17 Apr 2007, 10:47 pm
[b]you know how that is. You start over, staying small, keeping close to the door but your back to the wall and try not to look too impolite even while you refuse to apologize for not looking them in the eye. Oh they can think it's because you're lying...except you know you don't lie. You might make up some things, but that's not the same thing. They can think you're shy. They can think you're being superior. How can you explain that sometimes, you look people straight in the eye and it's just like locking eyes with the tiger at the zoo? Which is kind of thrilling...but can't be sustained. Sometimes it seems like my whole life is spent in threat maintenance-will this or that be too much stimulus for me? What can I handle? Yet sometimes I feel my life is almost ideal, my ability to reach a deep meditative trance within three to five minutes-who needs drugs? I do, I do! But I'm clean, really. Too much change the last few years. Being fired from a job-never happened before-I was a good cook, believe me. The great breakdown, a year of almost constant hospitalization. They wouldn't release me to my brother, placed me in a transitional home for the mentally ill...an inappropriate placement. Yes, I'm mentally ill. Bipolar, OCD, and the home was also chartered for developmental disorders. But I was the only one in the house who wasn't either ret*d, severely psychotic, or both. The other women had serious behavioral issues, and were extremely intrusive. The noise levels, large and small, was a problem. Four years of that...I grew habituated though. It was structured. Then I moved out. I got a roommate, Joe, who I'd known for two years. We went to the same day program and were close friends. He let me be, and he talked, and he was able to be his own company as well as be company.
He moved in with me when his marriage fell apart-still just friends-came down with appendicitis. The surgeon botched it, and less than a month after the operation he was dead. Of septicemia, for crying out loud. Yes, I feel some responsibility. If I felt like crawling through the whole miserable last day maybe I could explain why.
Then my depression landed me in the hospital a couple of times. I had to give up my puppy. Then I was in the hospital getting shock treatments when I stopped breathing and had difficulty starting again. I'd been running a fever for a few days...turns out I had bilateral pneumonia. I was in ICU for three weeks. By the time I got back, with no one at the trailer to check on things, the hot water heater had somehow leaked and flooded the place. The floor had collapsed in places. This was last year. I was sick, grieving, exhausted, and essentially homeless. Only place I could go on short notice was where I am now-back with my parents.
My parents were very abusive, nasty people. Their fangs are mostly pulled now because the power differential is largely gone-though my mother will still try to pull some crap. But this is still no place for me to be. No place at all. Social connection is problematic for me at the best of times. It seems to happen serendipitously, but i have to be able to be open for it-and i can't afford to be open while living with ogres. I do have one friend-maybe-a woman i go to church with. For the rest, I seek safety and connection on the net, at least until I can get out of here. I'm turning in my application for housing Friday, so there's hope. And maybe being connected here will give me some insights into how to stay open...or how to relax and know when it is time not to care, as in the lines from Ash Wednesday/ts eliot:
"Teach us to care and not to care/Teach us to sit still."
That's all I got in me for now. If you actually hung in and read this whole thing, you rock.
17 Apr 2007, 10:55 pm
larsenjw92286
Veteran
Joined: 30 Aug 2004
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,062
Location: Seattle, Washington
17 Apr 2007, 11:54 pm
18 Apr 2007, 2:35 am
sunnycat
Veteran
Joined: 10 Feb 2007
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,061
Location: Mysterious Forest of Legends, Kitty Dream Planet
18 Apr 2007, 4:15 am
That is quite a journey...I admire you for going through all that...I hope your housing application gets accepted...and welcome to WP...
18 Apr 2007, 1:10 pm
Welcome to the site 
19 Apr 2007, 12:43 am
