Things are just not going very well. I think group home staff thinks I’m “over” being completely traumatized in March, as though they can do whatever they want and it’ll blow over eventually. But no, I’m not over being expected to just accept that part of being in a group home is I don’t deserve basic personal safety. And I’m not over them being horrible to me afterwards about how they didn’t appreciate the way I spoke to them when they had abruptly forced me into homelessness by doing nothing to keep the house safe. As though I’m supposed to empathize with how hard it is to be spoken to harshly, but they don’t have to empathize with what it’s like to be constantly trapped in my room because the people I share a house with are criminally insane. And weeks later, when I finally called for help from a clinician because nobody seemed to care if I got killed anyway, it was group home staff that came banging on my door, irate that I had made them look bad at work. There was just so much to the whole thing, so many small details that made it horrible. Like how it was “protocol” that kept them from keeping me safe, so if the situation came up again, they still wouldn’t keep me safe. I’m done bringing it up with them because obviously they are not going to change anything, and they are not going to care about the lasting scars that that episode left on me. The guy across the hall from me transferred from another group home, and I don’t even want to imagine what sort of sinister horrors he must have had to be involved in at his last group home to get transferred here. A staff member once told me that a previous resident had brought a gun into the house, pointed it at another resident, then returned to the house after a couple of months in jail. Apparently, nothing is illegal if you’re “mentally ill.” Which, part of my life philosophy at this point is that I don’t honestly care what a person’s intentions are; I only care what the effects are of their actions. So if you’re a quadruple amputee with cognitive impairment, and also a self-proclaimed Nazi with the life goal of killing as many other humans as possible, I don’t really care. You’re not a danger to society. If you’re able-bodied and most of the time you’re completely fine psychologically as well, but occasionally you go into psychosis and point a gun at other people, then unfortunately you are a risk to society and should be removed from it. Note that putting someone in a group home with staff who took a brief training course in lieu of relevant education does not remove people from society. They can walk out the front door and kill people. They can stay home and kill me.
So, basically, my life is on hold as I try to get out of this group home. I’m trapped in my room all the time because the official solution given to me by staff is to stay in my room with the door locked. Which there are a number of problems with. First, my door is just a normal inside door, not a steel front door with a deadbold. Second, I would die if I stayed in my room all the time. There is no plumbing, for example. So I dart out once in a while with my pepper spray hidden in a pouch. But I’m tired of just being unsafe constantly.
Second, I don’t like being associated with these people. I have never done anything illegal. Once, when I lived down south and they had cameras on the traffic lights, I ran a red light. And I’ve gotten parking tickets when I worked in the big city and it was ridiculously hard to figure out what street parking was legal on any given day (it almost took the precalc class I never took to figure out the street sweeping schedule). But other than minor traffic violations, I’ve been on the right side of the law for my whole life. Furthermore, I have a Master’s degree and am trying to build a life as an upstanding citizen. But I’m living in this house with people who use racial slurs, attack people, are constantly having problems with the police, etc. If anyone finds out that I live here, they’re going to think that I’m a danger to society, too. Everyone says, “Well you don’t have to tell anybody.” And that is true. I know that. I can’t describe how deeply I don’t want to tell anybody. And yet, I keep finding out that I have told things to people. I’ve written on here before about “dissociative word vomit.” My therapist said to tell my psychopharmacologist because maybe it was the meds. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the meds, but I confirmed this with the psychopharmacologist and he said it was definitely not a pharmaceutical problem and sent me back to the therapist. I’m doing the best I can with grounding skills. But all that to say, I don’t want to have to live here because it jeopardizes my career.
