Lost in March
Sat, Mar 22, Evening
I’m lost. I’m just lost in every way that I think I can be. Over the course of the last month, some kind of complex situation with my health insurance has made it impossible for me to have access to the medication that it took over a month for me to even find someone (a psychiatrist) to prescribe for me. I really do much better when I’m able to manage my mood by taking medication. After trying it both ways (lithium and no lithium), I can say this is true.
It’s not the medication’s fault or anyone’s fault but mine (or at least my chronic alcoholism), but I went back to drinking which obviously doesn’t help anything, so there was all of that going on. I’d put it down for 5 or 6 days only to get back to it, and the other things that come with it (various states of un-manageability)
One of the things that happened during this period, turned out to be related to the supportive housing apartment I have. it’s a beautiful new house, and for a while it was just Karl and I. Karl is a big friendly giant with some form of schizo-affective disorder that causes him to talk to himself, but as the months since we shared the house we became close, and I consider him like a brother to me.
Someone else, technically lives in the other bedroom, but he was never ever there for one reason or another.
Well, he came back and moved two people into his room with him, who he says are family, though I see no resemblance between them, even in a racial sense…but who I am I to decide what family is? This by the way is against the policy of the supportive housing agency. These other two people don’t have NYC supportive housing for people with a psych diagnosis and a history of homelessness, they are hangers on.
it started out as an annoyance , his “sister” would be screaming at the top of her lungs the lyrics to toni braxton songs at all hours of the night. I suppose we could say she was attempting to sing, but that’s a very generous interpretation of what that was. they’d leave dishes all over the place and never clean up any mess they made in the kitchen. there was starting to be a disgusting odor.
The thing that’s really the problem, is what happened on Friday. I had been drinking, and the “brother” of my actual roommate gave me a bag of some of the shittiest cocaine I've ever encountered in my life, and let me know that he had more on deck (for a fee of course). Well, it isn’t hard to tell how that ended up going and eventually I woke up on Monday and realized that I live in the same house as a drug dealer again, which made me think back to the situation in 2022, in another supportive housing situation (in Brooklyn) that resulted in my being stabbed. I’m still fucking traumatized by that, by the way…i’m fucked up from that situation. I have a therapist, though, i’m working on it. I was afraid of where things would go, and I worried that I would act in a way that was informed by the traumatic experiences of the past.
I’ll put it bluntly, I wanted to fuck this kid up. just on principle. People who sell cocaine are parasites.
After sleeping it off (the weekend), I woke up and left the house. I didn’t want to be there, and I still don’t want to be there. I went over to Manhattan and spent the day and night drinking Jim Beam, and on the phone with my housing agency trying to get placed into something known as “respite”, so that at least I don’t have to stay in my house, on the street or in a shelter.
I also got attacked at the 2nd avenue subway station during that evening, and my phone was taken in the melee.
Respite is where I am now. in this little room of my own…feeling lost. I have my laptop, my notebook (and really nice pens), plus I got this little retro game emulator hand held device with tons of games on it. It could be, and has definitely been worse.
I’m reminded of how alone I am in New York City, and I think about how it’s a trap that, sure I have a nice room, in a nice house with my friendly giant brother that I don’t have to pay for but it always ends up in some insanely unhealthy shit show.
Sunday 3/23, noon
I’m glad I didn’t just post that where I left it. It’s not that I suddenly woke up not feeling lost and alone, in fact the stress kept me up all night.
What did change, is the idea that i’m not going to be feeling lost and alone forever, and like everything else this is temporary. I sat down with someone who works here at this respite care facility, and she asked me about what my goals were. Beyond the obvious situation that’s making me not want to be where I reside, we talked about how even before the last few weeks of wildly disruptive discord to most every aspect of my life, that I felt stuck. I felt stuck in various ways . one of the ways I felt stuck was: financially which is it’s own unique brand of stress. This led to us discussing the kind of vocational services that my housing agency can set me up with, and added that to the list of goals that i’ll be focusing on. I’m getting my phone situation squared away, and hopefully figure out how to get some money so that I have cigarettes to smoke while i’m over here, laying low, drying out and getting back on my medication.
The last post I wrote he (two weeks ago), mentioned that it’s been about five years since I came to NYC during what seemed like the end of the world (covid-19). Isn’t that funny? How quick I am to pronounce that the world is ending, and the sky is falling. I had good reason, then, to really think it was the end of the world though, after all I watched CNN for days on end before finding myself in a city that did very much resemble a disaster movie.
We are all standing on the other side of that apocalypse, the sky still above us, five years out. Eventually, i’ll find myself standing on the other side of what feels like the end of my little world, I suspect the sky will still be above me then, too.
In the five years since I came here to NYC , I learned so much about who I really am. I learned how to advocate for myself, because even though it feels like I could care less, something in me fights for a life worth living. It’s from finding that inner fight, in the summer of 2020 in a homeless shelter on an island off of east Harlem that set off a chain of events resulting in having people on my side who will help me, if I show up to help myself.
I’m a deeply troubled and flawed individual. I’m not ever going to claim that everything I've been through wasn’t in part due to choices I’ve made that put me in those situations. Plus, i’m a self centered, egotistical asshole. The thing is, I’m still here, which means there’s still a chance to become someone that I actually want to be. people are reborn multiple times in one life, in my opinion.
I’ve only just turned 39.
for the longest time I expected things to just go from bad to good, like flipping a switch on some linear chain of events.
“oh, I used to be sick, now i’m well…thank goodness, that was such a bummer”
It isn’t black and white like that. Nothing is.
Writing hasn’t come as easily to me as it did during many periods since I learned that I could do it with some level of proficiency, back in 2021 (another thing that I learned about myself in the last five years here in the city)
There were times when pages and pages just fell out of me, into wherever I could put them, I couldn’t even stop if I wanted to. When I was thinking about how stuck I felt financially, I was also reminded of how stuck I felt creatively, as a writer. I have this time here, in respite to try to see if I can unblock the writing block. Seems like I've been able to make a bit of a start.
There was something I was thinking, late last night that I realized has always been one of the main parts of why I took to writing in a public space. I thought there were interesting stories to tell, and I have a complex about seeking the approval of others for whatever reason. Sure, it’s cathartic, too to let some of this stuff out.
From page one though, I always had this thought, which is kind of dark. I have the most severe brand of alcoholism and chemical dependency disorder that one can have, coupled with the type of bi-polar disorder, that made two of my aunts commit suicide. People lose the fight to these things, every single day, everyone knows that, you could probably name five people that you knew, who aren't around anymore.
My thought was: if I did lose this life to these things . I wanted to leave some kind of mark on this world, somehow. It’s very morbid, but it’s always been in the back of my mind.
I haven’t lost yet.
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you can email me, I try not to use social media these days: Ev.penk7@gmail.com
