It’s hard to hope or plan for a future or help anyone when you don’t even have safety past a few days…
Still
I hope
I try
I dream
Dare to dream of a better tomorrow…
I’m still in constant need of support to keep my disabled family off the street. I’m exhausted, fighting suicidal ideation while my elderly mother just cannot gain peace being stuck in a hotel room with people screaming and throwing things constantly.
She asks me if we can go out but the 100+°F car is terribly dangerous for her. The hours that are a little safer we come back and it’s dark and it sometimes makes her confused.
It hurts feeling the throws of algorithms and having to play games to get my needs met. It hurts that those who are willing to help me gain traction outside of my reach are also exhausted and tired and have reached their limits.
I’ve made a new friend who’s seemingly beyond understanding of my situation, wants to help me, is kind and compassionate and caring but all of me fears the unknown. What many don’t understand is how deeply rooted and far reaching my trauma is in my psyche. It corrupts everything from my work, to my family to new connections and friends. Every time I let someone in and they hurt me it burns deeper.
I want to be clear, I don’t expect perfection from anyone. I don’t use the idea of hurt as a placeholder for conflicts and misunderstandings those are things that happen everywhere, everyday, between all sorts of beings. What I mean by “hurt” is betrayal, abuse, neglect and abandon. These were things that surrounded me growing up.
I don’t trust that anyone cares enough about my existence to keep me and my mother and my bunny off the street. The fact that we ended up homeless hurts so much. The help we’ve gotten so far gets corrupted in my mind as pity and some kind of guilt for having failed us before. I hate these feelings. I hate that I am the one that houses the mind that produces such feelings.
I want to have a heart that is open and receiving, that doesn’t feel some endless duty to be enough to stay alive.
I’m so tired.
I haven’t slept well for weeks. I can’t let myself stop and when I finally start to have to stop because my body or mind can’t take it anymore Mom needs me, my bunny needs me. I’ve spent hours talking so someone who by most standards is a stranger but they seem to care. Their warmth scares me… I keep thinking when will he be like TAM, when will he echo my father or my brother, when will he dump me like countless other “friends” have done so far?
I feel cold and heartless and cruel when I ask them or anyone for help with “nothing” to offer in return. I hate feeling like I’m nothing. Days of asking for help and nothing changes… It hurts… I hate feeling like everything everyone has done upto now feels like a waste like nothing when every bit does make a difference. I never want to seem ungrateful for every ounce of time, care, funds or words I have been given. My trauma poisons everything around me. I feel my world burning and I keep hoping it burns me alive instead to stop being a burden to stop giving someone hope feeling I will inevitably hurt another living soul.
I wish I could take in my own words at this moment. Having a new friend who just says them to me on their own feels like a twisted dream or like a long con to be pulled out from under my feet. I’m numb, cornered wondering if after Thursday it won’t matter anyway, any dream or hope or potential will disintegrate in my hands leaking out like sand or water.