Remembering Mowgli (part 1)

      She chose me. I had gone to the Solano County Animal Shelter (the SPCA in Vacaville was closed at that time) to find a companion for Maggie T, a wonderful stray cat who entered my life six years prior. I was thinking about getting a black cat because I had just recently lost my Tuxedo cat, Herfy. Although Herfy hated every living thing (including Maggie) except me, Maggie missed having a companion around all day while I was at work as a clerk for Yolo Superior Court. Since the shelter closed at five each day and was open only Saturday mornings (I don't DO mornings, especially on my day off), I had to use this small window I had after being fingerprinted earlier that day for work. In any case, I was looking for a black cat.

     They had black cats. There were black cats and black kittens. I petted them all, even though I wanted to get a cat, not a kitten. I must be the only person in the world who loves cats but can't stand kittens. They are annoying. So I petted all of the black cats, but none of them had any personality. They just sat there. Some purred, some didn't. A big purr was a must for me as there is nothing more comforting to me. Herfy had a big purr and a BIG personality. I likened her personality to that of Cartman from "South Park". Because she was abused so much by both my mother and my brother, I was the only living thing she loved. One time, when my brother lived in Oregon, after my mom passed away, I went up there for Thanksgiving. I stayed in Herfy's bedroom. We were both stoked. My brother finally gave Herfy to me when she was eleven years old. He got tired of her whiny meow. I could understand as Herfy meowed whenever anyone spoke. You had to be talking to her of course because why else would you be talking?

     Back to the Animal Shelter. None of the cats in the first room seemed to care. I walked into the next rom, which was the last room that cats went before they were exterminated. Simply because no one would adopt them. Please, if you have a cat or dog, get them neutered. It is so sad to know that everyday thousands of dogs and cats are euthanized because there are too many of them. (Note: The Solano SPCA does NOT euthanize healthy pets.) There were a few black cats in the 2nd room as well, but none really jumped out at me. But there was one cat that did.

     She was seven months old. That's no longer a kitten, right? (I found out it's worse. It's a TEENAGER.) I put my fingers in the cage and scratched around her ears and she meowed. And purred. And purred some more. The purring was louder than the meowing and that was loud. She was silky soft, with striking golden eyes. As I went to look at the other cats, this calico/tabby, now known as a caliby, kept meowing as if to say, "Mom, I'm right here! No need to look at any other cats. I'm the one you want!" I could hear her when I went back to the first room. So I went back, scratched under her chin and the purr began rumbling. She wiped her whole head around my fingers, making sure only her scent was to be found.

                                                 She chose me.

 

Life in THE COLLAR

   

 

   I stink. I'm not putting myself down, but I really stink. I haven't taken a shower since Wednesday, July 3rd. Then I went shopping and sweated. It was near the end of the record heat wave. I sweated the next day too, though I had to turn the oven on and keep it that way a few hours to cook some killer (ask Christine Craft, she'll tell you killer is the right word) ribs. I have run out of clothes to sleep in because it has been so hot, I haven't left my apartment to do laundry. The laundry room isn't that far from my apartment, but I know I can't take a shower every day. I am in a tracheotomy collar and it takes a full day for the pads to dry after washing them. I only have 2 sets of pads. So the best I could do is take a shower every other day, but why? I've no place to go. I'm not allowed to drive and that's driving me up the wall. The girls run out of their cat food in 2 days. While Mowgli will be just fine on the dry food, Ming doesn't have any teeth. I have put water in the dry food for her but she won't eat it. She will eat the dry food between the two feedings of canned food a day-they split a can of food in the morning and at night, though I think Ming eats most of it. When she eats the dry food, she drops most of it out of her mouth, but will not eat it unless it's in the bowl. Weird cat. In any case, when she runs out of canned food, I'm going to hear about it. I already hear about it when it's feeding time and she doesn't have her bowl full. There is one flavor she doesn't like-the Salmon flavor-and leaves some of it in her bowl. I tell her I won't open a new can until she eats what's in there. I point to the bowl that has food in it. I will go into the living room and within a few minutes will hear her metal I.D. tags banging against the ceramic bowl. About an hour later, I will put fresh (canned) food in her bowl and she's a happy cat. I know she's happy because she purrs when she eats.

