I don’t see what you see.

The smart thing to do, of course, would be to not quit my current job so I can find a place to stay by that date, but the recorded history of my life doesn’t seem to indicate that I’ll necessarily be doing the smart thing in this or any other instance. Because of the whole KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME thing.

My problem…Er, that is, ONE of my MANY problems is that I seem so normal to other people (who haven’t had time to get to know me) much of the time. I seem like such an intelligent and competent woman that when I have a meltdown or make an ill-advised choice, people are offended and confused and think I must be doing it all on purpose. What kind of idiot quits a paying job when they’re homeless, for example?

The answer is, of course, the kind of idiot who is actually seriously mentally ill and has no coping skills whatsoever.

Right at this moment, I’m relatively calm. I look okay. I seem rational. I’m at one of the nonprofit mental health centers where I volunteer, and I’ve been quietly doing my work without sobbing into my own shoulder over my hair or my failures or my pending backoutonthestreetedness.

I look okay, but I’m still not. This is incredibly frustrating to those who care about me. As if I could just use logic and reason to pull myself out of this stupid pit that I’ve been stuck in my entire life. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Sometimes I think the five stages of grief apply just as well to depression as to any death or terminal illness or divorce or whatever else. You know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression (heh), and acceptance? I’ve bounced around between them all at various points over the last several months, but I spend a lot of time in the anger phase. Usually, anger at the rest of the world for the stigma and the frustration and the ongoing myriad failures of the system throughout my entire life to help and protect me from all this.

I’m quitting my job. Because I’m smart like that. You may already be aware of this, in the unlikely event that you’ve seen my Twitter feed over the past few late nights. I pretty much hate Twitter and never use it, except for when I’m at this job in the middle of the night and desperately trying to find someone, anyone, anywhere, to KILL ME KILL ME KILL ME.

I have an interview at another place this afternoon. I’ll probably get it, because I tend to interview well. It isn’t until I’ve been around for a while that people notice that I’m crazy and unemployable. But at least it’ll be a daytime job where I’ll be less likely to be sitting around whining on the Internet for someone to KIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I still haven’t stopped crying about my hair. It’s not about the hair. We all know that. It’s about being violated, about having no control or agency over YET ANOTHER aspect of my life, being at the mercy of the whims of whoever is willing to throw me a few crumbs.

This is why I’m quitting the job, incidentally, because it’s not about the job any more than it’s about the hair. It’s about exercising power over at least SOME aspect of my life. It’s possible that this choice I’m making will have negative consequences and I’m mindful of them (yes, I’m aware that I’m still homeless and if I don’t have a job it’ll be kind of hard to find a place to live once I get kicked out of my current place), but it’s a choice that I need to make.

I can’t make my hair reattach itself to my head, but I can choose to end a bad relationship that is harming me rather than helping me, in this case, a stressful job that I in my current unstable state cannot do. Just the simple fact of making this choice has already made me feel a little better.

Maybe I’ll go to the beach again.

I’m medicated. I take my medication faithfully every day.

I’m in therapy, and my therapist is a Christian which is great for me personally. I see her about every week and a half or so.

I have a part time job. I hate it, because it’s at night and I don’t leave work until the wee hours of the morning, and also it is mind-shreddingly tedious and I have a nitpicking, barely-comprehensible Cuban national for a coworker, but it is a job and better than nothing. I’m at least able to pay my car insurance bill, though I still can’t afford to rent a room or an apartment locally.

I am doing volunteer work for two local mental health organizations. They love me.

I am homeless, and I wish I was dead.

Yesterday I was feeling sorry for myself because someone had generously offered to pay for me to get a haircut, and I thought hey this is awesome, it’ll help me feel a little better about myself and maybe help me in my search for a better job if I don’t look like a middle-aged homeless person. (I only got my current position because I was the only person who’d applied.) But since they were paying, they decided that I would get the cut they wanted, resulting in me losing many, many inches of hair that I’d been growing out for quite a long time, even though I specifically said I didn’t want my hair that short. I’ve had long hair my whole life, always receive compliments on it, and have been known as “that girl with the long, pretty hair” forever, but now I look like everybody else and I was in tears. Yeah, yeah, it’ll grow back, I know. What hurt me really more than the haircut itself was the fact that my “benefactor,” who has known me for several years, knew perfectly well how I felt about my hair but simply didn’t care, and the hairdresser blithely ignored my requests and chopped it all off because hey, it’s not like I was the paying customer.

