It’s My Life

Substantial progress has been made on a few fronts, notably the existence of this WordPress post. I thought I had this account at least partially set up, but reaccessing my dashboard on WP was not possible. I paid $150 for some expertise on the matter, only to learn WordPress isn’t free. $25 a month isn’t terrible, and probably paid for some SEO. That was a lot of money for me, but it could/should be worth it. I am finally in a good home that I will treat with the much-deserved respect it has earned. My task list is great, but one thing at a time, with assistance from Chat GPT as my strategy. One thing at a time has remained difficult with overanxiety. I’ve made monumental errors for quite a while with impetuousness, so my hole is deep. The process of elimination will eventually handle that, and I feel somewhat ready. My main task is to recover as well as I can, with personal documentation here. My health is better than it has been in a few months. I’ve lost my Kaiser health coverage (out of district), but Aetna Insurance was purchased today, and the local hospital is there when needed. I’m in a town that is exactly the type of southern town I’ve desired. The Green Belt gets me to most places on the e-bike. I pulled away from my long-time work desires while living in a ramshackle trailer in a ramshackle town in the winter, but things are working now, and I’ll begin angling for a job in short order.

I have had a couple of jobs this year, with decent results. The one that I stuck with, Martin’s, did less than zero towards legally required reasonable accommodation until I left. I’m obviously more comfortable in a restaurant job, but I believe there are numerous job opportunities around me, with Food Depot, Target, and a few others heading that list. Not too long ago, I thought my window for labor may have closed. I figured I had about five years of labor left in me, about six years ago. I was steered away from the job search until I arrived at the single good home I had experienced before this one. I handled my business while there somewhat well, but recklessly. I then made my Bethlehem, GA. mistake, leading me through a few more unhealthy stops. I lived because I’m a fighter, even in my now diminished state.

Money should hold up okay this month, but I’m greedy. After rent and the book, I’ll still have about $700 to play with. My intention for this blog (and however many others) has been, and remains, to journal my recovery. That recovery hasn’t gone well, which has kept me in a bad mood for a long time, but I’ve hopefully countered it well with comic ability. I probably countered it poorly a few times in the process, but the spirit was there. I tend to stay alone these days, but I trust in my communication skills (with actual people). 
My knee has improved substantially, and I don’t smoke or drink. CBD is still on my plate, but towards the back now. With just a little bit of luck, I will actually be earning income soon enough. That would be good, but having a place to go and a job to do should give me the human interaction that I’ve enjoyed and capitalized on. I have enough money, I think, to get by. Food is less of an issue with no molars, but I’ve learned to eat without them. I’ll not touch anything my roommate prepares, because I’ve seen it, which at least gives me confidence that some people can survive on mush. I will be of use here, but not how I prefer. When out, I see things that I want but don’t need. I return home to find more than expected, and my good sister has set me up very well. I could use a break, but Courtney has earned hers. She has a good full-time job now and should concentrate on her own happiness for a while instead of laboring for mine, as she has now for years. I doubt that I’ll acquire the patience needed, because patience has never been my forte, especially with a TBI. But I am in a decent home in a beautiful town, and patience will come. A job and money will help, and I’ll put my impatience to work, which does exist. I always have to do things right now because of my work history, which has served me well. Today was rough, but those days are normally followed by exceptional days. My narcissism tends to follow that up with a bad day, but I rebound well every time. Now, if I may, I’ll mention what I escaped from. An untold number of behavioral health institutions and a very long string of quite clearly inadequate disabled homes. I lost the family that I was once proud of. But I hung onto the computer and the electric bike. I’m in the best town ever, with a roomy that is appreciative. I may or may not get a job now, but nobody is telling me that I would lose my SSD income anymore, and that bitch can sue me for a blog, as ridiculously threatened back when my blogs were pleasant, at her own leisure. If I learned anything, it is how to take a hit. My other brother is thought to be a bona fide bad-ass, but he’s not; I am. Those who haven’t seen that aren’t paying attention. The bona fide bad-ass made a real bad-ass out of me. This will be enough hate speech out of me for today, but there will be smaller nuggets, just nuggets, of animosity for quite a while. I’ll be nice, but not very.

Traumatic

I incurred a traumatic, sheared axonal brain injury in 2019. Neither my family nor I followed the doctor’s warnings on the injury of increased patient temper or failures to communicate with confidence, but peacefully. Situations developed to where I was no longer welcome to stay at my mother’s home. I stayed with a kind-hearted sister for a weekend before I took an older brother up on an offer to live with him in Texas. This brother works out of town for weeks on end, but I was allowed to stay in his home with his girlfriend at the time. Upon his return, I was verbally accosted for a claim that I had snuck into the woman’s bedroom, where she woke to find me hovering over her bed. This accusation was accepted as false by all members of my family, save said brother. Within a month, I was shown by them where to move at a good price. During this time, I had begun blogging about my childhood’s positive events, but also about my daily life, which had become more negative. My family took some offense to my sharing of family stories, but greater offense at my coverage of daily goings on. I became nervous about riding my electric bicycle around the same town that my brother, an especially combative Harley gang member, might treat me poorly in any encounter, notably a street encounter. So I bought a plane ticket back to Georgia to stay with my sister for an undetermined amount of time. To do this, I would have to sell the electric bicycle that was gifted to me in Texas because its batteries are not allowed on commercial flights. I met a kind pastor there who was instrumental in finding a discounted buyer for the vehicle and also offered me a ride to the airport, several towns away.