     

     But back to me. I stink. In the past year since I have been disabled, I haven't been too physical. You know the old saying, "if you don't use it, you lose it"? Since I haven't been up every morning to go to work, I have become lazy. Add in severe arthritis in my knees (really, the last orthopedist I saw took one look at my right knee MRI and said, 'how do you even walk? You have no cartilage there') and you have a middle aged fat chick who is not able to do much. Since my neck operation, where they shaved three discs, opened up the area around my spinal cord and fused two things, I am not allowed to lift more than ten pounds. But I have a life that needs living and I got tired of the big bag of garbage sitting in the middle of my small kitchen, so I took that and the garbage in the can, out about an hour ago. That just about did me in. I was going to shave my legs and take a shower, but I am beat after taking out the trash. I need to shave my legs because when I do laundry later today - I need to because all of the t-shirts I have been wearing are all dirty and stinky - I will be wearing shorts. And while most people could care less, I can hear my dearly departed mother's voice in my head, 'you want to go outside like that? You want people to think you're gay? Or French? Geez, why bother to shower at all!' Besides, I like the feel of newly shaved legs against my 600 thread count sheets. Which I also need to launder. I have about eight sets of sheets and they are all dirty. When I say dirty, that's what I mean. Like my body of late, I wait until my sheets stink before I change them. It's not that I don't like clean sheets, it's just that it takes so much out of me to change them.

    

     So I stink. Here's a funny thing: when they were releasing me from the hospital, they were showing my sister and I how to change the pads in the neck brace, actually COLLAR from Hell, and suggested that I wear tops that are open wide at the top. I, of course, came in a tie-dye t-shirt that was kind of tight around the collar, We got the shirt on over the brace and then the collar over that. I stayed that way a few days until I took a shower and put a regular nightgown with a big opening at the top. The pads rubbed against my skin and irritated them so bad, I have been wearing big old t-shirts to soften the blow. What I wasn't supposed to wear, has actually helped me. I found that ironic.

 

     I know I stink and I am tired of stinking. I have nowhere to go, so I will now change out collars, shave my legs and take a shower. Because I am tired of stinking.

When you Dance With the Devil, There Will Be Hell to Pay

"You don't know what it's like in here! You don't have any idea why I'm here! It's not all my fault! I was set up!"

     That was my brother screaming to me over the phone from Sacramento County Jail. He is there on a DEA hold. He was arrested Friday, April 12, 2013. They broke the door down and arrested him and are holding him without bail. He is being treated as some kind of drug kingpin. My brother has been smoking marijuana for more than 40 years.

     Of course I have no idea what he is going through. I have been a law abiding citizen since August 2, 1985. That was one day after I was arrested and charged with two felonies-Attempted Grand Larceny and Conspiracy and a gross misdemeanor of having burglary tools. My two friends -Tom, who was 19 and John, who was 17 (I was 21 at the time)- and I went to a famous used car lot (think Cal Worthington) on Kietzke Lane in Reno, after drinking all night long at the MGM Grand Casino. They were going to show me how to hot wire a car. I suggested we use my car, but John insisted that we would not get in trouble even if we were caught because his family was friends with the owner. We didn't count on a stakeout across the street. Apparently there had been a rash of car thefts in the city. John was right, the owner refused to press charges on any of us, but it was an election year and having detectives work overtime trying to catch car thieves costs a lot of money. Money that the District Attorney had to account for, especially since she was up for re-election. The judge, though, realized we were just hapless kids on liquid courage. He put us, Tom and I, on probation for a year (John was remanded to the custody of his mom because he was 17) and said that if we stayed out of trouble, he would drop the charges and we would walk away with one misdemeanor charge of Tampering with a Vehicle. We did stay out of trouble, paid a $300 fine and I have not seen the inside of a jail cell since those initial 18 hours. Unfortunately, the FBI didn't get wind of the dropped charges and they were on my record until April 2012, when I finally was able to get them changed. Which is probably why I couldn't get a job for three years. It's why I was fired from the U.S. Census. But all that is behind me and that is where it will stay.