So I’m supposed to be moving to an apartment. They’ve been saying this for two months. I did not know that the apartment was still going to be for people with disabilities. I guess it makes sense because they don’t usually give subsidized housing to single people without disabilities. They don’t care that it’s an expensive state and I get paid less than the starting rate at McDonald’s, and I have absolutely no family to live with or share costs with. So until I’ve worked at my job for a full year (nine months from now) I’m just going to have to live in housing with a bunch of mentally ill neighbors. I’m over that. What bothers me is that the woman who is in charge of getting me placed in the apartment has suddenly gone offline. Staff says she’ll talk to them about other people’s cases but not mine. Nobody understands why she absolutely will not engage in any discussion of me or my apartment. So I kind of think it’s fallen through. I’ve been waiting for months and they just tell me that “there is no timeline” but I feel like there isn’t even a light at the end of the tunnel. Which, if there’s not, then they need to tell me that so I can take matters into my own hands. I used to live in a “rooming house” but there was no communal space. It was just a room in a building. It was in an extremely dangerous neighborhood, severely infested with various species of roaches and mice, and there was nowhere to cook, but I feel like it would be preferable to where I am now.
One time, Dr. X said that one of the most tragic things about my particular trauma story is that I want help but don’t know how it works or how to accept it. “When did you ever have a template for help?” he mused. It feels like it would be nice if I could somehow make this group home be helpful. I think the staff is well-intentioned. It also feels like they’re just waiting for me to slip up so they’ll have proof that I’m cognitively incapacitated. For Christmas, we each got a $25 gift card to Target. We had to use it asap and give the receipts to staff. There was a gray area that said to scratch it for the pin. I accidentally scratched too hard and it erased the pin, and the card was rendered unusable. I talked to the customer service desk at Target and they said there was nothing they could do. Staff thought this was a huge deal. I feel like I can’t possibly have been the first smart person who has made this mistake. Everything I do is microanalyzed for errors. And honestly, I have had suspicions about the agency that runs this group home since long before I moved into the group home. Not only have they done more harm than good for me from the beginning, but they contract with the Department of Mental Health to provide “services” to people with mental illness. They get money to do this. So obviously, they’re going to make it as hard as they can for me to rehabilitate myself. They have a financial interest in keeping me as dependent on them as possible for the rest of my life. I don’t think that the bottom-level individuals who they hire are in on this, but I do think that the individuals who they hire are almost exclusively people with absolutely zero background in psychology or social work, and who are looking for any job that will give them a work visa. They are vulnerable people. So the agency hires them and trains them and teaches them ways of looking at me and other “clients” in ways that serve the agency’s purposes. It’s not the workers’ fault. They aren’t even familiar with North American culture, so they aren’t going to figure out that they’re working for the Devil. But it does make it impossible for me to extract help from them because they learned all their techniques from an agency that wants me to fail.
So I know I’m bad at accepting help, but I also don’t think this group home is a good place to start. I could be wrong. I’m definitely unsure that I’m handling this the best way possible. But I also have no idea how to do this more effectively. It feels like accepting help from my therapist and doctors is going a lot better for me. I even am trying to get better at listening to people and being flexible in my thinking (both suggestions from Dr. X) and looking into opportunities at work. Apparently, instead of my paying for classes, they’ll cover everything I really need. I already got the classes that I needed to be hired paid for by the government, but apparently now that I’m hired, they’ll pay for like nine more college credits. I really wanted a Bachelor’s degree in early childhood, but that costs a whole lot more money and apparently offers zero career advantages other than the actual knowledge gained in the classes. From a credentialing standpoint, it makes no sense.
So I accepted that help. I just don’t like the mental health company that owns mostly everything in my ghetto-community.
Anyway. I’m upset about being stuck here in the group home because it makes me look and feel like a psycho, as well as being an unsafe environment. And my life is on hold while I’m trying to get out of here. But Mother’s Day is especially difficult. I constantly have dreams involving pregnancy. Whether I’m pregnant or trying to get pregnant or whatever, I’m always excited to be finally on my way to being a mom. It’s all I’ve ever wanted in life. So I woke up from that dream this morning and it was Mother’s Day and I am not a mom and I’m shunned by my own biological mom and I can’t even have my turtle because it’s not safe for him here at the group home so he’s off at the sitter a zillion miles away. And all of that makes me super sad. My body is aging, and my life is not moving along to match. Soon it will be too late. Getting out of this group home has to happen asap.
