I have been keeping a low profile on my life this year, though I've told some of you bits and pieces. Toward the end of last year I did hospice care for my grandmother at my apartment.
This was a very difficult point for me, as not only was my grandmother the closest person to me in my life, but also it was thrust on me on the same day I found out after 2 weeks of her being in the hospital that she was inoperable and in a terminal stage. There wasn't a lot of help from my family during this, sometimes I would get deliveries or something. The hospice company did provide me with nurses who would help me with singular tasks and then they would have to leave to the next call. I made good use of the service, and they said I did a good job with her. So overall I feel content in that regard.
After her passing, I became totally disillusioned with life. I got wrapped up in mortality, seen how gruesome death could be...and then walls in my apartment were thin, you could hear the family conversation downstairs and the guy on the phone upstairs. It felt like the triviality of life was closing in on me. Before the hospice care, I had recently left a very ghetto job. My grandmother had moved in with me to escape physical abuse where she was, and helped me with rent for 2 months. I thought "now after all this, I will find a new job, and for what even?" A life I found exhausting, that seemed like it was all futile in the end no matter what happens. At best I'd get a peaceful death.
So I went to a shelter I had stayed at before, because I didn't have the energy to quickly find a job within a month and then get locked into that 9 to 5 with something I hate. I was able to reset a bit and made good progress. I got a remote job while there (that I still have now), which I even enjoy doing at times. I got over the loss and the morose thinking and really made a rebound. I did within the last few months develop a drinking problem, which at times I wasn't able to hide from those around me. Still, they were willing to work with me and I have the utmost gratefulness for them.
I think that I was drinking there meant that I got too comfortable. An addiction is hard to stop, but it's also a matter of desire. But I got tired of what felt like the wearisome stuff you encounter at a shelter. People can't aim for a toilet, let alone seem to clean if they get feces everywhere. It gets loud, sometimes people would even randomly fire off guns in the front. I should have appreciated it more, but if you were around that you would probably quickly understand the fatigue. I could have held it down a bit more, but also I was holding it down more than most that come through if you can imagine that.
Around this time, CS and I started to talk again. Those who follow know that she has been talking about her Christian transformation, which I know to be sincere. She reads The Bible a lot, and has been very focused on this new direction in her life. Seemed to be genuine about taking her life a positive direction. She had gone to meet someone she thought she would marry, and it did not work out. I thought that move was ill-advised, but I've made rash decisions too.
She was homeless for a period after that, but came up with some ideas and did find solutions. I had helped out during this time and sent her some money, as she had helped me in the past. She got an Airbnb in a scenic area and offered me a way out of the shelter I was staying in. I could work there for a month or two with my remote job, have my freedom and decide what I wanted to do next. Revenue was planned out and the next few months too, along with backup plans. I flew out with the money I had, and everything seemed to be fine the first 3 days.
Then her behavior started to change, she became worried about me around her kid (even though I've babysitted her while CS worked in the past). Started saying I am walking around the house weird and up to things. At first she said this was PTSD. Well PTSD can look like that, so I started going along with her requests to give her "space". At first I could not enter her's or Jade's room, which was no problem. But then I gradually got sequestered to this room at the front of the unit without access to the rest of the place, including the fridge or stove. Because the original arrangement was that I would be there and then work and make some money, but that we would have food, this quickly became terrifying to me, because what would I eat?
I had some money to spend on food and so I did. She got a mini fridge for me that can fit 6 soda cans (not a lot of room for perishables). She would bring me some food and set it outside my door since initially when she made this decision—I had not even had a chance to buy food, and we're in a remote area on a mountain. Things kept ramping up. She would start yelling at me hysterically if I disagreed with anything she said or even ask her to keep the noise down if Jade was playing around yelling/screaming an hour at night. Kept talking about how Jesus is coming back (extremely) soon.
Then after some days she started doing those drawings she made a thread of on here, and doing all of these diagrams. I began to realize this was not PTSD at all, but a psychotic episode. It kept getting worse, and the fear I felt for a week turned into panic. She started doing stuff that made me realize her daughter was not safe either. So I called the police and she has been arrested. Jade is in custody, so she is being taken care of. The place is trashed; she was cutting through the ceiling with a butcher knife in some places. Cops took pictures of everything. I had no idea how bad things were going on the other part of the unit because she had locked me out of it.
I'm leaving stuff out of this story because a person during psychosis is not in a right frame of mind. If you look at some of her recent posts, I think you can tell there is something going on. And I hope they get her antipsychotics because she desperately needs them. Despite everything I don't have ill will. But it did put me in a situation where I lose everything. I'm now in a remote area in California. I don't know what they will do with her after the judge hears her on Monday, I just know that what I seen terrified me; I am afraid to be around her and am working on getting out ASAP and to either a shelter or temporary housing in the nearest city. Of course these resources are not infinite, and it can be difficult to make anything happen. I still have the remote job, and I was finally able to put in some work that I can get paid for 7 days from now. So within about 10 days I can buy a hotel voucher and that would give me a roof. It's not all totally doom and gloom. But the next week is going to be both brutal as well as entirely unpredictable for me. I've always made arrangements before anything bad can happen to me. Well this time I am on my own, aside from some food money I had gotten from my mother.
I am really sad with this year. It seemed like it was going a good direction too. CS and Jade getting help is positive overall, but my life is totally nuked at this moment. I have never been so fearful in my life. Well that is what has been going on, I've been up for 2 days at this point (still wired). I don't know what the future holds. I knew coming up here was a bad idea, it was just impossible to imagine it was going to be like this.
