Nauseous

Nauseous

 

The feeling comes often. I think about the problem, and I want to throw up. I think about it and something in my stomach rebels and wants to let everything I have eaten out. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. There used to be a map for what was going on in my life, there used to be some sort of guide, however slight, but now there is nothing. I have to swim and deal with what is happening on my own. On my own is not enough. Shoulder. I want to cry long and hard on somebody’s shoulder. Not possible. Once, not long ago, I let it all out one Sunday evening. I watched a 60 Minutes episode and they were interviewing people in Ohio who were in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. I remembered my foreclosure in another state and I just started crying. I couldn’t stop. Now, 7 years later, I am losing another place to live. The price of homelessness cannot be measured in dollars and cents. It is a very high price that I am paying—that I have paid—in emotional and psychological pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Day I Became Homeless

I think about this. I can never forget the afternoon I had to leave, leave quickly, with my cat and a few belongings. I thought I was safe in that condo. I didn’t believe anybody would do something like that. But the man came and told me I had to go. I was able to take a cab to Grand Central. My cat and I spent the night there until 2 in the morning when the cops told me I had to go outside. We stayed by the main entrance until 6 A.M.

The Elderly

The elderly are sometimes (very often) seen as burdens by their friends and/or relatives. In my lifetime, I have taken care of several elderly people and the stories are all sad. One 93 year old lady, who was living in her niece’s run down apt. with her dog Bambi, was drugged by a nurse hired by the niece so she could be placed in the nursing home. In the nursing home, my friend was tied down to a chair so she wouldn’t be able to move. My friend had moments of lucidity, even with all the drugs in her, and knew what was going on. Her dog was taken away from her and given to somebody else. My friend died among strangers. I and other neighbors tried to find a lawyer to help her to no avail. Then, there was a man in his early 90s who had his wife in Paris and his son in Arizona while he lived in Northern California. Yet another friend was a sweet lady originally from Northern Spain who was also dumped in a nursing home. I used to visit her once a week, and take her out to dinner or coffee/tea with pastries. Her niece put her in a second and cheap nursing home in a bad neighborhood. She fell and broke her hip and never recovered.

Kindness and its High Price

Kindness and Its High Price

I have found through the experiences I have had here in the United States these past 4 years and almost 10 months, that kindness has a terrible price. I have had to pay but not in dollars and cents for wanting to relocate to my adopted country. I love the U.S. and will be very sad to leave it. Right now I feel like I am auto deporting myself, though I am a dual national. The person I thought I could trust is not to be trusted. I am sometimes afraid of him, of what he might say, what other actions he might take against me. I wanted to leave a long, long time ago, but to go back outside where it is cold did not appeal to me. Now I have to go back out anyway and that is another thing that scares me—me who do not scare easily. The person’s initial kindness has turned into something else.

 

 

I am Them

I Am Them

My Tia, my beloved Aunt, when she was evicted years ago. My friend Nadia when she was living alone and forgotten after her days of glory. I have their stories in my brain and in my soul. What they suffered, I suffered. What they felt, I felt. Now it is my turn, my turn to go through experiences that are overwhelming to say the least. My poor Tia paid 3 times the market rate in rent for a dilapidated 2 bedroom house-like apt. in Buenos Aires. That high price was illegal on the landlady’s part, but she still got away with getting the extra rent money. And my Tia had no home after all her years of hard work and honesty. Nadia lived with her 3 dogs for company. They were her family, the only family she could count on. They were there, even if the food supply was iffy, even if she couldn’t walk them as often as they needed to be walked. She was tired. My Tia was tired. She lived for 10 months after her eviction; then she gave up and closed her eyes. Nadia fought until the very last minute for her life. The dogs screamed and yelled. Nobody paid attention until the fire dept. got in and found Nadia dead clutching her house keys by the front door.

Now I am fighting a battle similar to theirs. I am evicted. I don’t know how this happened, but it is like another foreclosure. This one feels worse than the first one 7 years ago when I lost my home in GA. It is a hard blow. The experience is surreal, as if it were a horrible dream somebody made up just to make me sad. A bad dream to show me that I cannot have a home.