11/15/23
This post is me trying to think my way through a really difficult time, on paper. I’ve learned to examine my black and white/all-or-nothing thinking, and that’s what I’m doing here. I also have a tendency to catastrophize and take things personally. This is my attempt to put it in front of me, in black and white, to try to be in touch with the reality outside of what my emotions are telling me.
A lot of my more recent writing operates with the assumption that you are up to speed on where I am and what’s been going on with me. In case you aren’t, go read my whole blog right now. No, listen, I’m in residential addiction treatment in Manhattan, and I have been for nearly 14 months. I am waiting on supportive housing, in a process that was grossly mishandled by the staff here that was supposed to handle it over six months ago. I suppose I’ll link some other work at the end of this post in case you do want to read over 500 posts about where I am and what got me here: the drugs, the streets, the mental illness, and the violence.
I’m not having a good time with life, really. I’m stuck. Everyone else is living, but I’m stuck in suspended animation, waking up, taking my meds, eating some chicken, going to bed, repeat.
Lately, It feels like some of (not all) the staff at this program I’m in is trying to torture me into leaving; it feels like they have no interest in keeping me going. Today, I asked if I could go and put my benefit money into my cash app at Walgreens like I have for the last year or so, the answer was no, for no reason.
So, I don’t get the privilege of the 2 hours a day out, which I found out yesterday, and now I can’t even run the errands I’ve been running for over a year to keep money in my life. For no reason, I’m being treated like I was when I got here for the first 30 days in September of last year. I’ve been here since September 30, 2022, and it’s now November 15th, 2023. I’m looking down the barrel of another Thanksgiving here, and there’s no definitive end in sight. I wake up every morning, really pissed off that I woke up. Like, ‘God damn it, another day.’
If they hadn’t fucked up my housing documents 10 months ago, I’d be in an apartment, like a while ago, and now I’m the one being punished because I’m the longest-staying resident/client. IT’S THE DOCTOR’S FAULT THAT I’M STILL HERE!
Let’s Try To Look At Reality, Though
There are some things I have to write here because I’m writing this for me: I had a supportive housing interview 8 days ago, and they said it would take 3–4 weeks to hear if I’m accepted. So, I’m waiting for that. Also, I have a separate housing interview on Friday morning.
“One way or another, this darkness has got to give” — Grateful Dead.
On Sundays, I get to sing songs with my music therapist/mentor/pianist. It’s powerful, and I probably need it more than I ever have. When I said that it feels like I have nothing in my life keeping me going, I need to remind myself of the music that I’m able to make. I need to remind myself of the incredible amount of creative output that has come from my stay here, in the Lower East Side. All of the writing, the recordings of songs, I literally star in a documentary that is very much about recovering through the creative process.
What if it’s just darkest before the dawn? The miracle might be right around the corner, and I’ll be able to look back at this and laugh at how I almost totally gave up yesterday, right before my big break. I have to hold on tighter than I have the whole time I’ve been here.
Look at what’s going on, anyone would feel bad: winter/daylight savings, the holidays coming, no freedom, separation from loved ones, and boredom. I should allow myself these feelings, as a human who feels things that make sense, let alone an individual with a mood disorder who is prone to seasonal depression.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in recovery for this long and not blown my life into shreds over the difficulties that life naturally presents, like I’ve done more times than I even know. I can have feelings; I am entitled to them. I can give myself credit for holding on.
I’m just so tired, man, I’m tired of this. I’ve been in and out of places like this (or much worse) since about 2011. This is what I need to remember the next time I think about getting high, that it never kills me like I hope it will, it just sentences me to more of other people dictating my every move to me, when it isn’t the drugs themselves dictating my every move to me.
It was last summer when I realized that I couldn’t even kill myself correctly and therefore would have to take some steps to make my life more equitably inhabitable, which led me in the direction I am currently heading in… the direction I continue to head in as I hold on tight.
Hold on, Ev. Hold on tight. Acceptance.
Go read the blog, listen to the music, watch the film:
Please send some bread, since i’m physically unable to get my finances where i need them, despite having like 100$:
