I’M RUDY VALENCIA.

AND THIS IS MY STORY.

THE ROOTS OF A STRUGGLE

My story doesn’t begin with me. It begins with my dad – a U.S. Navy petty officer and boiler technician who served in Vietnam between 1970 and 1974. Like many others, he likely was exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange during his deployments. He returned to the States, physically intact but changed in ways no one fully understood then.

While still married to his first wife, he had my half-brother in 1972. My brother grew up mostly healthy and now works in HVAC out in Utah. A good man. A quiet testament to what could have been.

My dad remarried in 1977 – this time, to my mom. They tried to start a family of their own. Three times, they hoped. Three times, their children were delivered stillborn – two sons who would’ve been my older brothers, and a fraternal twin. I was the only one who made it.

But survival came with conditions. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at 18. I live with what’s likely autism spectrum disorder – possibly Asperger’s – never formally diagnosed, but always present in the way I think, act, and relate. I also have ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), a condition that makes eating far more complicated than most people realize.

I didn’t get to start life on level ground. And what followed made the slope even steeper.

LOSING MY ANCHOR

My mother was my anchor. She lived with constant pain – arthritis so severe it knurled her hands and kept her from working after 1980, when she had to leave her job with the City of Greeley. Despite it all, she never stopped being my shelter from the storm.

My dad had his own way of dealing with the world – loud, impatient, commanding, shaped by his time in the Navy. When he yelled out “RUDY?” across the house, it wasn’t a question. It was a demand. I might be in the middle of a game, coding in QuickBASIC, or just trying to stay in my lane. If I asked for a moment to finish, the answer was always sharp: “NO, NOW!”

Arguments followed. And then tears. And every time, it was my mom who picked up the pieces. She was the calm after the chaos, helping me find my balance again.

In late August 2014, I lost her.

Pneumonia kept coming back – her immune system couldn’t keep up. I was there when she passed. I saw her last breath, and in that moment, everything changed. Her face, just moments later, no longer looked like hers. Just a shell. The grief didn’t hit right away, but it planted itself deep. It waited.

Years later, that loss would break through the surface. Especially when I was burning out in the relentless, dehumanizing environment of contact centers. But I’ll get to that.

WORK, BURNOUT, AND BOUNDARIES CROSSED

In 2003, I entered the world of contact centers. I started at StarTek, answering calls for AT&T Wireless. Back then, customer rage was rare, and the job felt manageable. But it didn’t fulfill me, so after two years, I walked away.

From 2006 to 2010, I worked at Walgreens as a Service Clerk. I did well – maybe too well. I was stuck in a role where I couldn’t grow. I wanted to shift to being a Photo Technician, but being “too good” at the register boxed me in.

I bounced between call centers from then on. Each one came with higher expectations, less support, and growing emotional wear. In 2014, as my mom’s health declined, I returned to Walgreens. Like before, it was familiar – but still limiting. I found myself stuck in the same role, with the same lack of mobility, and the same emotional drain. It was a temporary anchor during a chaotic time, but after my mom passed, I left again when a better opportunity came along.

In 2017, Comcast opened a contact center in Fort Collins. It seemed stable at first, but soon, call volumes surged and there weren’t enough agents to meet them. The pressure mounted. When the center shut down in 2019, we were told to work from home. I converted my late parents’ bedroom into an office, with help from my half-brother and two paternal cousins.

It was around this time that I met a friend – Misty. She was unemployed, and I was earning well. We’d go out to eat, shop, talk, just decompress. She never asked for anything. We had fun.

But my cousins didn’t see it that way.

They inserted themselves into my life under the banner of love – telling me that they were here for me, and that I “was not alone” But their version of “support” came with judgment. They called Misty a “gold digger.” They said she was using me. They shamed me for eating out – something I often had to do because cooking with ARFID isn’t as simple as “just make something,” and I had no experience cooking in general.

Their concern quickly became control. They scrutinized my choices, dismissed my needs, and undermined my autonomy. What started as help became a cage.

By 2022, things began to shift. Misty started working, and we saw less of each other. But the damage from my cousins’ interference was already done. What I needed was understanding and trust. What I got was suspicion and shame.

THE CORPORATE MACHINE DOESN’T CARE IF YOU BREAK

Comcast started out as hope – a job with decent pay, benefits, and the illusion of upward mobility. But it didn’t stay that way.

I watched the company prioritize scripted containment over real support. Their IVR was so clingy it bordered on hostile, doing everything it could to keep customers from speaking to a human. Those who got through were already angry – rightfully so. Fees filled their bills like barnacles: broadcast fees, regional sports fees, line access charges. None of them optional. All of them a racket.

Offshore agents, barely trained and having poor command of English, were the first line of defense. By the time customers reached me, they were exhausted and furious. And then I had to sell them on Xfinity Mobile – Comcast’s new pet product – as a solution, in the middle of their rage.

When the company pivoted toward a “chronic care” model, it was framed as more sustainable support. But in practice, it meant longer queues, fewer agents, and impossible expectations.

