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The best feeling in the world is being able to give something to someone that they need. I joined a group called free cycle. An e-friend gave me the link and I went ahead and joined. Today someone said they needed a plastic baby gate. I was shocked as all get out because I have a very nice gate sitting here doing nothing. And, I have a bunch of kids toys to give away too. Sheshh, I need to put this stuff on the group so someone can come and get it. It's good stuff that the person that lived here before me just left. Anyway, I was so happy to be able to offer this gate to her/him. I'll be smiling all day now. that probably sounds silly but I'm just happy that someone said they needed something and I happen to have exactly what they were wanting. After yesterday's spat with the food pantry and them telling me I couldtn come back for some bureaucratic reason it feels good to be able to find someone with a need that I can act on without stupid red tape and other unneccesary rules. Austin |
Monthly Archive for November, 2005
I’m exhausted. I need to lay down. I’ve got to take the meat loaf out of the oven and put it in the fridge. I’m having pie for dinner and then hitting the sheets. It’s been a day from hell!
I had a dream last night that the landlord died in a car accident. My mother told me I was only upset because he allowed me to live in such a nice place for less than I’d pay elsewhere. She told me that I live here for what I can get out of the landlord and that I was only upset because he was no longer alive to let me take and take from him. Then she started bad mouthing him and saying he was a thief and stuff. I told her that he is a nice man. I started telling her some things about his likes and dislikes. She started saying he stole 10 pies from a church. I told her to get out of my house. She left. I was crying so hard because Barney was dead, not because I might have to move because he was dead. that really messed me up, that dream. The rest of the day was just as horrible because it was almost and extension of that nightmares. It was such a bad day that I couldn’t even journal about it for a time. When I’m too mad to talk or to write then I’m pretty mad!
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of Bureaucracy…..one nation under Bureaucracy, indivisible, with unnecessary stress and lack of basic needs for all.
Oh, say can you see why the fuck can’t I eat? Why do I have to smoke crack to have everything handed to me? Do I have to spread my legs to make you give me what I need? Oh say can that star spangled banner be fried for the land of the bleak and the home of much dread!
I’d like to know why it’s so hard to get basic things? I’d like to know why it’s so difficult to go to the same food pantry I’ve gone to for 5 years but suddenly I can no longer go there because the rules have changed. Today when I went to the pantry with my landlord they told me that I could no longer get food there because I don’t own the house I live in, he does. He can get food but not me. I told them that someone come to my home and asked what the living situation was. I asked the man if he wanted to come in to see that my part of the house is completely separate from Barney’s. He said “no, I believe you.” Well, who in the hell has ever heard of someone from a fucking food pantry coming by your damn house to verify that you live there? That’s bullshit anyway! He had me sign some stupid ass paper saying I talked to him. Then he told me to put a beware of dog sign on the gate so that if Cappy ever bit anyone I wouldn’t be sued for it. He said he got “tagged” just the other day when he went into someone’s yard to verify their address. Who in the fuck goes around verifying info for a damn food pantry? So when I got there today things went off without a hitch until the landlord (who takes me to the pantry) went to sign up for food. The last time they approved him because we told them we have separate quarters and that we hardly ever even see each other. We don’t share expenses or food or anything else like that but today they decided that only he can come there now and not me. They said he owns the house so he can get food but I can’t. I asked what changed from the last time he and I went there. The woman replied, “This time you got caught!” I said got caught doing what? I told you before what the living situation is. She acted like I was lying to get some free food. Well, you know what? I’m not a liar and I’m not a thief. So I told her that. Then she gave me some speech about how “people” are dishonest. I told her she wasn’t talking to “people” she was talking to me, the same person she’s known for the last 5 years! I walked away in tears because I couldn’t believe they did that. I went outside the building to have a smoke and calm down. Barney comes outside and says they announced my name over the intercom and wanted to speak to me in the back. I get back there and the same damn woman says to me, “well, you need to tell your landlord to legally register your half of the house as an apartment.” She said he probably didn’t register it because he didn’t want to count the income and he didn’t want to pay extra taxes and this that and the other. I told her, look you don’t even know him. you can’t say he’s dishonest when you don’t even know him. I told her I didn’t want to hear it and walked away. I turned around and I told her, if I had a bunch of illegitimate children, was a drug user and refused to work you’d be handing me more food than I could ever eat. You’d put me through school and in a house with little or no rent. But I’m not. I’m a decent citizen and that means I have to fight for every single scrap of food. She gave me some line about how rules are rules and that if she “allowed me to get away with this” then she’d have to let 200 other people “get away with it.” I told her that bureaucracy has no place in a food pantry and that I was finished with the conversation. I walked away. I walked away in tears but I did walk away in the middle of her sentence.
