I know everybody has felt bogged down by the weight of 2016. The deaths of our favorite musicians, comedians, actors and writers have been astounding. Some of us have also lost people close to us. In my case I have lost my father and my uncle to the grim reaper though both had extraordinary and long lives. In addition to the heavy but inevitable ends, I have been dumped and heartbroken by the love of my life; my own body broken and put through hand surgery and a year long rehab which made my workability impossible; my brain was confused and depressed and I could’ve fixed the California drought with all the tears I shed.
I woke up crying. I went to bed weeping. I walked the dog with sunglasses on cloudy days to hide the stream down my face. In the midst of this I tried to connect with old friends who I’d left behind for San Francisco six years prior. I was back in LA the first of the year to make another go of it but as soon as I returned the hand injury became unbearable and all-encompassing. My long time friend who recently divorced her husband offered a room in her house “for as long as you want to stay.” At first, despite the physical pain, we played house and she cooked lavish, nightly dinners. We’d go out but I was immediately weary of the costs as my financial nut was disappearing due to lack of work and previous spendies after a year of travel and family time.
When I learned I needed surgery I looked into disability and was reminded that I’d been self-employed for ten years and didn’t pay into anything like that. I also learned well into the hand saga that returning to Southern California, I had to change my Kaiser account from the separate Northern California system. I asked for the same coverage as I’d had, but somehow I got onto a deductible plan and have since been having to pay for everything. The surgery, the rehab, the X-rays, the MRI, the cast, etc. Why ask for a co-pay when It’s really just a down payment? I was constantly distraught by these constant tidbits and I was exhausted with worry that I’d never have full use of my hand, that my relationship was starting to feel ghosted, that I was going broke and LA was not as warm to me as it once was.
I am not comfortable being a taker, I’d prefer if there is an opportunity, that I be the giver. I’ve never been able to be a money giver, but laughs and good cheer is something I’m normally a natural. It became unnatural when that was expected of me suddenly, as if I was not allowed to be down and hurt and in pain. I certainly have always had stories to tell of my weird and head-knocking life but it started to feel uber self-conscious and for everyone else, boring. When one of my besties said to me, “Snap out of it!” I wanted to punch her but instead I looked into her eyes, shook my head and started to tear up. To her credit she apologized and hugged me and has talked me through it now for months and counting.
One of the reasons I returned to LA was because I wrote a screenplay. It wasn’t my first, but it was one that I felt was a viable piece of work and I wanted to see if I could get anything to happen with it. Yeah, incredibly naive of me, even after my thirty years there. Somewhere into my nine months of 2016, back in LA, I realized nobody gave a shit. Sorry, nobody gives a shit. It was as if the people who actually read it looked at me with pity not because it was bad, but because it was good and there would be nothing I could do about it. Even the therapist I finally got an appointment with mocked me over it being a reason I moved back. I’d put her in the Not A Giver category.
And listen, I wasn’t in much of a position to be anything but a taker during this time. I needed assistance not only to open a jar or cut my food, but to be housed and comforted. Everybody’s got shit. It’s all how you handle it, I know. I could barely handle wiping my own shit. It got the best of me. I was clinically depressed. I thought being around my OG peeps would suffice but alas. We are older and have for the most part separate lives. I think my roomie wanted the OG me, but I couldn’t always deliver nor could I really afford to. I tried to write, to take a couple classes, to check books out of the library, all to be productive while incapacitated. Every time I thought I might be able to work I started looking and sending out dozens of resumes and cover letters, all in all upwards of a hundred. I could not get a response. If I did, the job paid $11 an hour, if that. I started to feel distrusted when the questions about what I did all day started coming in. “So, what are you going to do?” The more I was enveloped by my own shit the less I could answer that question and it hurt to be asked.
What was a girl to do? I got the hard arm cast taken off me in early June after six weeks. My entire hand felt worse than before the surgery. My long distance boyfriend was communicating less and less so I thought it was time to confront the year of promises not delivered. We are neither good on the phone so I drove 1400 miles to get dumped. It was all fun and good sex till I put him to the questions. I never actually got them answered but I knew when I was being pushed away. He and I had been on this merry-go-round for 30 years. A year earlier he had told me he was ready. Matured. We should live out our lives together. We weren’t getting any younger, especially him. I believed him. And now there he was asking why I would believe him. Ghosting isn’t bad enough, now I was being gaslighted. I drove back to LA one handed, in tears.
I started acupuncture and things started to feel like they were activating in the right direction. I was at about 10%, then 20 and over the next month I peaked at about 40% and could actually shave with my right hand. Then I fell up a curb while watching teens chase after pokemon and landed on the other hand. Yet another Xray was negative but the new pain was real and even six months later I feel it. I started anti-depressants. The first wasn’t good but I eventually got on one that I’d had success with some years before. I was trying everything including reading self help books. I’d never read a self help book in my life. I read three in less than a month.
Just as I was feeling good enough to really be able to look for physical work, accept the breakup (kind of) and even do some digital art and active writing on the computer, my roommate told me she “needed her space back.” It’s not that she didn’t have a constant flow of friends and relatives vacationing at the house — she did. Yes it’s true, it was hard for me too to have so many people coming and going and the holidays were coming up and the calendar was “already filling up… “ But only hard for me because I was expected to be OG Me during these visits and I wasn’t always. I was in pain and depressed. Also, it doesn’t feel any better to tell me that maybe she shouldn’t have given me the space in the first place because she can’t say no to family. And here I thought I … No. I’m a no…
I could’ve stayed in LA and gotten a apartment with no idea of when and what job I was going to get. It’s an ageist town. I was now up against hundreds of resumes for each job and against the ever present and arriving dreamy-eyed twenty-somethings. Even when I searched “cannabis” jobs on Craigslist each and every one in LA wanted you to submit a resume with two head-shots attached.
So I was uncomfortable and in another pinch. I was in contact with my friends up north who all agreed it was cuckoo and I should come back. I took a look at a wine job site, sent four resumes out and heard from two within two days. Quite a difference from what I was getting in LA. My cousin was getting married back in the North Bay a month after I got my walking papers so I decided that seemed like a good time to take leave. Unless anything miraculous happened before that. It didn’t.
So I am back in the Bay. I’ve been basically homeless since. I have been bouncing between couches for three months. Does not feel great. I do have friends and cousins currently in the right place at the current right time but it has been running out, as thankfully this year has as well. I am fervent and frayed. I am regretful, but maybe I won’t be some day. I am hurt and bitter, but maybe I won’t be some day. I am scared and sacrificing, but maybe I won’t be some day. I have grievances. I am grateful. Maybe I will always be some day.
I don’t need to even begin to address how I’ve felt about and since the election. This year couldn’t end soon enough but I have learned that dates don’t really mean much to life tides. I’ve got a couple irons in the fire but the fire is still hard to read. I still wonder when I will have a pain free hand in it.
