Wooooosh, let me breathe. breathe, Ev.
I have been having a hard time, mentally, with depression, and constant fatigue and my roommate has been having an even harder time. Robert (the roommate) is having severe symptoms from some kind of schizo-affective disorder.
I wrote about it the other day:
I try not to be redundant, so i’ll try to keep moving forward without rehashing too much. The day was rough on both of us, I had trouble getting out of bed, and after all it was all grey and rainy. Meanwhile, my roommate was in the living room in his underwear screaming at hallucinations. His situation was really fucking with me, so I sat him down and explained that it’s not considerate to Karl (my other roommate) and I for him to be basically naked in the living room, because that’s a shared space. I told him about how I've been inside of pretty much every psychiatric emergency room in the five boroughs of NYC, throughout the course of my own journey and that it gives me absolutely no pleasure to have to call 911 like I did at 3 in the morning the night after writing the post linked above.
I also told him about a roommate that I had back in 2021, who didn’t get adequate psychiatric care, Antonio. I told Robert about how Antonio attacked me with a dollar store grade steak knife. The last I heard about Antonio, he is in prison for 2nd degree felony attempted murder.
I don't think Robert would ever attack anyone, but I needed to him to know that there’s a very logical reason for me to be uneasy when someone is in psychiatric crisis where I live. After all, I never thought Antonio would attack anyone, either.
I also texted his case worker, to let her know that i’m willing to call 911 every day, if need be.
If I hadn’t learned to advocate for myself at some point during the pandemic, when I was in East Harlem, I’d still be sleeping on a heat vent next to the bus terminal, instead of the master bedroom in a brand new house (with it’s own bathroom, might I add).
After that, I went to an AA meeting with an interesting group of guys I met about two months ago. Self described “street guys”, who are always talking about the 80’s and dropping John Gotti’s name. That’s just funny to me (this weird leftist nerd) , sitting at a table with “street guys”, and it speaks to the kind of possibilities of camaraderie that can only come from AA in New York City.
I was coming back down the street after the meeting, and I saw an NYPD cruiser parked in my driveway. Turns out, Robert had called 911 himself. I was fully expecting that i’d be calling them before the end of the night. The cops were talking to him as they waited for an ambulance.
The thing I was stressing about, and wondering if it was the right course of action (calling 911) took care of itself as I was out hanging with wiseguys.
If I wasn't in the active process of trying to a better human, and God forbid I was using drugs I don’t think the day would have gone down like it did, that’s all. I’m not trying to take too much credit for anything, or overplay the victim card for things that happened in the past. I’m simply trying to tell it like it is, because it’s what I like to do.
Listen, I really can’t avoid doing this, given my financial situation at present, but YOU can help me with that if you find my writing does anything for you: https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17