This food pantry starts off ever single damn “give away” session with a prayer, then the “I lost and now I’m found” song and then The Lord’s Prayer. But when they are finished with that show of faith they prove themselves to be like most Christians, full of crap. Anyone that tells someone one time that the living arrangement is fine and then two weeks later that very same person tells you that you’ve gotten caught being dishonest then they sure as hell better not start talking to me about the Bible.
This food pantry has the absolute best variety of products. They have cheese, all kinds of dairy products like eggs and real milk. They have chicken, beef, pork, fruit, restroom tissue, pads, lotion, soap, dish soap, laundry soap, and toothbrushes and just about everything else. You get to go in and chose 15 items. In addition to those 15 items you get free bread and a free dessert like pie or an already made cake. People go to this pantry because of what you can get. Well, since they “allowed” me to shop just one last time I walked away with a whole chicken, 3 things of yogurt, a 64 oz bottle of Ocean Spray Cranapple juice, orange marmalade, two things of eggs and a host of other stuff. But that’s it for me. I can’t go back because of their bureaucracy. For them to announce my name over a fucking intercom and then take me back in a frikin room to tell me my landlord is dishonest and that’s why I cant shop is just bullshit.
So my day has been one fucking ball of shit after another. The biggest ball of shit is that Barney has decided that we will split the points he has. So I’ll be getting less than half of what I was getting. You can only have one meat item and there is nothing he and I are going to agree on. Today he had so many choices like a pound of hamburger, a pound of rolled sausage, a whole chicken and lunch meat. He chose the damn lunch meat! He chose lunch meat over a whole damn chicken!!! I’m trying to eat, not snack. Lunch meat does nothing for me. I need my food to be warm or hot and lunch meat doesn’t fit either of those requirements. The free bread will have to be split between us where as before we each got our own bread. We eat separately. We don’t share our food! But now we have to split these points because they said we live as one household. Fuck that! No we don’t. I see the man only when I cook. This is bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit!
Like I said before, I took the meat loaf out of the oven and had a nice big slice of American Apple Pie. How ironic is that!!??
Saturday December 3rd
Barney told me that he would give me all the points to use at the food pantry because he felt i may need it more than he does. I haven’t even talked to him about it because I was too upset. I knew I’d tell him about his lazy self so I said nothing. I made a suggestion about how to split up the point system then he replied with the above. I was shocked because he was thinking of someone other than himself. I was also very, very thankful. I expressed that to him without including how upset I was about the whole thing. Self control paid off again. Thank goodness for that. Not going off on the Catholics proved to be a good move too. I sure wanted to tell them about themselves! I didn’t. I was more calm than I on the journal. On this journal I let loose and tore them a new one but in their face I was pretty calm. I didn’t curse one time, not to their faces anyway. Although I do not respect them or their god I will not be disrespectful in a place that is supposed to be holy, even if its as unholy as the water in the Mississippi River. I have respect for religion in general. They should be happy for that as well!! If I didn’t, I would have been all ghetto right there in the house of their broken lord!
Joan of Arc
I am so tired. After therapy I came home and crashed big time. I slept from 6:30pm to 9:45pm. My roommate called me to ask if I want to go to the food pantry in the morning. had he not called I’d still be sleeping right now. I did some work on his pc and got paid with 1/2 a slice of pecan pie. Lord! I’ll have to charge more than pie when I get this graphics thing up and going.
