Alone. By choice. I’ve decided to be alone. It’s easier for me to decide to be alone than to risk being discarded or abandoned yet again. The feelings of unworthiness and being tolerated by others only if I am that girl I used to be is more than I can tolerate.
You know…that girl! The one that never stopped. The one who was always there. The one that continually took care of others for years and years, but God forbid I can’t pull it together physically to take care of myself, let alone the shame of when I have mental disasters.
It’s really not surprising I have no self-esteem left. What an embarrassment I am. I’ve been homeless for 5 years. Yes, I have had a roof over my head, but no stability. I hop from one place to the other trying like hell to be worth at least enough to live on. Yet, for a variety of reasons, I can’t seem to manage. I can’t even manage to do what is required to keep my trailer somewhere and earn maybe $300 a month for my basics.
It seems I have a 6-7 month window. I go in doing my very very best trying to make a good impression, and then when I have a bad pain day (which is the primary reason I’m in this situation) or my depression flares up and they ask me to do something I can’t hardly do on a good day, they (whomever is my landlord) become disappointed and say things like, “well, it’s obvious you can’t manage the work here so you need to move along”.
Recently, where I have been parked for the last 9 months (a record), no one has said that, yet it’s been like a big billboard in my front window for a few months now. I really should have left back in April. Before I started the gardens. Before I felt vested in things I was doing on the property. Before I got a cat, or started feeding the hummingbirds or planted flowers for all the other bugs.
I feel so dumb now. I should never have believed that I might truly have some security and stability. I never have had it so why should anything be different now? Especially since I can’t maintain the performance that the world requires of me in order to do more that just get by.
I have to laugh. I remember so many people saying if I would just stop gambling I could have the life I always wanted. Well guess what, I haven’t placed a bet in 6 years and 5 months (in 5 more days). I have worked my butt off recovering from a disease that nearly took my life. In the mean time, the person in charge of my medical care has done a great job of getting me dependent on pain pills and anti-anxiety meds and pills for my muscles and pills for my depression and pills for allergies and pills for diarrhea from my allergies and meds for constipation from the pain meds. That’s just the prescription things.
So, on my own I have weaned myself off everything except for the anti-depressant and one Xanax (anti-anxiety) at bedtime. I do still occasionally need my Lomotil (prescription anti-diarrheal) because I still sometimes try to eat at somewhere new and invariably it gets me or my nervous anxiety causes it. I have one Xanax left. So…that leaves just one medication daily and one for as needed.
Guess what? I’m not living the dream. It’s always just beyond my reach. It always has been and it isn’t going to change anytime soon. The big sign that continually flashes before my eyes says “That isn’t for you”. Stability and relationships that last and managing to live among others is out of my realm. It has been since I was less than double digits in age.
I can’t ever be what has been expected of me. So I’ll be alone, and try to figure out who I really am.
Ms. Ladybug and her Layers 