Foreword: I’m going to go pretty deep today, because there’s a lot on my mind, and the way things are with healthcare in this country make it really difficult to get therapy, outside of an AI assistant and a blog. this is going to be a little bit of a downer, but if you slog through it there’s some sunshine, I promise. My goal isn’t to get readers to feel bad for me and mine, my goal is to get out what’s in me (always has been).
If anyone needs me I’ll be barricaded in my room with a chair blocking the door because there’s no lock on it, the rest of the apartment makes me dry heave, and I don’t want to interact with my roommate . It’s a rainy day, and my mood is decidedly rainy to match it. I have a couple of things I need to do today that I can do with my phone and computer.
For some reason it’s insanely difficult to get and keep mental health care providers. right now I have neither a psychiatrist or therapist, which is a recipe for impending disaster. with everything that’s going on in my life, this is no time to lose my mind on top of it, and i’m really afraid. I left a message with the case-worker from my insurance company who’s job it is to make sure I don’t slip through the cracks of the mental healthcare system, and my housing case-worker should be in her office by 4:30 (this was supposed to be true but wasn’t the last 2 days). someone’s got to help me navigate this system because I can’t do it on my own. the healthcare system in America is so fucking broken. luckily I have a decent supply of medication that should give me some time to rectify this, but still i’ve been in this situation before without help and it didn’t end well.
If (hopefully) my housing worker does come in today, she’s going to have to take notes because of all of the things I’m going to bring to her, all of the disastrous roommate stuff, my lack of psychiatric care, and the fact that I got shorted 100$ on the monthly allowance I get as a resident of supportive housing. I feel guilty, like i’m a pain in the ass when I make people do their job, but I really shouldn’t. I’m working on that.
I need that 100$ they owe me to eat, because this shitbag I live with stole a big chunk of my food, and I have to eat a lot of things out because my kitchen isn’t sanitary to prepare food in.
I’m reminded of a time in Boston a few years ago,when I was with my mother, and I forget what we were trying to do, something related to getting my medications filled (of course), and there was just endless red tape. My family always makes up little songs about what’s going on to make us laugh (we usually need to laugh, to counteract the sadness). We imagined Leonard Cohen singing:
“life is a pit….and you can’t get out”
It’s a blessing that my family has a sense of humor, I don’t know that we would have made it without that. My poor mother is currently dealing with newly diagnosed colitis, caring for my sister who has a rare seizure disorder, all while trying to maintain housing on a single income. I spoke to her yesterday, and we were still able to crack jokes about poop related things, like we always have. I haven’t heard from my father, or his side of the family in over a month, I think he’s still in a hospital in Vermont getting electro-convulsive therapy for his medication resistant depression.
I see people who have a a financial safety net in their family, and when i’m at my lowest points I get really envious. I get in the whole “must be nice” mindset. It’s like any other time when i’m feeling low and a bit sorry for myself, I compare myself to others on social media and the result is a lot less than pleasant.
My father was a lawyer. We used to be middle class, until my dad had his first major nervous breakdown in the fall of 2004, the next couple of years after that saw bankruptcy, foreclosure on our home, and the ending of a 25 year old marriage. I took it about as badly as a 19 year old budding alcoholic with my own mental issues could possibly take it. I don’t know why, but I blamed my mother for what I thought was her lack of compassion towards him. it was only years later that I was able to understand that she was trying her best to hold it together while her whole life was being torn apart. my dad went down to new jersey where his family was, and so he could see a psychiatrist that could help him, but he never came back to help her, add to that the fact that he got a girlfriend, I cant imagine how that hurt my mother. All I did was make things worse, by showing up belligerently drunk on visits from the apartment I shared with my girlfriend in Boston (that her rich dad paid for). Divorce is hard on everyone involved, and I didn’t have any emotional tools to help me manage dealing with it… but neither did anyone else in the family. everyone did what they could do, knowing what they knew about life. things always make more sense in retrospect, still they never make sense all the way, no matter how much you want them to.
There’s a whole concept that I've been grappling with trying to understand for as long as I can remember. where is the line between mental illness and malignant narcissistic fuck bag? I don't think about this only in my father, I think about it in myself. which less than desirable parts of my personality (and his) can be chalked up to bi-polar disorder, and which are just straight up asshole traits? Where am I sick vs. where am I a manipulative piece of shit? I even ponder this line in the roommate that’s currently making my life a vermin infested shit hole.
I've done a lot of considering the fact that there are no absolutes in life, no black and white. it took me 38 years to get to that understanding, and I still lose grip on it when things are tough.
My pop did kind of bounce back for a while , down in new jersey, and we had some good years as a family, until 2019 when a manic episode to end all had him stealing around 65 thousand dollars from his clients. He’s now a felon, and is legally not allowed to practice law anymore. it’s not easy to really think about all of this, because I don’t know if he’ll ever recover from it. it’s been 5 years with no real bright spots in sight. I love my father, i’ve been close to him my whole life, It hurts me to know that he is in pain, because I know exactly what it’s like to be that way.
One thing I don’t understand, though is why my dad’s siblings excommunicated my mother and my siblings from the family, not even updating us on his progress or lack thereof, or checking up on my sick sister. I have 2 uncles who are both self described devout Christians (Pentecostal and catholic) and an aunt with a Phd. they all grew up with a severely bipolar mother, and an absentee father, one of them is even in long term addiction recovery. they seem to have this picture of my brother, sister, mother and I as some kind of greedy, money grubbing and ungrateful people who cut ties with my father when he couldn't help with the bills anymore. that shit seems kind of fucked up, it definitely ain't Christian.
There is good news though, i’m still pretty put together (compared to other times, even just a month ago) and I've got a lot of fight in me. i’m not getting high, which also really helps things. I've been places that I don’t think everyone would have made it out of, literally and figuratively, and I take that in stride when I’m faced with adversity. I know that I’ve been insanely lucky in the amount of close brushes with death I've escaped from, and despite all of the bad things, I can see some good in life. I've got a roof over my head in a city that is literally facing a widespread housing crisis (at least my room is spic and span) , i have the mental faculties to face a lot of the problems in my path (or at least it feels like it right now), and it’s highly unlikely that i’ll starve any time soon (I have a food pantry to go to on Saturday with my old lady cart) Do I want better for myself? fuck yes. do I want better for my loved ones? absolutely. The new thing, that I've picked up over the past year or so is that I know I deserve it.
Afterward: in the time it took me to write this, I was contacted by my insurance social worker who said she’d be getting me the providers I need, well before I get to the danger zone of running out of medication. See, things come together.
Your contribution, no matter how big or small, can make a huge difference. A donation to my Ko-fi will help with some of the stress i’m under, which is definitely compounded by the fact that i’m broke:
https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
For those who prefer to directly support my creative endeavors but aren’t comfortable with Ko-fi (because I have a history of drug use) , I’ve created an Amazon wishlist! This way, you can help me get the tools I need to keep creating.
https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/38UI78GFY4ROR?ref_=wl_share
