I'm OK. Well, I'm alive, and have yet to be completely homeless (if this is being read by Certain Parties: Thank you! All I did was eat your food and bum cigarettes for two weeks and get in the damn way and more or less be an ass, but you guys were there when I was in DESPERATE need. It absolutely sucks that one of you wound up in your own need later and I had no way of helping, considering I'm still suffering from a lack of monies. Maybe, one day, I'll have my shit together and we'll all Laugh About The Past! In the meantime, I'm not a praying man, but I do wish deeply that one day you will know how grateful I am, and perhaps I'll even be able to return the kindness when the time is right). Of course, I might yet wind up completely homeless. The year is young, and I'm actually facing a deadline . . .
So, what happened since last we Diaryland folk met? I suppose I should start with "Once Upon a Time" . . .
Once upon a time, I did a Dumb Thing for all the Right Reasons. Ever do that? Yeah, I thought so. It seems like the kind of mistake good people make, and I try very hard to only associate with good people, although a surprising number of them will feign being offended that I would choose to characterize them in that way. But, that is neither here, nor there, so let us continue with the story . . .
So, this Dumb Thing, being actually a Monumentally Dumb Thing, knocked down all the dominoes of my little carefully-constructed, barely-stable-in-the-first-place life. It wound up ruining me financially, depriving me of the quality mental-health-care I was (far, far) more dependant on than I realized, convincing me to lie to friends ALL OVER AGAIN in the hopes that they wouldn't realize that what I had done had been a Dumb Thing and not something incredibly wonderful, pissing off my ONLY means of financial support to the extent that my name is damn near an epithet at this point, and forcing me to eventually ADMIT my life was once again falling apart and that I had lied and generally beg borrow and steal from my friends just to land (literally and figuratively) back where I started except with EVERYONE'S good will towards me COMPLETELY used up.
But, I'm not being harsh enough towards myself. In essence, I made a mistake, refused to admit it was a mistake, then, when I was convinced it was a mistake, proceeded to commit attrocities to cover up the fact that I made a mistake, and when the attrocities came to light I freaked out and turned on the waterworks (well, they were real, but, even so, that's a viciously manipulative thing to do) and had OTHER PEOPLE bail my sorry ass out of trouble. This is a War Crime. An attempted genocide aimed at eliminating My Entire Life. What punishment is fitting? Perhaps the Purgatory I find myself in, now . . .
Didn't the Catholic Church eliminate Purgatory? Or was it Limbo? I don't feel like searching for the answer at the moment, but it was something like that and my mind is wandering, so I'll return . . .
Now, I will speak a moment in my defense: There was a point about a month before there was no turning back from my chosen course that the money started running low, and I could no longer afford my Precious Pills, and I was not (and, in fact, still am not) in my proper mind by the time the attrocities were committed and then the manipulation of others into fixing MY damn problems.
But, if I hadn't been in Denial Alley when that occured, there were ways to rectify that problem and avoid the Lack of Pills. Alas, I was living quite happily in Denial Alley, and refused to admit anything was wrong, even to myself.
The details of my attrocities are unimportant. The Dumb Thing, however, was: Moving back to my "True Home" before I was emotionally prepared to deal with the "Real World", and before I had come up with any sort of cogent strategy for solving the "How do I make enough money to survive?" problem.
I'm back living with my ex-step-father again. He's the one who mostly uses my name as an epithet, and he's also the one who has given me until the first of April (the signifigance of that date does not matter to him) to Get Out of Dodge. I might not think he's doing these things for any other reason than his own neuroses, but I must admit the punishment fits the crime . . .
I work EXTREMELY limited hours at the store I worked at the last time I lived in town. The bulk of my (very, very) meager paycheck is taken by the essentials: getting to and from work, eating, and making sure I'm clothed and washed. The rest goes towards re-paying a debt incurred by getting caught stealing (ok, really, it was more like a clever shuffling of paperwork and manipulation of dates, but the end result was that I wound up with money that belonged to someone else, which is the definition of "stealing").
So, that's the exceedingly-simplified, Reader's Digest Condensed version of my current situation. The next time I update, I'll try to get to what I'm doing now.
Until then, it's good to be back spilling my guts out into the cyber-void, and I missed you all . . .
Sayonara, cats and kittens . . .