I am. I recently went to a therapist for the first time. I was so scared he’d find out that I parked my car next door. But maybe it would be good if he found out. Maybe he’d leave me and give me a chance.”
“We didn’t expect to be raising our granddaughter. We used to talk about moving to the country when we retired. Now we talk about moving to the best school districts. I’m working as much as I can. I worry every day that something will happen to us before she’s grown. I’m going to the gym more. I’m trying to stay healthy. I’m enrolled in a special savings program for her college education. I’ve been adding money to it since the day she was born. Because if something happens to me, the amount doubles.”
“I grew up in the suburbs. I used to think that I could write a prescription for a poor man: ‘Get a job, save your money, pull yourself up by the bootstraps.’ I don’t believe that anymore. I was ignorant to the experiences of poor people. I’d invite anyone to come and meet the people who live in this neighborhood. Right now we are surrounded by working poor people. These are the people who sell your tools at Sears, and fix your roofs, and take care of your parents, and mow your lawns, and serve your meals. They’re not getting a living wage. There’s no money left to save. There’s nothing left if they get sick. Nothing left if their car breaks down. And God forbid they make a mistake, because there’s nothing left to pay fines or fees. When you’re down here, the system will continue to kick dirt in your face. You can’t pull yourself up when there’s nothing to grab onto. We aren’t paying our brothers and sisters enough to live. We want them to serve us, but we aren’t serving them.”

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