Stuck on a Ledge

I am afraid.

No, that’s not right.

I am terrified.

Of what? Of everything, it seems.

My greatest fear is failure. Or at least that’s how I think it can be explained simply. Failure means that I lose everything that I have worked for my entire life. Failure means that I live up to the expectations that my mother had for me—which is to say: that I be nothing. Failure means that I end up alone and bitter, just like my mother, or alone in a hospital unable to recall my own name, let alone who my children are. Failure means that I end up in a tiny box of some variety because I could not control myself. Failure means that I die before I am able to see the girls graduate college, or before I greet my grandchildren. Failure means that I see nothing but disappointment on my father’s face.

And so, I’m afraid, because it seems that I am failing. It’s not a quick process like I always thought it was—I thought that it would be BOOM and it’s over and I’ve failed and it’s time to pick myself up and try again. No, it’s a slow process like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I look down and I can’t see the bottom. I look up and can’t see the top. I’m suspended between the two points and moving ever downward and cannot stop. I can sort of figure out what needs to be done about various things, but I need to stop the momentum pulling me downwards towards the pit of despair.

Dad wants me to plan, but I can’t plan when I can’t stop going downwards. I can’t plan when I have no resources at my disposal. I can’t plan when I don’t know what’s going to happen from day to day. Planning requires a certain amount of predictability to one’s days—predictability that I don’t really have. Planning requires a certain amount of independence, which again, I don’t have. All my potential plans are contingent upon other people, and of things working out to my benefit. That is something that hasn’t happened in a long time.

Dad thinks I should sign up for Hawthorne, but I’ve been kicked out of Hocker Heights, which is run by the same people as Hawthorne. He’s seems so sure that I could get in immediately because I’m homeless—never mind that I’ve told him that I don’t meet HUD’s definition of homeless because I’ve done what I can to avoid shelters, seeing as how you go to one with kids and they call DFS first thing. “Oh, but that’s not true—“ Bullshit. I’ve seen it done. And then because the woman was Wiccan, they refused to let her have her kids back. I’m not going to lose the girls. If I lose the girls, it’s game over and I’ve lost. It’s as simple as that. Department of Family Services doesn’t really help; they just steal children from parents trying to do their best and abandon the children that truly need their help. That’s how they operate in practice, regardless of what they are supposed to do in theory. I grew up in the class that is prosecuted by them. Hellfire, I’m still in the class that is prosecuted by them. How often do you see a middle class child being taken or an upper class? No, it’s always the poor families whose children need “saving”.

Besides, signing up for Hawthorne requires something that I don’t have: an income. You need to be able to pay utilities because they don’t do that for you. And the “utility supplement” that they give you is nowhere near enough to actually cover the utilities. Despite what he’s seen coming out of Kansas City, Hawthorne is not required to pay utilities for you. Guess what happens when your power gets turned off for lack of payment? You get evicted for failure to maintain property. Which means that IF I managed to get in without an income, I would only have it for about a month before I was kicked out and found myself homeless once more. That means that I would have the stress of moving twice in about a month.

I don’t move well. I don’t sleep well from the anticipation of it and during the actual process I break into several pieces that rocket off into several different directions. I get angry. I get depressed. I get confused and lost. I get scared and panicky. I get sick and can’t eat. I don’t move well. It’s not a simple thing like what most people seem to experience. They don’t like it but they can function during it. I can’t. I fall apart.

Dad thinks that I should try signing up for TANF again. I suppose that I could, but I don’t have two people that aren’t related to me that would be able to vouch for the state of my affairs. Even then, TANF isn’t enough to actually live off of it. It’s only a couple of hundred dollars a month. That’s not enough to pay one utility, let alone the three that would be necessary if I had a place at Hawthorne—or three plus rent if I had to be somewhere else. And it won’t last for longer than a year and a half because I’ve been on it before, and that draws from the total allotment, so I would end up back in the same place in short order.

But I’m “just being negative” when I mention these things and “talking myself out of doing anything”. Never mind that I’m pointing out the reasons that his idea will not work the way that he thinks that they will. He thinks that TANF works the same way that its predecessor program did, which is what everyone thinks. “Welfare” isn’t a permanent thing anymore. You have five years of cash help, if you have kids, and that’s it. Food Stamps doesn’t have a limit, no, but the cash to pay for things like rent, utilities, those little incidentals that are necessary (clothes, school supplies, toilet paper, soap, cleaning supplies, etc.)—that stuff is only for five years, not five years at a time, but five years in a lifetime. And it’s never very much either.