Burnout set in. But I kept pushing – until I misunderstood Comcast’s vague and punishing FMLA attendance policy. “Four occurrences per month” and “two per week” wasn’t explained clearly. I thought I could take two days a week to manage my health. I was wrong. And that misunderstanding cost me my job.

I landed at CenturyLink in December 2023, hoping it would be a fresh start, and that their Bell System legacy was still there. It wasn’t a fresh start; it was actually worse.

The ticketing systems were relics from the Bell System days – LMOS and WFA, slow and unreliable, glossed over by a heavily modified Salesforce instance coupled with a Nokia-developed, workflow-based frontend called Customer Support Console (CSC). Dispatch dates came back a week or more out. When we got lucky and could schedule a technician within three days – or even same-day – they’d arrive and discover the issue wasn’t inside the customer’s home. It was in the outside plant that led to the customer’s home or business. The ticket would be marked “refer to cable”… and vanish.

It wasn’t just inefficient. It was a virtual oubliette – a hole where problems went to die.

Supervisors had no visibility. I had no tools. And yet I was still expected to sell Quantum Fiber to customers who were being burned by a neglected copper infrastructure. I knew full well most of them couldn’t even get fiber.

By late 2024, I was done. Not just with CenturyLink – with the illusion that traditional work would ever lead to anything sustainable for someone like me.

The burnout wasn’t just physical or mental. It was existential.

THE (LITERAL) BREAKING POINT

In 2018, I was participating in “CommTech Jeopardy,” a cable-industry trivia event hosted by Comcast. It was supposed to be fun—a light team-building moment. But after a rehearsal, as I stepped off the back edge of the temporary stage, I fell hard on my left ankle. At first, I thought it was just a sprain.

A month later, I went to bed – and my ankle snapped as I got onto the bed. It was dislocated. From that moment on, I limped through life, literally and metaphorically, for the next five years. In 2023, after infection had worked its way up halfway to my knee, and the foot was deemed functionally “decorative,” it had to go.

They amputated below the knee. And you know what? I was – and still am – fine with that. Losing my leg wasn’t the hard part.

It was everything else.

After leaving CenturyLink in October 2024, I applied for Medicaid and SNAP. It took two months to get approved. From that point on, I’ve been trying to survive in a world that doesn’t acknowledge people like me exist unless we’re in crisis – threatening to END IT ALL.

The pressure of bills, of trying to transfer my late parents’ house through informal probate, of simply existing day-by-day while burned out, grieving, and unsupported – it’s unbearable. Not a day passes that I don’t break down crying. My tears now come with gunk and crusted salt. Grief isn’t metaphorical anymore. It’s physical.

Any my house? It’s falling apart.

Built in 1954, with patchwork upgrades that only brought it up to the code of the 1980s.
Holes in the walls from old heating and rewiring jobs.
A bathroom fan removed and never replaced.
Roof leaks sealed by a new roofline but never repaired inside.
Wood siding cracking, revealing the original fake brick paneling underneath.
A bathtub so rusted, it has a 4″ by 6″ brown stain near the drain. I can’t even step into it – not with an amputation. I fear if I use the tub, it’ll eventually ruin the crawlspace and further degrade this house!

I’ve tried to rebuild. I created a GoFundMe in 2023 to raise funds for critical accessibility and structural repairs. I reached out to the media. I was all but ghosted; only one outlet – CBS Colorado – responded, just to tell me they “don’t cover crowdfunding stories.”

I raised $160. It all went to bills. The system doesn’t cover survival.

Since then, I’ve been through two mental health facilities – Denver Health’s adult psychiatry department, and the Nursing Integrated Psychiatry Unit (NIPU) at Mountain Crest in Fort Collins. Denver Health’s adult psychiatry department is a repurposed hospital ward with only a fresh coat of paint and security locks keeping patients within. Niether facility offered food options to accommodate for my ARFID. They only offered pills, not solutions. Supervision, not support.

I begged for help on Facebook. No one came. Only when I posted a last-ditch cry –

“IF YOU DON’T WANT TO WAKE UP TO AN OBITUARY READING ‘RUDY ALLEN VALENCIA – APRIL 25, 1985–MAY 8, 2025,’ THEN HELP ME!”

– did anyone act. Someone, likely a former principal, called in a welfare check. A “co-responder” – a plainclothes cop, usually driving an unmarked SUV having a boxed-in, hard back seat – called me. I explained everything. They canceled the check. Nothing changed.

So now, I’m doing the one thing I still can: telling the truth.

I built this site – Systemic Neglect – using the tools I still have:

A Web server hosted at a VPS provider.
Strong graphic design skills.
Technical knowledge earned by doing.
And a story no one else wanted to carry – so I’m carrying it myself.

This isn’t just my life. It’s the result of a system that waits until you publicize a death wish before it evem bothers to notice you – and even then, it only wants you quiet again.

Whether you’re media, an advocate, a neighbor, or someone who simply refuses to look away – there’s something you can do.

Help Systemic Neglect – and me – to get the message out.
Help make mental health better.
Help me get my house – and my life – in order, before it’s too late.