     No, I don't know what my brother is going through because I don't break the law. Although I think marijuana ought to be legal, it isn't, so I don't buy and sell or grow it. I don't want to see the inside of a jail cell. Ever. Again.

     As for my brother, since he has been busted for the same crime two times before and has an outstanding warrant out for him in Oregon, the inside of a jail cell and soon the inside of a prison cell might be all he'll see.

     Because when you dance with the devil, there'll be hell to pay.

Homeless, Again? (Part 2)

     I can't count the times I heard, "God comes, but in His time." What does that mean? God created man and man created the means of telling time through calendars and clocks and such, so how can He come in His own time? Is there another time that humans are not familiar with? I understand that in the Old Testament, since that is when God created time, it may have taken more than a week to create the world and the accounting is more for something so that even the feeblest of minds can comprehend, but is there an entire different dimension of time that only God follows? It just never made sense to me. Until the morning of October 4, 2012.

     I had been awoken around 9:30 with a loud knock on the door and a sheriff's deputy (who was kinda cute, by the way!) accompanied by the manager of the apartment complex and the locksmith changing the lock on the door. I was being evicted for non-payment. The day before I had received my first disability check from Social Security and got a money order for the amount of September's rent, which was past due. I tried to give it to the manager but he refused because the eviction process was too far along. After having been homeless from November 4, 2010 to April 21, 2012, I was about to be homeless again. Not even six months after getting my own place, I was going to be a nomad, moving every other month or so. And my poor cats. Cats are not like dogs; dogs crave adventure while cats crave stability and routine. In the time I was without a home, they were first being taken care of by a couple, who then split with the main caretaker moving 600 miles away. The secondary caretaker was not good at taking care of cats and it showed. So in February 2012, after staying in one place for almost a year, they were taken to another place that already had two cats. It was kind of funny though; the second place was the neighbor of the crazy house I stayed in and their two cats names were Mickey (after Mick Jagger) and MeMe (because it was all about her). My two cats were Ming (a Siamese mix) and Mowgli (the girl-cat version of the Jungle Boy). Four cats all starting with the letter M. They could have monogrammed the entire cat collection of bowls, etc and it would have worked for all of them! But back to the issue at hand. I was going to be homeless, but what was going to happen to my senior cats?

     After finding out that the apartment complex would not accept my back rent the day before, I had rented a U-Haul and bought some boxes. However, I couldn't bring myself to put the boxes together. I had done some laundry the night before but they locked the room before I could get it out. (The week before I had put $30 on my laundry card, so I wanted to use at least some of it.) I put on my robe and went to the laundry room to fetch my clothes. While there, I saw a young family and found out they had just moved in. I tried to sell them my card, but they didn't want to buy it. I warned them about paying their rent on time, as the landlord didn't mess around. They didn't even care that I was at the mercy of the federal government as I waited for a lump sum from Social Security. After folding my clothes, I went back to the apartment to start my day and somehow move as much as I could out of my apartment and back into storage. 

     After reading my Bible and saying my prayers (as I do every morning), I sat down to have breakfast. About halfway through my yogurt, the phone rang. It was Jason at my bank. He was calling to tell me a large sum of money had been deposited in my account overnight. I told him that, yes, I know that Social Security had put my first check of $1510 in the account a day ago. He told me that there were two more deposits totaling more than $10,000!  I asked him where it came from and he told me  Social Security. The lump sum had come! In God's time.

