My Day Today

This morning Bernard walked me to the bus stop before the day program opened. It was the only way we could carve out time with each other between my work and school schedule. Bernard has also been leaving early at 4pm most days. I suspect something is up. A few weeks ago I walked in on him on the phone in his office. I overheard him on his phone trying to set up an appointment somewhere. In the end he said, "Well, I need to go so I'll take the day off." Before he ended the call he said, "And that's at the Cancer Institute correct?" He takes a lot of days off. A few days ago I called to see if he could meet up after I got off work and he said he couldn't because he had to leave at four; he couldn't stay late to talk to me he had somewhere to be.

I'm pretending I haven't noticed these things. As far as anyone knows I'm completely oblivious. Maybe it's just that I have a friend battling lung cancer but it's definitely on my radar. I'm worried about this. I try to tell myself I'm reading too much into it all. It's horrible but at times I find myself hoping that it's his wife that's sick and not him. But, I digress. I hadn't meant to post anything about any of that, it just came barreling out. Bear with me, I'm not in a good place right now.

Anywho, so he walked me to the bus. There has been continued drama with the ginger clan. The director of housing has encouraged me to seek a restraining order. If I'm successful with it Ginger will lose housing. I went to shelter last night to get every note I turned into Director Lady about the Ginger Clan.

Another tangent, I had a lovely time talking to her. We were laughing about the fact that I managed to get a BLA after getting into housing. (That's talent!)
"I had to do a triple take when I saw that." she said.
"Did you laugh?"
She put her finger to her lips, smiled slyly and said, "I don't laugh when youth get BLAs."
"You totally laughed."
"Maybe a little."

The BLA happened when I went back to get my food and the lady refused to give it to me. It was a new staff, one to replace the four that got fired. When she refused to give me my stuff I argued with her over the buzzer (classic!) and asked, "What are you smoking?" I then buzzed up to the downstairs shelter hoping someone sensible was working. Gauges Guy was so I told him the lady was refusing me my belongings. Somehow I ended up interacting with the new staff again and asked for her to send GG down.

"He's in a meeting," she had said.
"Are you stupid?" I asked, "Because I'm sure as hell not. There aren't meetings at shelter during hours and I just talked to him five minutes ago."
She gave me a BLA for all that which made me and my friend with me laugh hysterically. "I'm in housing idiot."

Director Lady said two years after I get out of services she'll have a job for me. (You can work inside the youth program after being out of services for two years.) I think when I'm done in housing I'll mark that date on my calendar and on that two year anniversary I'll take in that application for the job if for no other reason than to drive Director Lady crazy. :P But, in all honesty I think I might be good at that job.

Anywho, so this morning Bernard walked me to the bus stop. He said when I'm ready he'll go with me to the police to file that restraining order. It's nice to know that I have his support even though the problem is with another youth that he was working with. It helps me feel validated.

On the way he asked me, "So why did you call the housing staff stupid ass bitches?"
I rolled my eyes, "Because they were being stupid ass bitches."
So far I haven't gotten along with housing staff. I find them to be petty. I made it pretty clear when I got into housing that work and school were my number one priorities and that they could not get in my way when it came to these things. Well, they did by turning off my key card for not cleaning the bathroom WHEN I DIDN'T KNOW I HAD TO. I threw a fit and got the card turned back on. At this point I called them, as stated above, stupid bitches because clearly, they were.
"I get that. But don't call them stupid ass bitches to their face." Bernard said.
"Well, I certainly wouldn't call them that behind their back."
Bernard shakes his head and laughs, clearly he has no idea what to do with me.
"If they don't want to be called stupid bitches they shouldn't be stupid bitches. Problem solved."
Bernard gave up.

Houdini has pretty much ended things with Kitten Lady. I don't know if they're actually broken up but every time I see him I ask about her and he says, "I haven't seen her in weeks." He's clean now. He's going to go back to St. Louis so he can be with his family and his son. Every time I see him he says he's going that week but Kitten Lady seems to be holding him back. I know how hard it is to walk away. I told Bernard this on our walk.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked.
"She must be bad if even he is leaving. Everyone thought she was going to leave him and get clean. She was always the one that had a future. Not him. How bad must she be for it to be the other way around?"
I always thought that if I could just get her away from him she would be okay. In the end, I was severely wrong. Bernard agreed, it was always supposed to be the other way around.
"I've accepted that she is going to die."
"How do you feel about that?"
"No one is going to do anything and she's going to die. And that's all there really is."

I leave out that I will have to live with the fact I walked away knowing this. I leave out that I think if they would have really tried when she and I first started to hang out she would have made it. She had stopped using. Part of me believes she only started again because no one had any faith in her to stop. I leave out that I don't recognize her. Tonight at Safeway I saw someone wearing a face mask that had the same color hair but I wasn't even sure if that was her or not. The last time I saw her she was so thin, her eyes were bloodshot, her hair was a mess. The only reason I recognized her was by the way her bad foot turned.

A few days ago there was a memorial service for a youth. I heard about it riding in the elevator with Beard Man. "Another one?" I had asked. Each time there's any form of posting of another death I pray it's not her. I may be at a distance now but I'm still watching my friend die. It's not any easier this way. She still matters to me. There are nights I'm up worrying about her. But what can I do? She purposefully made it so that I couldn't help her anymore. If something doesn't change she will die. And there's nothing I can do.