Therapy was draining. We talked about the homeless issues. I wanted to tuck my head and ball but I seemed to keep myself pretty contained. When I went in Cappy was all clingy for the first few minutes. He’d been that way all day. He knew Mama wasn’t feeling well at all. I was emotionally drained and somewhat dissociative. I guess I’m better than I was a few weeks ago because Cappy is back to his regular night time routine. He starts off in bed with me but when I wake up he’s on his pouch. When I was not doing well he slept beside me the entire night. He is a good way to gauge my true emotional state.
Well, I guess that’s all for now.
Austin
“Do you know what I expect of you? I expect you to be you. I don’t expect you to call me every day or to say certain things or not say certain things. I expect you to be who you are and if you don’t know who you are I expect you to find out.
So who am I? I’m the woman that appreciates comedy, nature and good conversation. I love my sunflowers, porcelain angels, antique Bibles and road trips. I like history, biology, literature, programming and other intellectually stimulating things. I’m the kid that stayed in to read the World Encyclopedia instead of sledding with the neighborhood kids. I’m the kid that preferred going to the art museum instead of the state fair. The one that started writing poetry in the 6th grade and abandoned meat when she was 8 years old. I was also the kid that listened to Elvis when everyone else my age was listening to Bell Biv Devoe. I was my own person then the same as now. I always will be and I have no time for people that are swayed by every turning tide.”
Knowing who you are is the most important knowledge you will ever have. As many of me as there are the one thing I can count on is knowing what I will and won’t do and what I want or don’t want. Even knowing these things doesn’t mean I’m going to make the right decisions or take proper action to get what I want. I’m just as unfocused as the next person. The difference is, I know I have a path and when I stray from it I have little pieces of bread to lead me back in the right direction. Man, I’m tired of screwing up and feeling like I’ve said too much or not said enough. I’m tired of nightmares and of my weight, of depression and anxiety. Those pieces of bread I speak of are reminders that it won’t always be this way. So when I go down the path of self destruction I can look back on past positives and find my way back to the direction towards the sun(flower).
I read other journals on the web and my heart goes out to the authors because they seem to have no hope and don’t know what to look to to find it. For some reason, a reason I’m grateful for, I have a spirit that just refuses to be broken. I think in my struggle to survive I forget that others are struggling even more. I forget that others have deeper depression and harder things to deal with. Talking to Mic last night really grabbed my heart. As much as I hurt inside this man hurts twice as much. I’ve learned to ask for help when I need it but some people just cant and they are alone with their thoughts and their nightmares. My heart goes out to them and I wish they could see the sunshine that I depend on.
I once said that the sunrise is a blessing of hope. When the sun comes up I have another chance to make this life work. It’s like a new day brings new hope and maybe, just maybe I’ll find a way to make this life a pleasant one. I can’t say I’m hopeless because as long as the sun rises I have another chance to put my own errors behind me and make my own choices as to how I want to live. It’s like climbing up hill all day and then you reach the top and look back to see all that you’ve climbed above and all that you’ve overcome. Then you meet the sun as it clips the horizon, and you know for sure that you’ve been given a second and a third and a hundredth chance to be human with all its positives and negatives.
Perhaps my thoughts of what the sun brings are a bit more complicated than others. But if you think about it, our lives depend on the sun working properly and rising and setting on time. Nope, I don’t worship the sun by any means. But I appreciate what it represents. The rainbow is a documented promise from our Almighty. Without the sun we’d have no rainbow. I see the two promises hand in hand. If I’m wrong about the sun being a good source of hope then please don’t tell me. If this hope is meaningless to others as well as harmless, then please keep me in the dark.
I hope others find hope in something, in something that will keep them going and sooth over old scars. Without hope we have nothing. Without other humans we have even less.