So I was in a foul mood and decided to treat myself to some junk food. I cruised on up to McDonald’s and had one of their mushroom & Swiss burgers with a large fries and a chocolate shake. My medication combined with a lack of decent exercise over the last several months has really ballooned me up and I’m trying to be mindful of my weight, but as I said, I was feeling sorry for myself, so I splurged.

As soon as I pulled out of the parking lot, I witnessed a gruesome car accident, up close and personal. I was one car away from being part of a sudden and violent vehicle sandwich on U.S. 41.

A guy in a convertible zoomed directly into traffic, was hit by an SUV, and both plowed into the minivan directly in front of me. Another car, trying to avoid the whole thing, was also semi-smashed. Convertible guy was not wearing a seat belt, as I noticed when I rushed up to the car while calling 911 so I could see how bad it was. He’d been knocked sideways in the seat and was gushing blood and moaning. The other bystanders couldn’t get his door open. No one else was hurt.

I had to give a statement to the deputies and to the Florida Highway Patrol when they showed up. I stood around, watching all the emergency personnel trying to pry the crushed convertible apart, eventually using the Jaws of Life to extract the guy whose fault the whole thing was. I asked one of them if he’d be okay, and was told they were going to airlift him somewhere. He’d seemed at least semi-conscious when I was by him, but who knows.

You would think-slash-hope that this incident would be some sort of life-affirming wakeup call for me, but all I could think of was how if it had been me, I would’ve done it right. Interstate, high speed, a tree or a pole, and no other vehicles involved. Why drag innocent people into it?

One might wonder if perhaps I’m not yet on the right med cocktail (they’ve been fooled with a number of times since my initial meltdown in December), or if my therapist isn’t the right one for me despite my fondness for her.

Or maybe I’m just broken, like I’ve suspected all along. Maybe this is all just a colossal wasted effort on everyone’s part. Maybe they’re just caulking bathroom tiles on the Titanic and they should just go home and let me sink.

It’s been over eight years since I’ve had to sleep in my car. I never thought I would be in this position again. The pills, the magic pills, they are keeping me from breaking down but I just wish a truck would hit me.

I have had, for the past several years and for another week or so to come, the pleasure of living in a delightful small town. It’s actually a city; a real live municipality unto itself. Thriving, growing, good schools, and new businesses popping up every day. It’s a nice place.

Unfortunately, if you live here, no outside social service organization will touch you with a ten-foot pole.

It turns out that major groups like the United Way, the Salvation Army, and even smaller local orgs and county resources are prohibited from providing services to anyone who lives in my city. It’s a jurisdictional thing. Getting evicted and about to be homeless? Not their prob. Electric bill on its final notice? Talk to the hand. Sleeping in your car and need a place to shower? Sorry, insert sympathetic grimace and tongue click.

No, when you live in my charming little burg, the only place that will step in when you’re in a crisis such as mine is the city’s own Social Services Department. But only if you have a job. If you’re unfortunate enough to be unemployed and can’t demonstrate self-sufficiency, you’re out of luck.

I’m so heavily-medicated right now that I might be officially reclassified as a dill pickle, so the aforementioned brick wall of red tape I’ve come up against is just making me laugh. It’s like Catch-22 but with more bureaucrats. I couldn’t get a job because I was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and also my phone was shut off, but without a job I can’t get assistance with housing, and without a safe place to live I’ll be even less likely to get a job what with my car being too small to install a shower and sink in the trunk.

“Aren’t there shelters where you live?”