     Because I couldn't comprehend in totality all that Jason was telling me, I asked what he was doing the rest of the day because I would pay him to help me move. He suggested I ask how much it would cost to stay there. Wow. I had not even thought of that. I would end up paying all of those costs anyway plus have an eviction on my record if I left. I thanked him and hung up the phone. 

     The day before, as I was leaving the apartment to go get the U-Haul, I met a lady who gave me a bag of groceries. She didn't know me and I didn't know her, but she said that she helped at the local food bank and brought extra groceries home for her neighbors. I was flabbergasted. Here I was, a perfect stranger, and she was giving me something she had worked for. Although I had plenty of food, I knew a lot of people who didn't. I figured I would give it to them. I thanked her and told her of my pressing issue of homelessness. She said she would pray for me. Later that evening, I went to her apartment and we exchanged phone numbers. When I got off the phone with Jason the banker, my neighbor was the first person I called to thank her for her prayers. Towards the end of that call, another call came in. It was the California Highway Patrol asking if I would like to come in for an interview as a 9-1-1 dispatcher. Yes, my life was full of cliches that morning. 'In God's time' and 'when it rains, it pours'. 

     My next phone call was to the apartment office where I asked if I could stay. I wasn't enamored with the place or its managing methods, but I signed a contract stating I would stay for a year and I don't like to break my word. I know it's old-fashioned, but I believe in a person's word. That is why I wanted to stay. That, and I would be able to stay in a place longer than six months. Six-thousand dollars later, I was paid up until the end of the year and in my apartment until April 30, 2013, as long as I paid the rent on time. I am waiting for a Section 8 voucher, so I would only have to pay $500 a month, but they have none available right now. But that's okay, because I am not homeless. I am where I am supposed to be, in God's time.

Footnote: I just realized, while writing this, that October 4, 2012, is exactly 20 years to the day since I was baptized. 

In His time.

Homeless, Again?

Now where were we...oh yes, that's right, self discipline. At least a blog a week. And now that I have the Internet at home, there are no excuses. Though I am certain I could think of a few.

     July 26, 2012 was the day I didn't pass probation as an Experienced Level Clerk (ELC) for the Welfare to Work Department of Contra Costa County. They don't need to tell you why you didn't pass, but I asked anyway. The main reason was that I was gone and tardy too often. If you know me, you know that I have been struggling with that last issues all of my 48 years. My mom used to say the only time I was on time was when I was born. My 7th grade English teacher wrote in my yearbook that I would "set the world on fire if I could only get there on time". What can I say? Her class was right after lunch and I like my food to settle a little bit. But more of that in another post. This was even worse. Since being T-boned by a careless driver in February, my left hand goes numb without notice. My back does the same. Imagine waking up at the normal time, but not being able to move too well because your back is numb. And dropping everything in your left hand because it decides to go numb whenever it wants. Things take a little longer. But you don't have a little longer. So the next day you wake up 15 minutes earlier and nothing happens and you could have slept that 15 minutes. Needless to say, I was late. That was if I could move. I called in sick way too many times because I could not move well enough to get ready for work, let alone drive 40 miles and work. The second reason I did not pass probation was my personality-too much of it in such a small space. I worked a full ten months after being out of work for three years. I didn't know what I was going to do.

     A few weeks earlier, I had received a letter from Social Security telling me I had a hearing on my disability case coming up August 8th. I went and stated my case that I essentially lost my job due to my disabilities. I hobbled into the room and hobbled out. I received a call from Social Security about three weeks later telling me that I had been deemed disabled from the date I originally filed-October of 2010. I needed to send in some paperwork, but would be receiving a lump sum from the back payments. Meaning, that if they had not denied me the first time, I would not have spent a year and a half being homeless. I was happy and asked when I would get the back payments. The lady told me as long as I turned in the needed documents within the next ten days, I would receive it in September. What a relief! I now had a way to pay rent and not worry about being homeless - AGAIN. All I had to do was wait.