Austin’s August for Morton’s Pride on Sunflower Province
When I dream about nasty, filthy shit filled toilets I know there is some crap in my head that needs to get out. No laxative required! It’s gonna come out even if I don’t want it to. Good thing I have a therapist as a mental laxative. Sheshhh! I’ve been dreaming about going out on a boat and getting caught in the middle of a storm. The boat gets washed up on the shore and I’m stranded on a small piece of land about 100 feet from the shore. The only problem is, if I want to get to the larger land I have to swim through snake and alligator infested waters. I go from being on a storm tossed Russian fishing boat to being in an alligator infested swamp within seconds of the dream starting. Having lived in Texas and Florida I know better than to chance swimming even 5 feet across waters with gators or crocks. This last dream I somehow found myself with another survivor from the fishing boat. He or she was on the larger land but we couldn’t hear each other even though we were so close.The sun was shining and the sky was clear. I had plenty of fresh vegetation and I didn’t seem to be upset that I was stranded. Maybe I was use to it by then and being on a small strip of land in the middle of the swamp seemed like home. I was relaxed and chewing on a vine of grapes (which you won’t find in the swamp). Another strange twist was that the dream turned and the other survivor and I were inside a make shift wooden house with 15 other survivors. We were all waiting to be rescued. No one feared being stranded there forever. I didn’t know these people, not from the boat or anywhere else. We all seemed to get along just fine. Understandably people were bored and just sitting around talking and playing cards. We were all dressed and clean inside a make shift home atop a small strip of land in the middle of that same ocean. I dream this often save the other people. I’m not sure why it’s a Russian fishing boat though. The way the moon hits the water and the clouds streak the sky is one breathtaking scene just before the waves come and toss the boat like a second hand rag doll.
I slept from 3am to a few minutes before 9am. I don’t feel rested at all. I feel rather sick inside but not to the point that I feel like skipping therapy. The windy, cloudy day won’t make me feel any better but a nice, hot cup of Folgers will. Coffee time!
Me
More Brain Vomit with Emotional Diarrhea Looming In the Distance</strong>
28 November 2005
11:30 AM
I kept my word to myself. Most often, my word is good only when I give it to someone else. I tell my therapist that I will or will not do something and I stick to it. If I tell myself that I will or will not do this or that it means nothing. Tonight I kept to my safety plan after journaling about past homelessness issues. I watched Shrek, had the cat fish dinner and did some PC art. When I was shooting pics of my roommate for his singles profile I ended up taking a few practice shots of the windows. When I uploaded them I knew I had to a piece on Picture It Publish It. This is what I came up with.
I also talked to Mic. he was somewhat depressed tonight. He says that he is waiting for me to hurt him. I listened carefully. Part of me heard my own voice and another part of me thought he was being manipulative. My trust issues may have been telling me he was being manipulative. I can’t say for sure if he was or not. I think this man is so sad and lost. I think he works so much to keep from running into himself when he slows down. I think his heart is heavy but he doesn’t have the courage to ask someone for advice on how to lift it. I think he misses his mother so much that he just can’t stand it. Animals don’t replace humans but in his life and in the life of many, animals surround him and give to him what he thinks he can’t get from humans.
Slave Girl once said that she couldn’t believe Mic is so sad. She said he had so much going for him. Then she said that maybe I could be what makes him happy. I objected. I told her that there is no one that can fill the hole in a person’s heart when that hole is there for reasons such as his. There isn’t anyone on this earth that is going to come into my life and take away the nightmares or take away the past. I can’t be that kind of savior for anyone else either. What I can do is listen and support. I can give only what I have and that is a listening ear and understanding. But I can’t make Mic happy. Happiness is made up of more than one thing and that one thing is rarely if ever a single human being. I suppose her train of thought is what got her hooked up with Monkey Boy. She knew he was depressed and needy. She wanted to make him happy. Its a sad situation all around.
This piece that I’ve done is called “Walking Away From The Window” (the water mark of Sundrip Graphics is so people can’t just steel my shit) Both of the people in the picture are me. In therapy we talked about how I see through tainted glass and that looking through that makes it difficult to see the real situation. I see things through the eyes of the past and the past keeps affecting my here and now. But it is very hard to forget the past when pieces of it are everywhere. From the colour of an old Ford automobile, a tossed out Christmas tree, a bottle of Fego Rootbeer or the way my hands look like my mothers as I get older… it’s all a slap in the face from the past. It is my desire, my goal to feel less of a sting when the past slaps me in the face.