There is, in fact, no homeless shelter in my delightful little town. There’s one in the next town over, but there’s a waiting list several weeks out (I’m on it), and also I don’t have kids, so, you know. There’s a Salvation Army emergency shelter a few cities in the opposite direction, but you’re only allowed to stay there ten days. I might check it out, but the amount of precious gasoline I’ll have to spend just to visit there is giving me heartburn. My mental health care, and I think I speak for everyone present when I say it’s not an option NOT to get it, is taking place in THIS town and also another town way in the OTHER other direction.

So, needless to say, I’m not thrilled about the prospect of being homeless without even a nice, big natural disaster to blame it on. But the ditzy lady at Social Services (who repeatedly and cheerfully called me by another person’s name even after being corrected) suggested I try to enjoy it. Go to the beach! Hang out! Um, okay. I might, in fact, drive to one of my favorite parks and sleep in the woods. In the car. Because, alligators. But still, nature yay! Right?

God bless the numerous and multicolored pills I’m currently on. They’re taking a situation that had me quietly planning my suicide, and turning it into a situation where I’m quietly rolling my eyes.

Having once again sabotaged everything in my life and left myself on the verge of homelessness with a spectacular mental illness flareup, I discovered a peculiar peace. I knew that I would never be able to be normal, would always wreck every relationship whether business or personal, would always be broken, and would never, ever get better. Most importantly, I was no longer afraid.

I’ve written about my suicidal thoughts before. I’ve mentioned how the fear of screwing it up was one of the biggest deterrents in my life from taking the plunge. A month ago, that fear left me for good. I knew exactly what I would do, how much damage I would inflict on myself, and how unlikely it was that I’d survive as a despondent vegetable. At long last, I knew that I could do it and I knew that I wouldn’t chicken out at the last second. It was at once relaxing and thrilling, to realize that I was capable of following through, finally.

I started writing my suicide note. Predictably, the note got long, and I worked on trimming the excess drama while still including enough detail so that people would understand. To the bitter end, I couldn’t bear the thought of people thinking the wrong things about me. I wanted them to know the sequence of events that led up to this moment, but I knew I couldn’t make it a Great American Novel or nobody would take it seriously. Hell, I knew they were all just going to shake their heads and cluck their tongues over it no matter what I said, but I was still compelled to EXPLAIN.

So there I was, planning out my final exit. It was very specific and detailed, and there was going to be very little wiggle room for miraculous lifesaving. The timing was also fairly specific: Since I couldn’t pay my rent or any of my other bills, I would kick back and enjoy my last couple of weeks of life while I waited for the landlord to get the eviction process into gear. Once I got the summons and my homelessness was no longer an abstract but a reality, I would do the deed.

I did enjoy myself. I let my cellphone run up data overage charges, because who cares if you’re dead by the time the bill comes in? I bought treats that I had long denied myself (with food stamps, ooooooh, bad girl), and ate with gusto. So I’d be a little heavier in the casket, not my prob. I skipped showers — not trying to impress anybody anymore — and spent a quiet Christmas with as much non-alcoholic eggnog as I wanted. I played Minecraft for hours on end, for once not worrying about bills or rent.

I even went to church one last time, Christmas Eve, and told a couple of what passes for close friends in my life about what was going on (sans suicide plans, of course). Posted on Facebook asking for prayers. This was nothing new to the people who know me; you could almost hear the “Oh, C’s in crisis again, yawn” comments that people had the good taste not to post. Only one person, an Internet friend, reached out, and I’m very grateful for her tenderheartedness. The rest of my peeps, well, they’ve seen it all before.

So I put up my feet and waited. I wasn’t in any hurry, because I really did want to just take it easy for once. I knew that I could do it when the time came, and I knew it would come soon.

Are you ready for the punchline? The landlord wouldn’t evict me. She was ticked off at the prospect of having to spend all that money to get me out of the house, and dug in her heels, refusing to file the paperwork. She tried to persuade me to just leave, voluntarily, so they could re-rent my house. She made calls on my behalf to social service organizations, because my phone was shut off for non-payment. She called my church and tried to light a fire under their butts to help me so she wouldn’t have to evict.

