This precise moment is a very happy and well anticipated conjunction of time and place which I have waited anxiously for two decades to witness. I do believe that in my complete sober state I am experiencing a piece of nirvana for the first time in my life that I wasn’t even sure if I’d live to see…It is quite nice actually, peaceful, serene, quiet and comfortable.
As I reflect back to just a mere two weeks ago, I laugh at the irony of it all for I was in such a terrible afflicted state physically and emotionally that it felt like a tornado was tossing my spirit throughout the air and ripping it to pieces. Yet sometimes its just best to embrace the storm and face it head on – that is precisely what I did. I refused to become uprooted.
It actually all began rather slowly like rolling a small snowball in the ground. At the local mental health center where I attend, a man from my housing rehab class came in with bedbugs on his clothing. A couple months later, I hear from the staff that his home (primarily his couch) is covered with bedbugs and this individual is banned temporarily from attending the mental health center until the housing manager and his assistant go to his rental home to spray and help with the situation.
The next week, someone picks this man up and brings him to the mental health center when he isn’t suppose to be there and the entire facility is being loaded into like 8 large vans to go to the capital that day and rally for a mental health bill to keep state funding for mental health. Instead of taking this individual home, the manager decided he can ride in the crowded van with 15 people for 2 hours to the capital, then go to a pizza place and ride back for 2 hours! I was not happy with the situation at all.
I told the manager I was uncomfortable with this idea of riding with a man known to have bedbug issues and he claimed it was solved even tho the man wasn’t suppose to be there that day. A couple weeks later in my group therapy room, in a separate building from my rehab class, a different man from a different rental home has a bedbug crawl off his jacket onto the table. The counselor told him to lay his jacket in the corner and we continue with session.
The next couple of weeks talk is flying around the housing class about the bedbug infestation in the homes and how they have had to spray the mental health center. Then my group therapy class loads up into a van and 9 of us go to town to visit a local church for groceries. The man sitting next to me, behind the driver on the front row, has a bedbug on him. The counselor flicks it off him and says I guess I will have one of the staff spray the vans.
Then I find bedbugs in my apartment. I was also really sick with a bad ear infection.
I was not a happy camper. 
I called my apartment manager and she informed me of all the HUD protocol I would have to follow to have my apartment sprayed for bedbugs: everything off the walls, everything out of drawers, everything out of closets, everything in plastic tubs or bags, strip all curtains and bedding and wash everything, AND purchase two plastic bed covers from the bug man at a nice $20 each (one for mattress, other for box spring).
I was livid to say the least… not to mention, sick and broke.
So I eventually told the administrator of the mental health facility that once I bought the bed covers, I would give her a copy of the receipt and she could pay me back because I know I got them from the mental health center. She of course did not agree with me…lol. She furthermore went on to say that I’d been “raising hell” lately at the mental health center (I had filed a couple complaints against some of the workers) and I was having too many absences (from being sick).
As a result, she informed me that she did felt I was “no longer a good fit for her program” and that she’d “recommend to the courts that I seek treatment elsewhere.”
I was thrilled. I told her: “Great! I will just go to (the mental health facility in my town).”
I couldn’t be happier. I took off walking. The mental health facility was like fifteen miles away from town, but I could care less. I knew I had a friend with a vehicle that would come pick me up off the highway sooner or later. So I called my state’s patient advocate and told her I just got kicked out of my mental health center and wanted to file a complaint about the bedbug infestation as well as the workers at the mental health center that I had been having issues with.
As soon as I got back to my apartment, I called the local transportation company and paid a dollar to ride to the local mental health center and fill out an application and set up a date for an intake interview.
Now, I have had two intake interviews with the case manager and will be meeting, if the roads are clear, with a counselor there tomorrow to do a two hour interview and set up my treatment plan for the behavioral health facility.
I am so happy to be done with that chapter in my life. My patient advocate agrees that since I have been living independently now for over 3 years I no longer require rehab services. I simply will need to set up individual counseling sessions, some group therapy, family therapy (which I was so happy to see they offer) and see a new psychiatrist for my medications.
Needless to say, I am starting to feel more and more like a normal crazy person!
I even went out and purchased, fully with cash, my first vehicle in over 20 years! All I have to do is take it to the mechanic on the first and get a new water pump installed then save up money next month for a new heater core that my boyfriend is going to replace for me.
I couldn’t be happier. They sprayed the apartment over a week ago and it took me almost a week, due to my infection and the catching of the flu, to get it ready. They will be back around the 12th to spray again and so in the meantime, I am having to keep everything in totes and plastic bags (mostly piled up in the closet with the doors shut because my cat has claws).
I have no cash. My car is broken. The weather is wet with sleet and snow.
But I could not be happier. I got through the thunderstorm. All I have to do is wait to hear from the court because from what I was told, my paperwork to change my conditional release to where I can go to the new behavioral center in town simply has to be signed by my Judge.
So I sit and tap these keys counting my blessings for there is no other place I’d rather be right now and right here.
Embrace that thunderstorm people!
Madcow#52699
©2018
MADCOW #52699 