     I was able to pay August's rent with my last paycheck, but September came and the third week into the month, I had still not received the lump sum, which I figured to be about ten-thousand dollars. I could pay a few months in advance! If only I had the money. The first week of September, after I had not paid my rent, I got a three day notice to quit or pay rent. I told the manager the issue and he said there was nothing that could be done about it. Then a knock came on my door one Sunday morning and I answered it, thinking it was the lady upstairs whose grandson loved to throw things downstairs onto my patio. Instead it was a process server. See what happens when you don't go to church?  I thought I had 14 days to answer the complaint, but it was only a week. See what happens when you don't read? The last week of September, a note was nailed to the side of my door letting me know that the sheriff's office would be by on October 4th at 6am to kick me off the premises because I did not pay September's rent. During the final week of September, I left a message a day  with the contact person at Social Security and did not hear back, so I went down to the office to ask in person what was going on and how could speed things up. She told me there was nothing she could do except move my payment from the end of the month to the 3rd. I told her about the eviction and that I finally had a place to live after being homeless for a year and a half and now I was going to be homeless again. (By the way, I could not go back to the crazy house because they have me labeled a "violent drug offender who can't follow rules". I have no idea how to get that bullshit off of there.) The other thing she could -and did- do was write a letter stating that I was waiting for the money from Social Security and there was nothing more I could do until I got it. 

     I came straight from the Social Security office to the apartment office and gave the letter to the manager. He asked if I had called the lawyer's office that was handling the eviction. I told him I had just received the letter and that I would. Two days later I called the lawyer's office. They didn't care. Come October 4, 2012, I was going to be off the premises one way or another.

     As October 2nd turned into October 3rd, I checked my bank account on my phone. My first check had arrived! There was $1500 more in my account! I was so excited I couldn't sleep. When I finally got up around noon, I went to the bank and bought a money order for the amount of September's rent, with the late fee included. I raced back to the manager and handed it to him. He refused to accept it. He said I was too far along in the eviction process and that nothing could be done. I offered to clear out my bank account with just enough to keep it open if I could stay. (Just to let you know, it wasn't that I was in love with the place or anything like that. I was just tired of moving. I lived in the same apartment in downtown Suisun City for 15 years before moving into a house with my upstairs neighbor. I was there only a year and a half when she gave me notice to leave. In the next year and a half, I moved four more times. I needed stability.) But the people who own the apartment complex didn't care. In their eyes I was a lowlife deadbeat who didn't pay her bills. I asked the manager to call his boss and tell him the unique situation and ask for more time. He said he would and that he would contact me later that day with the decision. A few hours later he called back. The answer was no. If I did not leave mt apartment the next day, I would be forcibly removed. I rented a U-Haul truck and bought 10 medium size boxes. I would get what I could in my disabled state and put it into my storage unit and rent a room at a cheap motel until the money came in. And I had just put $30 on my laundry card. I had gone shopping the night before. I wonder who I could give my food to? I called the cats' last caretaker and left a voice mail for her asking if she could take them in until I could find a place. These are the things that ran through my head the night of October 3rd. I did some laundry because it needed to be done and I wanted to use the money on the card. But the security guard locked the laundry room ten minutes early so my clothes sat all night in the dryer. Just another thing I had to deal with in the morning when they locked me out of my home and I once again became homeless.

     But I couldn't bring myself to put the boxes together to start packing what I had barely just unpacked. I was frozen. I prayed, but I still felt hopeless and lost. Many people who are homeless got that way through their bad decision making. Was that me? Was I always going to be chronically homeless because the industry (radio) that chose me to employ had lost more than 50% of its jobs? Was I a bad person? If I wasn't, then what went wrong? I escaped the crazy house, on their terms, but I escaped anyway. For what? To have dreams of being self-sufficient only to find out I wasn't? And what about my girls, Mowgli and Ming? They wouldn't leave my side since I brought them home. Now they were going to be homeless again too because their mommy couldn't make the right decisions. They were going to be homeless again because their mommy was a failure. I couldn't put the boxes together because I was falling apart.