I’ve got therapy tomorrow. I need some sleep and a cig.
Austin’s August and Joan of Arc
Dignity and homelessness
Sunday, November 27, 2005
5:55 PM
Dignity and homelessness are friends the same as a lamb and a lion. When the people you hang with are the safest of anyone you’ve ever met it makes homelessness preferable to living with abusive parents. That is why I left home and stayed gone for so long. It’s why I left repeatedly. The biggest difficulties of my homeless experiences were roughing the elements and avoiding the authorities. Roughing the elements was the factor that sucked away self respect. Even if I found a dry place to sleep it didn’t mean that rats, mice, strays animals and such didn’t walk over me or by me. It didn’t mean that bugs fled just because I lay on the ground.
I’d seek cover from the rain in hidden areas, places you couldn’t see from the street. It would seem preferable to have the rain hit the pavement instead of directly on my head but the truth is, the rain brings out earth worms. When you sleep in the rain you sleep with the worms. When you’re hungry enough, earth worms aren’t such a slimy pest. But it makes that old nursery rhyme less than humorous.
On Suicide: The Living and The DeadA comment from a reader states:
it’s confusing sometimes…people tell us that we need to change and get over things..that we are ruining their lives-so we figure they are better off w/o us and in fear of ruining our families lives…we decide it just might be the answer after all. We hurt so much we are ready for it to be over…we don’t want to hurt anyone in doing so, but we are already hurting them now anyway. so what so we do? pray for death?
Austin says:
I thought I’d do an entry on this because it’s come up a few times in private 3D conversations as well as in a few journal entries of mine.
The biggest reason that suicide hurts others more than it relieves the dead is that the living are left with too many un-answered questions. As a survivor, I know that I take responsibility for faults that are not my own. I take on the burdens, the mistakes and the crimes of others and wonder why on earth I didn’t do this or that right so the situation would come out differently. I have found that this is a human response and not one that is primarily an abuse survivor’s issue. To illustrate this, let’s think about the surviving person of a car crash. Say everyone in the car died save one person. It is common for that sole survivor to wonder why he was left alive and why the others didn’t live. Even though the case wasn’t of suicide it still centers on a sudden and unexpected death. The questions that the survivor has are often haunting and life altering. He may sometimes feel he would have been better off had he perished in the car accident. Many times the grief that eats at our bones is worse than death itself. If you think about a person that is the survivor of a suicide victim the questions they have are much more intense and much more disturbing. (“Suicide victim” is the appropriate phrase. We are often victims of our own mind and it is from this mind that we seek refuge in death) There were most likely years of struggling with the victim and years of trying this or that to help them. When the person does take their life it may feel to others that they simply didn’t do enough to keep their loved one from suffering. Do you realize that you can never tell them exactly why you chose that day to die? You can never tell them that they did or did not do enough, that they did or did not understand you. The questions you leave behind and the grief that follows when there are no answers is to me, like passing on the grief I would seek to end. Yes, people would move on but I’d steel from them valuable days and nights. My mother stole the same things from me, sleep, happiness, closeness and peace of mind. Can I justify taking my life and passing on grief to another person who has not ever hurt me to the extent that my mother has? No. I can’t. I use to think I could. When a friend of mine killed herself a few years back it became clear to me that I personally can not justifiably take my own life. I’ve tried over 15 times. I’ve got about 10 serious attempts and at least 3 near fatal ones. I consider myself to be an expert on what doesn’t work!
There are many days when I think death would be better than living in my own mind. Of all the emotions I feel, anger, fear, depression and grief, joy and love, humiliation comes out on top by a land slide. This life I lead is humiliating. It’s degrading and many times it’s intolerable. Remembering what was done to me, remembering in my sleep and in waking hours, not recognizing myself when I look in the mirror, not recognizing my friends, my roommate, my dog, being afraid I’m going to run into my mother, just being afraid… it’s all so much to deal with that sometimes I think death would be better. But if I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger I take all my hardships and pass them onto people that don’t deserve it the same as I didn’t deserve to be hurt.