It was hilarious.

Even better, she made calls trying to get me HELP. You know, as in mental health care. (I’ve written about my experiences with that before, too.) This was after she showed up at my door and found me a long-unshowered shambling mass that crumbled into tears and burst out with all the truth about my depression, the loss of my jobs, the meds I couldn’t afford anymore.

I was somewhat vindicated by the fact that my landlord, in her efforts, came up against the same roadblocks I’ve always come up against, so I could finally say, “SEE? SEE? It’s not as easy as you people are always saying! It’s not as easy as ‘you have to WANT to be helped!’” Others were enlisted: The local women’s resource organization, the next county over’s behavioral health center, the counseling service attached to the health department.

With my suicide plans utterly derailed by this ridiculous clown car of letmehelpitude out of nowhere, I found myself daring to hope.

I took a shower. I brushed my teeth. I washed my clothes. With no insurance, no money, and no waiting, I was ushered into a psychiatrist’s office, in a hysterical scene that needed only a soundtrack of Yakety Sax to punctuate my sputtering of “What just happened?” as a bag of jarred peanut butter and jelly was thrust into my hands and a swarm of ladies group-hugged me into submission. No, I’m not making any of that up, and I still don’t know exactly what happened.

Meds were adjusted. Meds were added. Appointments were made. Appointments were kept. Therapy. Go back to school. Fill out these papers. Endless conversations. Hope.

Unfortunately, time continued its inexorable crawl during these events, and the landlord grew restless. The rent was two months past due.

I was served with the eviction papers yesterday.

I still have no job, no phone, and nowhere to go. “Don’t you have friends?” If I had friends who were willing to take me in, we wouldn’t be having this little talk. See above, re: seen it all before. “What about your church?” See above. “What about your family?” Ah ha ha. You must be new here. “What about–” No. Using other people’s phones, I’ve called every social service organization, homeless prevention corps, all the big names and the little ones in the back of the phone book too. I don’t qualify for aid from any of them. No job, no kids, no disability. (Tried that too; seems I’ve already shown that I’ll get better with treatment, hence not disabled.)

I’m sorry, were you getting your hopes up that this would be a touching story of redemption from the throes of terminal depression? Oops. Nope, this isn’t a Lifetime movie. The sad truth is that I still might fall back on my original plan if the alternative is getting molested in the Salvation Army communal bathroom. Who knows?

So why am I sharing this? Just another attention-seeking gesture? Sure, why not. I’m very thoroughly medicated now. Two antidepressants, two antipsychotics, birth control, allergy meds, a multivitamin, and a gizmo that works with the antidepressant to do some sort of folic acid sorcery on me. And a partridge in a pear tree. I’m as close to happy as I’ve been in a long time, but I’m going to be sleeping in my car in a week or so, and I’m not exactly okay with that, so…I guess I don’t really have a point, here. How are you doing?

P.S. I burned my hand again. MELODRAMAZ!

Here’s my “recipe,” bearing in mind that I hate measuring stuff so I make everything pretty much “to taste”:

• 1 pound chicken breast
• some dillweed
• some fruity jam
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
• some dried cranberries
• some walnut pieces
• some small red seedless grapes
• 1 Fuji apple, chopped
• several tablespoons of mayonnaise
• pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Smear a little vegetable oil in your favorite glass baking dish and plop your chicken breast in it.
3. Sprinkle liberally with dillweed, and then spread jam over the whole thing. (I used Amish Wedding brand “tropical jam,” but whatever fruity jam floats your boat should do nicely.)
4. Bake uncovered for about an hour or until done, turning occasionally. The jam will melt and baste the chicken in a most delicious way.
5. Cube or shred the chicken and place in bowl with all the other ingredients. Add a few tablespoonfuls of the melted jam & dillweed mixture and mix it all up, adding more of any particular ingredient to your taste.
6. Make sammich.

Okay, so it may not fit your definition of EXTREEM, but it’s one heck of a chicken salad if I do say so myself.