Tomorrow is my "transfer" meeting. Since I'm now in the housing program I have to switch from Bernard to a new case manager. It was supposed to be done weeks ago but with my schedule it just hasn't happened. Tomorrow Bernard will officially not be my case manager anymore. I will be with the artsy lady I've befriended.

She has always been my second pick when it came to a case manager but everyone knows switching me from Bernard is going to be, well, not ideal. Most people don't get to pick their case managers like I have. I've really been given special treatment in this area. The boss of case managers came to me right before I got into housing and asked quietly, for me to pick between the two housing case managers. When I answered the crafty lady she said that's what she thought I wanted. Even though it was a two minute conversation she was very somber when she asked, as if she didn't really want to have to switch me.

I had my first meeting with my new case manager on Sunday. Even though I adore her for her crafty abilities when we had to talk about case management stuff it felt incredibly forced. She asked me how I felt about the switch and I answered, simply, "I'm not thrilled."
"I know you and Bernard are very close." she said, "You guys had a really special bond."
Going to Bernard was just natural for me. I told him I wanted xyz, left, came back a few hours later and there it was. He knew how to deal with me. Which, let's admit takes talent.

When they turned off my key card the new case manager did not know how to deal with me. It was Sunday, Bernard's day off. I was screaming and calling people bitches and crafty lady was like "wow, don't know what to do with you" and thus it took two hours. Bernard would have just been able to be like, "Okay, let's deal with these bitches so you can do your homework." Granted, he wouldn't call them bitches but he definitely would have known how to deal with me and them when I was on rampage mode. He would have been a little more aggressive about it (though not as aggressive as me).

The good news is no one is going to look down at me for continuing to work with Bernard despite the case manager change. Every time I've seen him since this whole shenanaghan began he's said I can still call/text/walk downstairs any time. Both case managers have said they are willing to work together on issues that I want Bernard in on. The director of housing has encouraged me to continue with Bernard, especially when discussing the issues with the ginger clan. Today Bernard put both his hands on my shoulders (which is unusual. I usually have a strict no-touchy policy). He said, "You are not going to get kicked out of housing. We [case managers] know you aren't who people are painting you up to be. You still have me. I believe in you. You are going to go far in life."

So, I'm trying to look at it as having two case managers instead of switching. Who knows how anything will really play out though?

I didn't really intend to talk about the case management stuff for so long. I meant for this to be a short post actually about school today, not any of this. This mess just kind of spilled out. What I had intended to talk about was what happened to me in the newspaper room today.

I was doing homework. I'm really behind. I got the flu bad and missed classes, and to be honest ditched a few too. I still have no voice. I'm so squeaky that the chief editor was like, "I'm going to walk away because I'm going to start laughing and you're going to slap me." Wise man.

So anyways, I already feel like shit and he comes back in and sits next to me. He says, "Your mugshot was up on one of the computers."
"My mug shot? You mean from last year's column?"
"No, your actual mug shot."
He pulled up the tab and there I was, smirking at the camera. My jaw dropped to the floor. The only person who knew I was arrested was Savior Man. I just don't understand how this could have gotten out without Savior Man telling people. It dawns on me that this means that the editors were sitting around looking for my mug shot and laughing about it behind my back. Furthermore, they left it up for a full day, for everyone to see.

I'm so completely mortified. I couldn't even get through my classes despite one of my classes today was PhotoJournalism which I NEVER miss because I adore my little old Asian buddy. (He's a whole nother blog post). I confronted Savior Man. He insists that the editors just stumbled onto it while they were goofing around in production class. I don't know if I can really believe that. It seems a little far fetched that they just started typing my name into Busted.

Putting that up on computers for everyone to see is something you'd see in the movie Mean Girls. It's not what I would expect from people I consider my friends. I'm now questioning my friendships with everyone and anyone on the paper. I called that place my home.

I left my lit class to go to the dean. It's the same dean who made the call to get me back into school. I feel horrible because I kept intending to go by to see him to thank him for doing that. Instead, when I finally go to see him it's because of high school like bullying. After meeting him I went to see my teacher for my next class and find the bus schedule. My teacher sent me home, saying he will mark me present for the class. I left without saying a word to Savior Man even though he said bye to me.

Not only does it suck to have my "friends" broadcast something so personal it's left me wondering how long I will have to deal with this. I did what I had to do to survive. Am I proud of all of the decisions I made? No. I'm proud that I survived. Do I regret any of it? No. I did what I had to.

Even though I've done my best to laugh off everything that happened on the infamous blog post I don't want that mugshot to follow me everywhere I go. Will I be denied jobs because I'm listed as a criminal online? Will I walk into classrooms to relive this in the future? Will I forever be judged by my homeless stint even after I am no longer homeless?

I don't want to live my life forever defined by these last four months. I don't want people to see me as a homeless criminal. I don't want people telling me I should be ashamed. I don't want this.

Ughn, so that's where I'm at in life right now. Just got in from smoking three cigarettes with my roomie. Trying to remind myself that everything is only going up from here, even though I'm not 100% sure.

--mm