Dad gets all huffy when I try to explain this to him. He knows this person or that person who makes it work. Why can’t I? I don’t think you actually know what that person is doing to make it work—or if it working at all. Just because their Section 8 voucher says that Grandpa has to pay electric doesn’t mean that all Section 8 vouchers will—besides which, Section 8 is a three to five year wait with priority going to those people who are already in government housing. I’m not in government housing, for the reasons that have already been discussed.

I keep saying that my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is messed up, but no one seems to be listening. I’m trying to go to college when I can’t even figure out my housing situation or my relationship. I have no stability in my life. I thought that things were getting better—I had started singing again and I had unpacked my books for the first time in over a year. I had a space that I could claim as mine…

I should have known it was too good to have lasted.

Alex started spending most of his time in another room. Anytime that I went into that room, things got tense, like I was interrupting something or intruding, so I stopped going in. The last thing that I want to do is force my company on anyone. But I was afraid to ask for him to come to me very often. I was afraid of asking too much of him, of anyone. And maybe that stems from my issues with Mother, who was—and still is—fond of talking about how much of a burden that I am, just by existing.

I’ve read the literature on bipolar people and their relationships. The constant up and down of them—the constant flux between dependence and rejection—that wears down the relationship to the point that they break. Besides, there’s all this talk about how a healthy relationship is all about equality. People are equally independent and work together to make a successful partnership. You have to be able to trust and be trusted in return. If you don’t know when your partner is going to crack under the pressure and break down into inconsolable tears, how can you trust them? If you never know when your partner is going to decide that they simply must have such and such and use up funds that are needed elsewhere, how could you trust them? If you can’t trust your partner to believe you when you tell them that they are loved and can ask for attention without you reprimanding them for being selfish, how will you know when they are feeling like they’re being ignored?

He says that he feels as if he was being pushed away. I say that I felt him pulling away. He says that was just him changing, growing—I should do the same. I say that I have been doing it too, but I don’t want to grow away from him. But I’m stuck, aren’t I? I was so afraid of losing him, that I kept him at arm’s length. I can’t move forward, but I can’t move backwards either. I can’t have him, but I can’t live without him. I’m too much work, too much needs to be done to coax me off the ledge and I can’t just jump, can I? I want someone to pull me—take me under—but I can’t ask for them to do it, because that would mean admitting that I can’t do something that everyone else can do.

He says that I’m jealous of Luna—but I don’t want him to get rid of her…I just want the cookie too. I want him to want to spend time with me. I want him to want to session with me. I want him to want to slip my collar on me before cradling my face and kissing me. I want to be held like I’m precious and not have him rushing to move away or move it into something sexual. I want him to see me struggling and offer to help. I want him to take charge and say that he’s got a plan for how we’re going to stay together as a family rather being split into pieces again and never seeing each other except in passing. I want him to want my company. I don’t want to be alone with my nightmares. But I’m not the one that he defaults to when he “autopilots”. That’s her. And she’s the one who shares his interests in Pokémon and My Little Pony and Skylanders. And she’s the one with all the interesting knowledge of kinky things. And she’s the one who isn’t afraid to ask for things that she wants. And she’s capable of making friends on her own. And she doesn’t have a therapist and a psychiatrist. And she’s not the one needing to lose weight because her blood sugar is too high. She’s easy to get along with for most people, except that she hates me. And how can I compete with someone who is everything that I’m not? Someone who has already issued the ultimatum and I’ve lost…I’ve lost everything because I couldn’t be what he wanted. I couldn’t be easy; I couldn’t be her.

All I’ve ever wanted was him, but I can’t be what he needs me to be. I can’t be anything except what I am. I try to get along with people, but I always end up slipping and pointing out things that they don’t want to focus on or realize about themselves. I try to speak up about what I want, but when the first time isn’t successful, I can’t bring myself to ask again, because the rejection hurts and I can’t breathe for it. I try to trust people but I hear a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t and I can’t take that last step off the ledge. I know the voices, and I know that they don’t have my best interests in mind, but they’re so loud and just there and I can’t push off the edge, even knowing that I may not fall, that I may fly.

I’m scared, so scared. I can’t breathe. I can’t stop shaking. And I know that everyone else doesn’t have this problem and I should be able to handle things because everyone else can and this is just part of being a grownup—grownups take care of things and they don’t cry over things all the time and they aren’t crippled by the normal ups and downs of life—and they don’t need a specially chosen mug in order to write or for their pillows to smell a certain way or to have a specific quilt to sleep with and they don’t count their steps to four over and over again. And they don’t have to focus in order to not get lost in the ever-rippling tide of what if? that flows away from everything all the time. They don’t panic when something changes in their environment. They can create plans for their future, and if something happens to derail that plan, they can just regroup and try again.

They aren’t stuck on ledges, wanting to jump but unable to bring themselves to do it. They just jump.

So what’s wrong with me that I can’t?