lost connections

I think the hardest part of all this is feeling cut off from all the people I spent the last few years getting to know. Countless randoms strangers I grew to feel familiar and comfortable with, to at least some degree. That's been a huge challenge. It's taken me years just to get to this basic level. I felt known and respected. To a degree. It was always a work in progress. I was making progress. Long slow and more important to me than doing anything else progress.

I had the idea some of this might transfer with me to a new place, with all new people to potentially get along well with, I thought some of it had to do with social skills, and a familiarity with socializing itself. That must play a role here, but I think it's just a long slow process that takes time for me. Time for people to feel more familiar and comfortable with me, just as much as the other way round.

I think it's an arduous uphill battle, and I've tumbled all the way back to the bottom, each time I go live somewhere else. In some places I've lived, I had nothing to lose. In others, I had a lot. This time, I had more than ever.

I'm probably going back, but I don't know when. I don't know that anything else won't go wrong in the meantime. I don't know for sure how this will all work out. I don't know what of my fragile connections will remain, if and when I finally get back home.

I just want to go home, but I am a person without one. I have safe and comfortable shelter, and that's saved my life, but I was kinda aiming higher than that for a while there. That seemed like incredibly important work for me to be doing to save my own life. When I talk about having a life, maybe it's about all these connections with strangers. This was a massive setback and I keep getting older here.

change averse

Autistic types do not like changes, from what I can gather. Everyday transitions can be difficult, like going from laying in bed, to getting up and moving, or going from clothed and dry to naked and surrounded by water. I hate to admit that it took me way too long to learn to bathe regularly. I'm still working on getting up in the morning. Sometimes it takes me all day.

Routines help a lot. We shower every morning before going to do the things we do every day, or we shower as part of the ritual of getting ready that we perform before going anywhere. When transitions are routine, they become a lot easier. So, the fact of the matter is that I do not bathe regularly because my mental health is better - I bathed regularly because I've learned to incorporate it into my routine. Which is to say, if I'm forced to abandon my routine, I go right back to being itchy and smelly, and inexplicably procrastinating the whole thing.

My mental health hasn't improved, per se. This is how my brain works. It doesn't get better. Whatever caused my problems when I was younger is still the same old problem. It's my strategies for living with it that changed. I've learned to manage my aversion to change, such that I can function, or even thrive, or at least properly bathe, but I still go through all sorts of hell if you make me change my plans, such that my routine is thrown all askew.

How do you think I'm going to feel having my whole life turned upside down and having no choice by to go live hundreds of miles away, where I can't keep doing any of what I was doing? I can keep doing some of it here, except no I can't, because none of this is routine. All my strategies have been completely demolished. It was routine to go socialize, for fucks sake. Now what the hell am I supposed to do? 

Adapt, form new routines, no big deal, right? Yeah, well, big deal or not, I've been failing at it. I can't even get to the gym. It's a completely different gym. I didn't form these routines overnight. I can't rebuild new ones overnight. It's a constant shuffle of baby steps and setbacks, plagued by anxiety and failure, as I start doing things regularly, only to have other people constantly trample all over my efforts just by existing. Solitude helps a lot. Everything is easier alone. Living with others has always been a problem.

While I know that this is what I need to do, I also know it's going to involve lots of not doing it.

unstable

That I am emotionally unstable is not reason to dismiss what I say, but rather all the more reason to expect me to behave irrationally. I have been extremely unstable lately. I am having massive difficulties adapting to having my entire life ripped away from me, from everything I was doing, to everything I owned, to all my fragile social connections. 

My whole life was structured around building up those things and now what am I doing. Of course I'm falling apart here. It's insulting to tell me this isn't a catastrophe. Do you think I didn't have much to lose, so what difference does it make if I lose everything? How fucked up is that. That was a $500 bicycle, not some easily replaced piece of trash.

I call affordable housing a mirage, because they put people on these years long waiting lists and actively look for excuses to throw them off. It takes forever and feels incredibly unreliable. In many states it's literally worse than useless, due to requirements that applicants not be in anything resembling actual poverty.

This is why I hadn't applied sooner. I didn't think I needed it, and know it's a last resort that might not even work out. Still, some would blame me for my own homelessness, for not applying seven years ago, when it was last mentioned to me. Sorry you feel guilty for being so petty and selfish, but that's not my problem anymore.

Aside from being unreliable, that it may take a year makes it feel like it will never happen. So much can go wrong in that time, from where I can live in the meantime, to how I handle this situation dragging on month after month while I fall apart. Turns out though, there is no Vermont residency requirement. That was an assumption that simply isn't true. I finally called and asked outright and was told that I can move to another state, I can officially change my address, none of that matters as long as any mail they send me doesn't bounce.

What a massive relief. I thought I was at risk of losing eligibility, and that it would get worse the longer I'm not living in Vermont, but that whole concern turns out to be unfounded.

goodbye forever

It's not looking good. I really needed to stay in Vermont, if I was going to find a way to keep living there. "Affordable housing" is just a mirage. I can't keep looking for roommates there, while I'm here. Where I'm living now is a stepping stone to nowhere.

Five years ago, I embarked on this journey to get my life together, because I knew eventually something like this would happen. I completely failed. Now my whole life is gone. All my dreams, ambitions and endeavors, all gone. I spent years fighting to earn the respect of people I will never see again. Everyone I knew, gone. I had a life, for the first time in my life, and it's gone.

I can't start over. I can't live anywhere else. I don't want to live anymore.

germantown

I haven't much felt like writing since I got here. It's taken some time for the dust to settle, such that I'm feeling my tired old anxious self again. I've been doing stuff, but have only been to the new gym here twice. I'm still learning their schedule, trying to sort out what days I should be aiming for. They do a lot of things differently. I miss my gym in Vermont. I miss all the people I'll never see again.

Instead of getting this lousy gym more, I've found myself doing other random things. Things which should not preclude me getting to the gym, but I'm always struggling to manage my time and energy levels, even when I should have plenty of both. I've been trying to say yes to everything people ask me to do. I should be doing stuff.

I took part and contributed to a vegan food swap last night. I made mujaddara. I thought it was one of the better dishes on the table. A few days ago, I got stung by a wasp, trying to do yard work. The woman I'm renting the room from has some pretty severe injuries from a scooter accident, so I help her with things. She's a temporarily disabled dog-walker and cat-sitter. I went to meet a nice couple who need a cat-sitter. On Friday, I'm supposed to go meet another couple that need a house-sitter, in addition to cat sitting. I had to get up early this morning to buy a transit card, because they have to be bought in person and they close the sales offices at 10:30am. My third pepper seed germinated today. 

I'm doing stuff, but I'm also feeling exhausted and plagued by anxiety. These are all dead end distractions. Nothing can be routine here, everything I'm doing is chaos. I'm falling apart. I can't handle it. I'm fasting for the first time tonight, since I got here. I'm trying. I'm always trying. I'm so tired.