Turners Falls
A year ago today (9/24/08, the Wednesday), I ran away from the shelter here in Turners. I'd been there since the 15th, and they were treating me fairly shabbily, staff and "guests" alike, and I just didn't need it anymore. I was exhausted from the twice-daily walks down the canal and back, and from not being allowed to sleep once I got back to the shelter. So I left in the morning as always, taking the same things with me as I always did and leaving the rest behind, and walked the canal to the center of town for the last time. In the afternoon I took a bus to Greenfield, the hated place, but there was no place else for me to go in Turners.
In Greenfield, I spent a lot of time going in and out of the health food store. I'd hang there a while, then go out for a walk, then return. Mr. Matthew was there every time, in that store, wearing a snow-white shirt and playing cards with someone and popping himself in front of my face. When it got late enough that I had missed the last bus back to Turners, Matthew, boy genius, no doubt figured out that I wasn't going back to the shelter. And despite the fact that he popped himself in front of me for 3 or so hours that evening, he never offered for me to sleep at his place. This man in love.
I sat around on picnic tables and benches once the health food store closed, sat around, used bathrooms in bars as long as they stayed open, and then they closed too. I was sitting in the veterans mall wondering if I'd lie down on one of those benches, when a guy I knew slightly (I'd been seeing him all over Greenfield since March, and I know his name) came and sat down to chat with me. Somehow he knew that I had no place to sleep that night, though I hadn't told him. After beating around the bush for a while (I pretended I didn't know what he was trying to say), he came right out and said that I could stay at his place if I "fucked" him. I said no, but he kept at me a while. "You'd rather stay outside than have sex with me and be warm?" The short answer is yup, but I gave him a longer one. After at least a half an hour of this, he gave me his number and told me that if I changed my mind to call him. I didn't change my mind. I was drowning, once again, in the milk of human kindness. Matthew, who loved me, wouldn't take me in. And G. would only get me in out of the cold if I had sex with him.
After he went away, I found a raised square of cement attached to the back of the old police station to lie down on. I had a thin throw-blanket with me, but it did little. I froze, and I only slept about an hour.
The next morning, as I'd done in New Hampshire, I went to the ER to get wrapped in the heated blankets and sleep a couple of hours. After that they released me and told me to call the respite when it opened and see if they had a bed. They did, and they took me in, but very grudgingly this time. I was there from Thursday 9/25 to Tuesday morning 9/30.
Memories. Anniversaries. Of humiliation, of shame, of being screwed already by the DMH that allowed my home and my whole life to be taken away, and possibly also screwed by my "protectors." And certainly screwed by the man who professed to love me. Trauma, all of it, for the reclusive, sensitive person that I am.
Well done, humans.
On yet another ugly note, while I was outside waiting for this place to open, the psycho-chick drove by. She who was my neighbor. She with the organized crime connections. She who relentlessly harassed me for 17 months. She who is not in jail and has lost nothing, while I have lost everything. This place opened 5 minutes late. If they'd opened on time, I wouldn't have had to see her. Trigger of trauma, trigger of enormous pain, and rage.