This will sound rather hypocritical or contradictory but I don’t feel that suicide is a selfish act. I think suicide is often the result of terminal mental illness the same as death is the result of terminal cancer. There are times when the body and the mind simply give out. In my opinion the word selfish has no place in the same conversation as suicide. Many times when a person takes their life they worry that their family will be better off without them. The struggles we go through in our head, in our hearts… it can’t be summed up on one word such as selfish.
I can’t tell another person that they should or should not take their life. What I can do is tell you my perspective as the surviving friend of a suicide victim. In death the victim leaves behind more grief than they feel they caused in life. I’d like to as my friend Berlin what went wrong the day she took her life. I’d like to know why I didn’t get to say good bye. I’d like to know if she thought there would be people that would be angry with her or if she wrote and asked people not to be angry with her. I’d like to know if she realizes that when she killed herself she gave many people the okay to follow in her footsteps and if she realizes that while she lie asleep in death I still cry and grieve for her?
You might be asking yourself, well, what about all she was going through? I know. I know so well because as I said, I’ve tried numerous times to take my own life. So I know what she was going through. I know what it feels like to need to die, not just to want to die but to need to die. And now I know what it feels like to stand at the other end and wonder what I could have said or done to make a difference.
So what do we do? You asked if we should pray for death. We should keep going. We should take each and every tiny victory and hold it tightly. We should understand each failing and recognize it as a part of being a frail human. We should reach out to other people and not be caught in our own world. We should understand that without connection to others healing will be retarded and dwarfed in ways it should never be. We keep going… and we keep journaling.
Austin
Chocolate girl says:
there are lots of ugly humans, but never one ugly animal. i get offended when i see the news casters make fun of “ugly” animals…not funny! yes, we have the dark humour thing in our household too…but never a word of truth in it. animals are what keeps me alive, saves me, run to me when i’m screaming and crying….my lil stress relievers
Austin says:
Yes, she is my little bugger. She’s the little kitty that sits on my shoulder while I type my stressful entries. It would be rather painful if Captain did that. She’s the one purring in my ear when I wake up and licks my eye when I don’t wake up fast enough. She is a sweetheart but the truth is she’s ugly! Her heart is wonderful but she is just an unattractive cat. This is the thing though, I’m fat and short but my heart glows and that makes me attractive. She is short and furry and it is her heart that makes her attractive. I love to watch her play with Cappy’s tail. I love to photograph her in the window and to watch her sit so royally with no doubt in her mind that she is the most beautiful cat that ever lived. Isn’t it self esteem that people notice first about another person? When a woman walks down the street dressed well and with her head in the air everyone notices her. She may be somewhat homely but her attitude, her presentation says, “I’m worth more than the skin I’m in.” Does it mean no one on earth would appreciate her physical appearance? No. But people seem to respect those that are well put together even when they are not the most attractive person around. This kitten comes in a package that isn’t the best but her presentation pushes her to the top of her kitten class. So, while I do make fun of her one eye and her hanging tongue in that other photo, she still captured my heart the day she was given to me.
I’m sorry if you were offended by the jokes I made about her. They were not to offend in any way. I was just messing around and having fun at the kitties expense. It is a good thing she can’t read.
About a week or so ago someone made a comment and I got into a bit of a tiff with her. I refused to acknowledge that she had reason to be offended by that entry. Do you know why I’ve offered a sincere apology to you? Because I “know” you and I know from your journal what kind of person you are. I “know” who I’m talking to and can take all things into consideration. With the anonymous person I had no idea who it was or why they said what they said. It is always important to me to take the other persons feelings into consideration. I can’t do that if I don’t know who I’m talking to. I appreciate having the chance to read your entries so that I could kinda get to know you. It is this reason that I feel comfortable letting you know that I had no intension of offending you. And to emphasize this gesture, Lake-a Gray will have tuna for dinner in place of her usual kitten chow.
Smiles to you and yours, 
Aussie
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