I returned to Georgia and my sister’s, where her boyfriend put me in contact with a man wanting to sell his electric bike. I purchased the Darth Vaderesque-looking and more off-road-feeling Imperial Stout for a thousand dollars. My sister lived in a beautiful area, and I enjoyed the Stout, immensely. My sister had turned me on to CBD while I had still been staying with my mother. Incidentally, it was my mother’s discovery of my CBD use that led to my having to leave my mother’s home, despite Fareed Zakaria and the general opinion of doctors that it was useful to my injury. My sister had been an accomplished user of THC and was not considered the sharpest knife in the drawer. I had been injured in a drunk driving incident, so all drugs for me were considered anathema, while drinking and drug use were common and accepted in the rest of the family. Those coinciding facts led to my blog becoming more angry with family and them with me to the point that it eventually led to me being blocked on multiple outlets from communicating with most of them at all.

It was possibly a mixture of my easily angered mind and my sister’s Christian beliefs that led to my first admittance to a behavioral health institute, of which I, at last count, have visited 6. The suicide hotline call I made in this anger made my sister tell me that I would not be welcomed back to her home. By this point, I had alienated myself from my entire family and had no place to go after my release from Ridgeview Institute. I found a courier for disabled people to be placed in various homes in my general area. The courier introduced me to a Jamaican family close to Atlanta that supplied room and board to disabled folks for $1200 a month. Alcohol and marijuana abuse were quite prevalent there, which made my need to remain sober impossible to meet. I stayed there for a year, bunking with some old yankee that reminded me of one of my evil stepfathers and sharing a space with an autistic boy that I had met in Ridgeview. Our downstairs area also had a couple of mixed pit bulls that came after me when the autistic boy threw punches because I caught him stealing some of my stored food. We had a range of disabilities that rotated through there for the year I stayed before I found a group that introduced me to another Jamaican lady who rented beds to the disabled in a home where we would live only amongst ourselves.

This home was usually overstuffed with people of various disabilities or no disability at all, other than not being bright. My xenophobia got in high gear when several of the Jamaican tenants had more problems than most. I stayed there for 2-3 months, but didn’t have to pay for the final weeks I was there because paying the landlord, who did not accept checks, was difficult. My time there with roach-infested silverware drawers was unpleasant, so I contacted Safe Care Homes Group, which had introduced me to the owner of that home, for another home. I was taken to another home, owned and run by a couple of Jamaican ladies who lived off-site, where I tempered my doubts as best I could, but could not escape the dilemma of having no telephone for multiple reasons, including two-factor authentication that was needed to pursue my quest for paid writing gigs online. I have now signed the papers for my departure from this home to a different home that is owned and operated by a kind enough-seeming person. The current landlords have and will remain displeased with me until I move out in less than one month. I have visited the new home and believe I will likely operate quite well from there. Of course, I’ve got brain damage and am oftentimes incorrect.

Reach Out

I think I’m barely doing okay on money so I took the Imperial Stout down the road to a Walmart to purchase a couple of pillows for my bed. When I go to places like that, I usually take their lithium powered buggies like old people use. I bought my stuff and pulled outside close to the Stout to load my bag. A lady came out and asked me if I was done with the buggy. I thought I was, so gave her the buggy. I packed my bag but didn’t see my phone. I hightailed it back into Walmart but couldn’t find the lady. I looked everywhere (on foot), including the cashier but she was nowhere to be found. I somehow made it home with no GPS and sent as many alerts as possible with no internet or phone of my own. I sure as hell didn’t want to contact Mom or Kirsten again but they had sent me a life 360 invite a day or so again which I’d accepted. Phoning that Walmart wasn’t getting me anywhere at all, so I’d accepted the possibility of finding my way to a T mobile store to but yet another phone when I had not yet finished purchasing the phone that Byron stole and chucked one day.

I gave it about an hour before riding back out to Walmart while making careful mental notes of all intersections used. I passed the same two people at the front door and made my way back to the Customer Center again. They had it. The ride home was easier. I then let a roommate give it a spin. I’ve lost or had stolen more things than I can count right now. Of course, me being me and losing something important every day, week, month or half decade; I went to lock the bike back up again from my oversized key ring and noticed a key fly off into the grass. It took more than a few minutes to find it but I think I have one more workable key on that battery. If not; paying for a locksmith would have sucked but at least I had my phone again and maybe enough money to at least pull that battery which I have two of because of my brain damage.

I then told Carlos how I would periodically take trips from my Conyers home to pick up smokes, even vodka and some other things for roommates there with a 100% fee for doing so. I told Carlos that he will be welcome again to pick something up at a Kroger or something and that there would be no fee or I’d take the trip myself. Ill just loan a battery that I have two keys for and go from there. Of course Carlos is black, so the chances of him doing something that I wouldn’t be tempted to might be greater than I’d like but I’d risk that in order to be who I like to be and live in a home where people are getting along well, Sugarbelle. That inclination might cost me one day but the idea of living another way would cost me more. I am a gambler and I’ll take those odds. I’ll win.

In the meantime, I will struggle mightily. I can’t even follow directions on how to set a featured image on this somanabitchin post but I’m tired now and it’s getting late. I’ll figure it out soon enough but I’m happy to be back on WordPress where things used to make sense. They will.