This spring has been a lot harder on me than I thought it would be.
That point was underscored this morning when I realized that I actually felt comfortable for once! Up until then I've been going to bed in a single sleeping on a thin thermal pad, which has resulted in over two months of waking up to pain in my hip whenever I rolled around in my sleep trying to get comfortable. I've never been good at sleeping, really, being apparently very much a Princess and the Pea kind of guy on top of being a very light sleeper and having a hard time even falling asleep in the first place because of my mind's tendency toward obsessional restlessness and disquiet ... I guess I forgot somehow just how poor my sleep had been in previous forays out on the streets, which is strange considering how poor my sleep was even when I was living indoors this last time around. I have sleeping medicine, but it's a case or too little or too much: one pill won't do enough for me, but two of them will leave me dopey for much of the early part of the next day unless I take them twelve hours before I plan on rousing myself into the day. Of course, living beneath a freeway isn't any help, either, but options are pretty limited for homeless people in this town, and this freeway is much less noisy than any other place I've tried to camp out at.
Well, it's also been a rather chilly and soggy spring, too. That's one thing I've always disliked about the Pacific Northwest, the fact that the weather can be mild but depressing and inconvenient for seven to nine months out of the year of what ends up feeling like a dark, drizzly monsoon that smothers my psychology in a wet blanket. You just never feel dry and comfortable in this kind of weather and it wears on you even when you manage somehow to keep yourself at least acceptably damp and avoid soaking your sleeping bag. It's a rather subtle kind of discomfort, too, and one you wouldn't notice unless you live or work outside. I think I'm going to need to talk to my case worker at Central City Concern today and tell her about my problem with depression and discomfort, and maybe see if there's things I can do to help me feel better and remain motivated to make the best out of my situation and to work with the organization toward improving my lot; I can't wait the year or longer until I get back into housing to deal with my problems with depression, alcohol abuse, and just sitting around not doing anything but reading, dicking around on computers, and schlepping from one free meal to the next in an aimless drifting around in dismal circles of human flotsam. In other words, get pro-active instead of wait for a ray of hope to fall into my lap like a Coke bottle dropped out of an Ultraflight.
Yeah, I've been blowing off appointments at Central City Concern, appointments which may result in me getting part-time work and alleviating somewhat the pain in my legs and hips that seem to be a daily curse for me. I'm just so used to being resigned to nothing working out for me — be it due to the vagaries of fate or my own foibles and failings — I seem to have institutionalized myself into laziness, self-medication, and fickle and cheeseparing opportunism ... in short, being a bum. This can't continue, not unless I want to die next to a shopping cart and empty bottles of fortified wine twenty years from now, or even sooner.
