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Sunday, June 25, 2017

I'm not doing well

When I got home I didn't eat for two days (not calendar days, more sundown to sundown, two days worth of food no matter how you look at it.)  The sole exception being one bag of microwave popcorn.

That was nine days ago, I'm eating now.

I haven't been doing the whole "go to bed" process well which usually means missing out on a couple hours a night but one time had me going to bed early the next morning.

I'm not accomplishing anything.  Even simple things like "Eat fruit because it will go bad."

I just . . . sit with my computer on my lap and do things that I don't even enjoy that much because it's better that staring off into space doing nothing.


I am, simply, overwhelmed.

Usually when people see my house they see a mess, while I'm fine with it.  Not so right now.

The time I spent unable to walk led to some very serious fucking up of everything.  Oh, and when I broke my ankle in three places it was because things had gotten out of hand and I was trying to tidy up a bit.  Right during step one I fell all the way down the basement stairs.

On getting back from the hospital I had to make my house crutch accessible which involved, basically, anti-clearning.  Clutter that could easily be picked up and put where it went had to be shoved aside into daunting piles of "I have no idea where to even fucking start" and things got worse from there.  As I got better at accommodating the injury I had to access less and less of the house as everything became centralized.  Plus I couldn't clean but the cat was still more than content to knock over ALL THE THINGS.

And then there's money.

Insurance I already owe.  The good news is that my mother/landlord doesn't charge late fees and interest.  I still have to pay it, though, and it's higher than expected $288.

Deferred payments start coming due in August, which is also when the quarterly property tax is due (that, at least, hasn't changed: $657.72) and come October a very long differal (18 months?  Two years?) ends and of course it had to be for a nice high amount high interest thing.  It's what I had to pay to fill the gap between what my warranty paid and what it actually cost to replace broken computer with this one AND get a new external hard drive (a kind of big one) to transfer backed up data and maybe some other stuff.  I have been making payments, but they're never enough. At least it's less than a thousand now.

Then in November there's something I haven't talked about, but I care deeply about.  My grandparents farm is being sold.  The hope is that my sister will be able to finagle things so that she keeps enough property to live on and a conservation group buys the rest so it will not be completely demolished to make space for another ugly housing development, which is what traditionally happens to farms and what my Aunt, half owner, wants to do because that's where the money is.

I don't have faith.

I also don't have a hundreds of thousands of dollars.  That's the problem with farm land around here.  That's why farms are seldom replaced with new farms.  Farms are worth shit.  The land they sit on is worth fucktons.  When I was little my mom used to point to housing developments and say, "When I was little that was all farm land."  I think I was in high school when I started being able to point to housing developments and say, "When I was little, that was all farmland."  It's gotten worse since then.

So I keep on thinking of that, coming to the conclusion that there's no fucking way I could ever hope to raise the necessary money, and having my brain shut down.  Even though there's plenty of other stuff I really fucking need to do that can't be done with a shut down brain.  Like, you know, everything.

I think there was other stuff I was going to say.


I very much wish there were some sort of special account/business/whatever where the money could only be used to pay for buying the farm.  Something where I, my sister, and whoever else could raise specifically farm money that was legally cut off from the money we have to live on.  You know, go out, write/do/whatever farm stuff, and not have that cause me to lose my SSI and my insurance.

It would be dishonest to say, "We're trying to save this farm in Cape Elizabeth" and then use raised money to pay expenses on my house in South Portland, but the SSA doesn't see honesty as an important concept.  Unless I'm legally prevented from using the money dishonestly, they have determined that I can use it to pay the expenses SSI is supposed to cover, and they cut SSI, and that's why for more than two years I've been in a state of nigh constant financial collapse when I should be skimming along just fine.

I still need to get around to sending them financial documents (in hopes it will fix some of that), it's as easy as a trip across the street on a day other than Sunday, but see the body of this post for why that hasn't happened.

I did have the documents all gathered and ready to send, but that was in my maroon notebook.  All of my notebooks are important, but the maroon notebook was really, really, really fucking important.  Of course it was the one that I lost.

In fact, that might have been one of the other things I intended to say.  There are various writing projects where I'll think, "Wait, I already did this work," spend ages looking for where I did it (I have writing and notes in a lot of places) and finally realize with a fresh dose of frustration and sadness that it was in the maroon notebook, which I think I lost in someone's house in Massachusetts, that I'll almost certainly never see again.


Anyway those are the thoughts I am having.

I know I shouldn't think so much about the farm.  It's beyond my reach.  It's a problem I can't solve.  But I can't not think about it, and when I do it just shuts everything down.

If anyone wants to help contribute solving the problems that can be solved:

I can be given money in single payments via Paypal either using my email (cpw [at] maine [dot] rr [dot] com) in the "send money" feature of your account (which is better if you're paying me via your balance or bank account, the same if it's via credit card) or via the donate button on the top right of this page.

Automatic Paypal payments do not work.
 It's been going on for ages and I have yet to determine the problem.  They just don't work.

So, if you want to set up a recurring payment, please use my Patreon account.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not a doctor, and more importantly I'm not your doctor, so feel absolutely free to ignore me, but what you describe sounds a lot like classical depression that's not being treated effectively.

    Would something like GoFundMe work, particularly if it were in your sister's name rather than yours?

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    Replies
    1. I'm not sure on the GoFundMe thing.

      As for seeming like untreated depression, it has to do with how the brain works. A path, once traveled, is easier to travel again. Patterns, once established, tend to take over.

      Even treated, my brain doesn't do "down" right. I've got half a lifetime of practice in untreated depression so if something knocks me off of normal, the bottom drops out.

      Sleep deprivation: like untreated depression.
      Prolonged hopelessness: like untreated depression.
      Not enough calories for too long: like untreated depression.

      So on, so forth.

      Even with medication that works, the depression has left its mark and it's always waiting to take over. If something knocks me down, I don't stop falling until I'm back in depression-land.

      Delete
  2. I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that I have nothing to say besides "I'm sorry".

    ---Redcrow

    ReplyDelete