The Shit Show, likely part 1

My living situation is no longer feeling very safe.
Maybe I’m just over-reacting a little, but everyone I have talked to says "Get the fuck out".
I have definitely been testing my limits lately.
I am exhausted and hungry.

This is what I wrote last Thursday.
Let’s have a real struggle. Ha. Be careful what you ask for. I am having a real struggle, though it’s really not so bad. I teeter between freaking out and being really okay, even excited about things. There is a controlling factor that is making the struggle. The other things are difficult, but I think I am okay with that.  Food, heat, water, these are things that are worth struggling for. The affection of another is not. My belief in love fades darker everyday. Is it love or is it loneliness or is it convenience or is it timing or is it really just love? I’m so convinced that love is a waste of time. There’s always something else fueling the fire. I am living without reliable communication. My phone got stolen my first day here. Neither of the people I live with have a phone either. I can get on the internet at a cafe that is a mile or so walk up the road. It’s fucking cold here at night. The day is okay if you are active. Making fires is okay if you have newspaper to start it. Showering is near impossible. I am going to have to use the community center or yeah….. there is no  or. The one kid I live with got his last $15 stolen. Would my roommates live like this if they weren’t poor? I can’t help but to wonder. HOw long am I prepared to do this? I need to go to a real doctor. I either have a  UTI or yeast infection. I guess I’ll try the drugs I got, but I am not into the way she’s been. It’s not really my responsibility, and she says she’s trying, but goddamn. I am still working on my patience. I just don’t want to wait anymore. I feel like I have been waiting for far too long. This is an adventure. The walls are crumbling grass. It’s all falling apart. If only we can build it back up. I hope we all have it in us. I am okay with sustainable. I am just not okay with this poor aspect, but with sustainability you don’t need as much money and that is the end goal, and it’s good for the earth. Hey man, just gotta try… I guess.

This is what I wrote Monday.
This is such a strange dynamic. My living situation is growing more bizarre everyday. There is such an awkward thing floating in the air. It’s amusing for now, but it’s totally going to get old soon.  Soft sunsets make my heart warm, but the night brings the chill. I want to go out again. I hate being here with. Silly little jealous boy. It’s odd to me. I still don’t get it at all. There is something missing here. Oh well. Thanks a bunch. I miss New York so much. Disappear for a few days. Maybe I should go down to Alburquerque and let this shit blow up. Three chairs perched around a wood fire. They  are not subtle in their desire to be without me. Yet again. Oh jealousy. Too powerful an emotion. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so observant, then I just lost my key. Fuck.

This is what I wrote as a letter to a friend yesterday and last night.
How is everything? I am missing New York so much right now. Remember how I was upset about San Diego? Well if I could tell past me about this shit, she would’ve been thrilled about living at her mom’s.  Haha. My friend, Karen, who I am supposed to be starting a business with, is a complete emotional mess. The work to live situation that she has gotten us into is a complete shit storm. It is so very difficult to put on a happy face with a person who has misled me yet I am in a position where I have to rely on her too much. She has completely betrayed my confidence in her and my trust.  Initially when she told me of the work to live (FREE RENT) situation, she said it was all lined up. The space needed a little work (paint and getting the septic pumped), but would offer us freedom to set it up and pretty much do what we want with it in exchange for two 7 hour shifts/week at a local coffee shop. The house is a squatter’s nightmare. The last people to reside here were a bunch of crackheads and honestly that is the only type of people who could tolerate living here. I am going to break down the issues numerically, so I don’t get sidetracked, as my mind really just wants to go off on a tangent.

1. The heat.
So the only wood stove we have is just that- meant for cooking- not for heating. It’s great for cooking, which is fantastic because aside from that we have a little propane fueled camping stove. The heating part sucks. It’s only warm if you are sitting directly next to it, so pretty much everynight we are huddled around this shitty stove pretending to like each other.  At night, we sleep like hobo’s on leftover crack whore mattresses, sharing blankets and I still shake myself to sleep. The house is so shoddily constructed and maintained that there are all kinds of air leaks and we don’t have enough blankets to cover them and us. The saving grace is that it is warm enough during the day to walk somewhere, though the wind is brutal and cuts down to the bones.

2. The water.
There is running well water that I drink having to ignore the fact that it is probably not so good to drink.  So that’s nice that we don’t have to pillage water from somewhere else. There is no hot water however. No septic. So the water from the sink drains into a bucket, that my two roommates constantly forget to check, so I find myself neurotically emptying the bucket. We heat a large pot of water on the fire for dishes.  And I wash my hands and face with that when I can. There is a bucket to shit in – in the cold part of the house. I developed a UTI from not wanting to get up in the middle of the night to go piss in it.  On the plus side. I have gotten pretty good at making a fire.

3. The septic.
So there is a septic tank that we could pay $150 to get drained, however the tank is so small apparently you should only use it to shit in anyway. All the plumbing drains into this tank, so it makes ever having a working shower or remove the need to empty a bucket improbable. Oh but we have a 4 gallon ‘solar shower’ that provides about 3 minutes of hot water, so I guess if we got a basin then we could take a kinda shower. The other option is paying $3 up at the community center to go swimming and then shower. I am pretty much a dirty mess, which brings me to….

4. The dirt.
New Mexico is a mud pit. It gets warm enough during the day to unfreeze the ground and melt the snow just enough to create a muddy mess everywhere you go.  Fires are dirty, so you can imagine how messy it is when it’s in the middle of the room. You don’t want to take your shoes off because the floor is cold tile, so basically I live in dirt. The bed is dirty. The blankets are dirty. I am dirty. All the time.

5. The ‘landlord’ vs. ‘the property manager’.
Mark is the landlord. He is a completely a backboneless flake.  He means well and I think he feels pretty shitty sometimes about the living situation he has put us in, so he is nice and sharing, but he is a complete pothead flake.  The room that I was initially meant to be living in, apparently I can’t be in anymore because the ‘property manager’, Clay, wants to save it for a ‘wolfer’ or someone who will liver here and

help to fix the place up.  Which we intend on doing.  Mark has made several comments about me being a ‘city girl’ and this and that.  Clay made a comment about the importance of being ‘willing AND capable’. The first thing he said to me is "I don’t hear". Great. Mark initially siad it was fine that I take the ‘wolfer’s’ room, but has since reneged because of Clay, I imagine.  So now I don’t really even have a room and if I did there isn’t heat in it anyway.

6. Transportation.
I was sold on ‘only a mile’ from town when it is closer to 2. Also the bike they have for me has no fucking tires, so yeah, two feet, which doesn’t bother me too much for now.

7. Lack of communication.
Noone has a phone. Internet only at the cafe. Shit storm. The second day I was here, Karen’s car got broken into and her wallet and phone and my phone were stolen among some other stupid things.  Call me paranoid, but it almost feels a little set up, because they didn’t take my wallet which was with my phone in the glove box.

8. And then there is the real shit storm, because dealing with the rest wouldn’t be so bad except….
There is stupid fucking Karen.  The dumbass selfish bitch who believes she’s a good person because she is so nice to everyone. But it’s all this selfish self fulfilling bullshit. Unfortunately for me, a couple weeks after I agreed to move to New Mexico, she found herself a plaything. And what’s more important than anything? A plaything apparently.  Nevermind that I was trying to start a fucking business with her or whatever. No this boy toy is where it’s at. Because what’s better for the self esteem than a boy? That’s how it is. Fucking stupidass bitch. I fucking hate that bitch so much right now> i am beyond pissed off. This has gotten so redundant. Life just sucks right now.

And that’s the end. Could you tell that I had gotten drunk for #8?