     Because my clothes were being held hostage in the laundry room, I fell asleep naked on top of my bed. Six o'clock in the morning of October 4, 2012 came and went and no knocking at the door. I finally allowed myself to sleep.

     BANG! BANG! BANG! "This is the Sheriff's Office! We are here to let Lynda McMahan know that she must vacate the premises!" It was 9:30am and my front door was wide open as a locksmith changed the locks and the manager just stood there. I yelled that I needed to put something on, could they wait a second? I tossed on an old nightgown and went to the door. The sheriff's deputy explained to me that I had until 5pm that day to get my stuff out of the apartment. If I was unable to get it all, the apartment manager would store it for me at a reasonable rate. If I failed to vacate the premises after 5pm, I would be arrested for trespassing by Suisun City Police. The locksmith has changed the lock and my door was to be left unlocked for the remainder of the day. Did I understand this? Yes, I answered. They left and I closed the door. It was really happening. I was going to be homeless again.

Self-Discipline Can Only Help So Much...

     Another long time no see post. But that is going to change. Who says one has to wait until the New Year to make changes? I am making a pledge to you, my readers, that I will post at least once a week. I would like to do that three times a week, but as I am still not hooked up to the Internet @ home and it's not easy to write a post on my BlackBerry (I'm on my fourth one in less than 10 months), I will promise a week.

 

     In order to make one's life better, changes need to occur. I know my weak spots, my main one being lack of self-discipline. I always joked that if I was self-employed I'd be homeless because of my lack of self-discipline. I've already been homeless and I think after that journey, self-discipline ought to be a piece of cake. Speaking of which, were you going to eat that last one? Look at a picture of me and you will know I have self-discipline issues with everything, including food. Remember the See-Food diet? Where you eat all the food you see? It works! Except that you gain weight instead of losing it.

 

     I just came back from my first airline trip in four years and the bigger me had an effect on my comfort and the comfort of my seatmates. I felt so bad on the first leg out, which was a four hour flight from Sacramento to Minneapolis, that I told the person sitting next to me if he wanted to eat anything, I would pay for it. He wouldn't let me do that. It was the only thing I could think of to make up for my flab encroaching into his space. The second leg, which was only an hour and a half, was not as easy. The lady sitting next to me was above average in her late fifties or early sixties. I made her the same offer and she just about had a fit. As if I had no right to breathe the same air as her because I was so fat. The entire flight she sat there with this angry smug look on her face. Poor woman. Being angry like that only hurts you, not the person you are angry at. On the flights back home, I tried to upgrade to first class because those seats are bigger, but both flights were sold out. The agent did allow me to sit in the exit row, which is bigger. Many airlines won't let anyone who uses a seat belt extender to sit in the exit row. Something about big people not being able to help others out. Sorry, but when my adrenaline flows that hard, I can do anything. Well, most anything. Don't think I could acquire self-discipline.

 

     I have been in my apartment for more than a half a year, but still have not: Put my bed frame together; put my dinette set together; or emptied out my storage unit. All of those things take more than self-discipline, they take physical strength and I just cannot do that. The medication I am on for my aches and pains puts me to sleep 18 hours a day. I hate it, but if I don't take it, I am in pain and cannot function the time I am awake. According to the federal government, I am disabled, yet I cannot get health care until March of next year. Well, I do have Medi-Cal, but there is a $1978/month share of cost. Yeah, I essentially have no health insurance. Which means I cannot get the spine operation I need until next March. I cannot get the knee injections I need every six months until next March. I cannot have my left ovary (I have never hated a body part as much as my left ovary. The pain it has caused me since puberty is worse than all the other aches and pains put together) removed until next March. So I take my pain meds, sleep 18 hours a day and wait for Medicare to kick in. Meanwhile, I have brand new furniture that is not being used because there is nowhere to hook up a television set in the living room for the time being. My couch serves as a place to put stuff until I can get someone to help me put it up, such as the cat door and the automatic litter box. Do you think self-discipline would help get these things done? I am willing to pay people at this point to come help me, as I know my limitations right now.

