in reference to the last post

 

 

 you do sound a bit depressed. is there any way you can go to the doctor? is there a reduced fee or free clinic you can go to? if there is, it might be a good idea for you to look into it.  (Note off the last entry)

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In 1998, surprisingly, I survived a car wreck that, from the photos the fire dept. gave me, looked like it should have killed me or messed me up way worse than I am/was.

I was very grateful to have survived.  I had gotten a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and was pretty discomboobulated because of that.  My total focus for the first year or so was recovery, to recover enough to "get my life back".  I had returned to the US in 1996, newly divorced, determined to finish the college degree I had been working on.  I had about, at my usual class load, a year and a half or less to finish to get the degree, so, after stabilising a bit, and after therapy (which ended when the insurance lapsed, six months after the car wreck), I went back to Portland State University.

I was not able to stay awake and focused for more than three or four hours at a time (which increased as I lived and adapted to the injuries).  Whereas before the wreck, I had been able to hold down a full time job and go to school part time, after the wreck, I couldn’t stay focused long enough to go to school for more than one class at a time, let alone work, too.  I took one class a day, two or three a week, and was working nearly at my limits to comprehend and write my classwork.

My total focus was to finish the degree.  There were a couple of times on the bus home where I fell asleep and missed my stop; I learned more about that particular bus line than I really wanted to.  This is TMI, but for the first year or two after the wreck, and because of the brain injury, I had some problems – I had to be very careful about farting.  Occaisionally, it was a "wet fart", and, not to put too fine a point on it, I shit my pants.  Not being able to be focused for more than a few hours, and the occaisonal mess in my pants meant that I couldn’t hold down a job.

I could go to one class a day, and did.  Fortunately, I had taken most all of "the hard" classes before the wreck, so I was basically filling up the requirements sheet for graduation.  I went to the Summer Graduation in the Park Blocks in June, 2000, and finally finished the classes for the degree in December, 2000.

As time went by, my abilities to stay focused lasted longer, so after graduation and the end of my classes in December 2000, I applied for jobs and went hunting for work, and was determined to rebuild my life and go on with as normal a life as possible.  I graduated into an economic slowdown (Oregon’s unemployment figures led the nation in joblessness) and could not find any work.  By that time, the insurance had long since lapsed (I had to finish my recovery completely on my own) and Oregon had stopped paying me the hundred or so dollars in Disability a month that they had been sending me.

During this period, I lost the focus that kept me in school.  The joblessness rate kept me out of a job.  I had a kind of relapse and fell into Depression.  I live in an eighth floor apartment and have a balcony to hang out on, and that balcony was looking better and better as a way to end the pain and joblessness and hopelessness I felt.   I began thinking of jumping off my balcony.   I was scared of myself, for myself.

Since I was so poor, I qualified for The Oregon Helath Plan (which not so long later, imploded and ceased to exist) and tried to get some mental health help.  THE ONLY THING I WAS ABLE TO GET was drug and alchohol treatment at a court ordered facility.  I was THE ONLY PERSON THERE VOLUTARILY.  It wasn’t what I needed to get out of the depression, and I had to make up stories about drug use to even get in the door.  Those lies came back to fuck me over – Social Security looked at JUST THAT and said fuck you when I applied for disability.  I was not able to work for over four years after the wreck, but SS did NOT keep their side of the bargain and fucked me off.

(I’m vain and think that if any of those fuckers had gotten the same injuries that they wouldn’t recover and would suck the public tit all their lives.  Pussies.  I didn’t want or think I needed support all my life, just for the four years I couldn’t work)

The metal health treatment, lax as it was, helped me to stop looking at the balcony the same way, and the Zoloft prescription helped.  I found a part time job that summer (2002) and worked – I was so excited to have work again!  I was a "crowd management" guard at The Rose Festival, and going to work, staying up all day, and getting home and doing it again the next day for a few weeks made it clear to me that I could work again.  I was without a job again until Spring, 2003, when I began working at The Oregon Zoo..  That lasted 13 months, and I trasitioned directly into making the Daily newspaper deliveries (I had begun handling the Sunday papers in January, 2004.  I still have that job, eight or nine hours a weekend))

Depression and I have formed what looks like a life-long association.  It’s overwhelming me again.  I lost my school bus driving job through a rigged drug test (I don’t think I licked the right cunt).  That fucks Unemployment for me, and the economic situation once again means no jobs for me.  No job, no money for expenses, no Unemployment – when the insulin for my cat needs to be replaced in a few weeks, I don’t think I can.  It’s $108.00 a bottle, and I have to chose whether to make the car/insurance payment or my cat’s life.

The depression feels fully justified, but that doesn’t make it any more "fun".  At least I’m no

t looking longingly at the drop from my balcony this time…. but the spate of murder-suicides the last month is, in my worst momtents, inspriational.  People have fucked me over, some of them with malice, and it’s hard not to imagine killing them as messily as possible, especially the people who have maliciously ruined my life.

On good days, I remember this:  I deliver the news, I don’t make it.

 

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