Further

This is old news. 

I was in a car wreck and was pretty messed up and it took me a long time to recover and to get to work.  It more or less worked out positively and the last few years, each has been "better" than the last one.

It hasn’t always been a positive experience though.

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When I woke up in the hospital, I was determined to get my life back; even though it had been sucking big time, I wanted my life back.  To get that, I had to focus most of my scant attention on re-linking things in my mind and reforging new ways around old but cut-off blocks.

Part of my determination was to finish what I had come back to the US to do, get my Bachelors Degree.

I had been working as a janitor days and took classes at night a few days a week.  The state rehab people wanted to get me back to the job I had before the wreck.  I did not want to be a janitor, a custodian, or anything like that, so the rehab effort was, ahem, less than successful.  I told them all along that what I wanted and needed to do was to go back to Portland State and finish the degree.  In one last try, the rehab people enrolled me in a St. Vincent de Paul office training program.  At that point, I was not playing with a full deck – I was still recovering from the brain injury.  The St. Vincent people all but laughed in my face – "no way you could do that!"

I had a meeting with the rehab couselor they had transferred my case to, a relative stranger to me (this happened a few times- just a job to them, woried about their retirement, which at that time, was being refigured, state benefits being out of line with most other people’s and costing the state billions)  He and I agreed that I should do what I thought I needed to do, go back to school and that would help my brain get reconnected.  He told me to apply for Finacial Aid, which I had never done before.  I had always paid my own way, but I was totally broke, so I bit the bullet, applied for, and received a grant from the state.  I did what the rehab counselor advised me to do.

In return, the food stamp people said "we don’t support students" and cut off my food stamps.  The grant was enough to pay for the most of the classes and have a little left over for books.  They asked me if I wanted any loans and I said, really, "fuck no".  I was not about to take on any debts I had no idea – none- if I could repay.

My former wife and family in Japan stepped up and helped me out, since the state, county, and feds would not.  It gave me a real case of heartburn to listen to these fucks lie about how they helped out the poor and needy, because when they looked at me, they saw a white guy, one of the supposed favored class, one who did not look injured or act like their conception of a brain injured person acts.  I don’t and haven’t drooled, and this late in the recovery, I have no trouble with keeping my wastes until the right time and place.  There was a brief time after the wreck when my body had to relearn some thing that seem so basic, but when they are not there, are really significant.

I developed an attitude, but I was going to school and paying most of my attention to that.  I had enrolled in 2nd year Japanese, having taken the first year, then moved to and lived in Japan, and I found that one of the "deficits" they told me about was my visual memory. I could not for the life of me remember and learn the characters of the Japanese alphabets.  I had to drop that class, which was some upsetting.

I started back to school in summer 99, and graduated the next summer (with a 3.03 average, down from the 3.86 I used to have, pre-wreck).  School had given me focus and drive, and when it was over and done with, I was lost.  The economy had tanked here in Oregon.  The unemployment rate was the highest in the country.  No one wanted to hire a 36 year old recent college graduate.  No one wanted to hire any kind of janitor or custodian.  My drivers liscense was suspended for years longer, so there was little I could do that I knew how to do.  And I still was not fully recovered from the brain injury.

At first, after the wreck and the hospitals, I had been SO happy I wasn’t dead or crippled, and that sustained me through college and a little after, but with dozens of resumes and applications out and no reply, I began to despair.

Why the fuck did I survive if this is the shit I’m gonna have to eat?  The thing that had driven me over the edge, that bogus child support thing would not leave me alone.  They had all my medical records and KNEW how lucky I was to even be alive, and knew I couldn’t work, but kept billing me anyways, siccing bill collectors on me and raping my sanity.

I live on the eighth floor of my building, the top floor.  I have a good view.  I began to look seriously and interestedly at that eight floor drop – would it kill me?  Could I be done with this shitty life?  I wondered…. What about the train?  Or a bus?  I could just step out into their paths and be done with this bullshit.

I got really worried about myself, so I tried to use the Oregon Health Plan benefits I had at the time.  (that whole thing has been gutted)  I looked into the mental health services that I could get to on the bus, but none of them were really what I needed, since they were basically court-ordered services for criminal driving offenses and incapable parents.  The entrance paperwork they gave me clearly indicated that I had to have a drug or alcohol problem to get any kind of help, and that I would have to fit myself to their mold to get it.

I embellished some stories and told some that weren’t necessesarily "mine" and got enrolled in their "Depression and THC" therapy workshop with the promise that once I finished that I could move on to their "Grief and Loss" workshop.  They gave me a prescription for Zoloft and set me up to come two or three times a week.  I was the only person there by choice.

The drugs and the renewed perspective they gave me and the perspective I gained from hanging out with people that were worse off than I was (and likely would be all their lives) were the primary benefits of that experience.

I am shortening this nine or ten month experience because it was not something I want to remember. The end result was that I ended up getting a dose of "schadenfreud", looking at everyone else there.  Thank god that is not me or my s

ituation – ya know, compared to these people, you got nothing to complain about – that kind of thing.

That, and the Zoloft, helped me to regain some perspective, but what really did was finally getting back to work, even if it was just a summer job (summer of 02).  It has been, for the most part, a climb to better things.

For the most part.  This minivan not working is underscoring just how tenuous this position is.