 

     So look forward to reading a post a week from me at the least. In the meantime, know anyone who can help turn my apartment into a home? All the self discipline in the world won't do it.

Me and Pain Don't Mix

I am a drug addict. According to a friend of mine, since I am taking narcotic pain relievers, I am a drug addict. I am no better than the homeless person begging for food but really wanting money to pay for his/her next fix. Because I am a drug addict, I am also a liar. Even though I have admitted many times over the past few days, since this subject came up, that my body is addicted to the pain medication, my friend insists I am lying to myself and others by not coming clean. What?

In 2011, I lost a friendship that I had cultivated over the course of six or seven years. Why? I made a joke about drugs. Having grown up in the 1970’s in Davis, illegal drugs abounded. Heck, most of the ceramics waiting to go into the kiln at my high school were bongs and pipes. That’s just the way it was. We wore red t-shirts that said “Enjoy Cocaine” instead of Enjoy Coke. There was a place set aside in front of the school for people to smoke cigarettes and anything else one might have. My brother was the biggest weed dealer in town. I had tried most illegal drugs before graduating high school. A good majority of the kids had. It was part of our culture. Think “Fast Times at Ridegmont High”. I graduated the same year that movie came out. Joking about drugs was just part of our DNA.

But this particular friend had served as a prison guard for almost 30 years. In her mindset, anyone who even thought about marijuana should be locked up for life. I know you are wondering what brought us together. We had similar thoughts on politics, though I leaned libertarian and she leaned right wing. She had told me that people who talk about drugs do drugs and therefore should be in prison. She didn’t even take aspirin. Which was fine with me; if she wanted to be in pain, well that was her problem. Me? When I was fertile I joked that if I found out I was pregnant I would get the epidural then and there because I am such a pain wuss.

One day at a meeting we were both attending, I made a joke, loud enough for everyone to hear, about pain medication. Most of the room laughed. She didn’t. In fact she took me out to lunch and told me off, that she did not want to be around drug addicts. Because in her mind, if a person talked about drugs, they must be addicted to drugs and need to be in prison. She didn’t want guilt by association.

Fast forward to my current friend. Once again, we became friends because of similar political views, though I am a little more libertarian. I ran out of my narcotic medication early yesterday and started going into withdrawal symptoms of shaking and sweating. It is not pleasant. Plus, I am still in pain. I mentioned that to her in a text message and the next thing I know she wants me to go to Betty Ford because in her eyes I am a junkie. Like I said earlier, I know my body is addicted, but my mind is not. If it was, I would be going house to house stealing whatever wasn’t nailed down in order to get my fix. Instead I am waiting for my doctor to split up the prescription because I have no insurance right now (so much for checking “urgent” on the box when I applied for Medi-Cal) and $40 to my name. My pharmacy will not sell me 40 pills now and the rest when I get some money, so I am waiting for my doctor to split the script. In the meantime, I keep getting texts from my friend telling me she knows that I am a liar, but that it’s the drugs that are making me lie. She said she doesn’t take any pain meds because she wants to live a long life. That’s great- for her. For me, a long life in pain does not sound like a whole lot of fun. A short life, lived pain free, is more my option. But in this cookie cutter world, we all have to be the same.

It’s sad, really, that people can’t just let people be. I know my issues. I know that after I deal with what is causing the pain and I am no longer in need of pain medication that I will have to wean off of it. But in the meantime, I just want to be out of pain. For now.