More Stupid Behaior

Simon Says:

I'm feeling a little stupid now and justifiably so. I had just been released from the psych ward a couple days earlier and here I was back in. I was depressed, anxious and tired. I wasn't looking forward to explaining myself to the doctor but he was pretty cool and I would just have to tell him the truth. I made some poor decisions and drank too much alcohol again. I needed something other than alcohol to deal with my anxiety. They gave me ativan to detox me but then refused to give me any benzo's to help me deal with the anxiety. I believe this protocol is way fucked up but there's no arguing with doctors. When you're stuck in the psych ward you just do and take what they want.


I knew I lost my phone but I could still check my voice mails so I got on the patient phone and dialed up my voice mail. I was glad I did because there were two messages that I was particularly interested in. The first was from Kathy, believe it or not she ended up back in the psych ward at Regions where I was. Only I was on the fourth floor and she was on the fifth floor. The hospital was aware of what happened at the Hovander house and had put us on separate floors on purpose. The other voice mail was from Rick in AZ. He had heard what had happened to me at the house. He wanted Mush and Mark out and me in. I never missed a rent payment and was always on time. I called Rick and told him everything that had happened at the house since he took off to AZ. He said he was going to call his sister and Mark and tell them to get out and I could move back to the house and I would have it to myself until he got back and we could find another roommate to rent the other room. I told him I wasn't sure about moving back and I had no idea what I was going to have to do as a result of me ending back in the psych ward again.


The thing I was most interested in was the fact that Kathy was just upstairs and had no idea I was on the floor below her. I knew the phone number to the floor above and I called it and asked for Kathy. She got on the phone and I told her where I was and that everything would be OK. We were thrilled again, that after everything that had happened we ended up in the same place again. I would see her once and awhile when she would come downstairs for Occupational Therapy group which was held on the fourth floor every day. She was only participating in the group so that we could see each other momentarily. I couldn't join in the group because each floor has it's own groups but we could see each other in the hall. We still didn't know each other that well and I guess the attraction was a physical one and the Hovander incident did give me some insight as to her mental condition but that was when she was drinking. She seemed fairly normal sober and we talked on the phone a lot and continued with our plans to get an apartment together. Neither of us knew where we were going from the psych ward but we were still going to make it work somehow.


Meanwhile I kept in touch with Rick and he was keeping me posted as to the situation at the house. He said he had given them a few days to move out and their rent wasn't an issue because they hadn't payed it. I still wasn't so sure so I called Ricks mother who had an interest in the house because she was a cosigner on the lease and needed to make sure the rent was paid just as much as Rick. She told me that yes, Mush and Mark had been given a deadline to get out of the house and I could move back in as soon as they were out. I trusted her because she was in her early 70's and seemed like an honest person to me. I had met her many times while living there. I was still a little skeptical but I was hoping things were going to work out. For me the best case scenario was I'd get the place to myself and I could have Kathy stay there with me until Rick got back and then we could find an apartment together as planned.
I think I was in the psych ward for about two weeks again and then released the same way as before. This time I was going to go to a different transition house in South St.Paul. This place was called Maureen's house and it's run by Guild. Gild is an organization that helps people suffering with mental illness and chemical dependency. I stayed there for a few days and kept in touch with Rick on a new phone I bought. He told me that Mush was moving out of the house and should be gone by now. His mother confirmed it and I believed them. My social worker didn't want me to go there and wanted some kind of confirmation from my landlord (Rick) that I could move back there and everything was cool. After talking with Rick my social worker agreed that I could go back to where I had been living. Rick asked me if I could send him the rent for the next month and everything would be cool. I hadn't moved back in yet but I was convinced that Mush and her boyfriend had moved out and I had no problem with sending Rick the next months rent. I waited another day and then I went to Walmart and sent Rick a moneygram for the next month's rent.


I asked my old girlfriend to give me a ride back to the house in Blaine and she was cool with that. So I packed up my duffel bag again, checked out of Maureen's House, and headed back to Blaine. I didn't have my key for the house and Rick had told me to just crawl through the window to get in. There was a window that was always left unlocked in case anyone ever lost their keys. When we pulled in the driveway the place seemed deserted, no vehicles in the driveway and the front door was locked. I told my old girlfriend to just leave and I was going to have to break in through the window, I would call her later. I climbed up on some garbage cans and opened the window and climbed in. The window opened into my old room and I was surprised to see it had been completely changed. All my things were gone and there seemed like someone elses stuff was in there. The door was closed and I thought I heard something but wasn't sure. I opened the door, walked down the hall to kitchen and the house seemed quiet with no one around. Then I walked into the living room and I was surprised to see Mush, Mark and some other chick sitting in the living room smoking meth. I had been fucked over again. First thing Mush say's is you aren't welcome here and you'll have to leave. I told her that she wasn't supposed to be staying there and that Rick said she had moved out. All she said was that Rick wasn't there and she was in charge of the house.


I didn't want to argue with them so I just left and headed back to the transit station to wait for a bus. Along the way I called Rick and told him what had happened and that I wanted my rent money back. He was pissed off and had me call his mother to find out why Mush was still in the house. I called her and she said she had no idea that she was still in there and she didn't know what to do. Mush was refusing to leave and along with her was Mark. Truth is they had no where else to go and Mush was being stubborn about letting me back in. Don't forget that these are all meth addicts I'm dealing with and meth has a way of twisting the mind into all kinds of bizarre behavior. I'm no exception, allowing myself to get fucked over every time I turn around. I walked to the transit station and was waiting for the bus when this guy Mike and his girlfriend drive up and say I should go with them. Mike is Ricks good friend and Rick had called him and told him the situation. Rick asked Mike to help me out until Rick could get a flight back to Minnesota. Rick was going to fly all the way back just to kick Mush and Mark out of his house. I knew Mike a little because he would come to the house a lot and he was a meth addict too. Well, once again I didn't have a clue where I was going to go, maybe back to Maureen's house but I just wasn't sure and Mike was asking me to go stay at his place until Rick got back from AZ. OK, and I got in the car. Mike was actually a pretty cool dude for a meth addict and he made me feel at home in his house while I was waiting for Rick.


Mike and his girlfriend didn't work real jobs, their thing was taking old broken things and repairing them in their garage to sell. The house wasn't actually his, rather it was his girlfriends handicapped brothers house and they stayed there rent free and she would take care of her brother in exchange. I helped them work in their garage as a way of paying for my stay there. I had stopped drinking because I didn't want to offend them. They didn't drink but they smoked a lot of meth and had a lot of friends that were the same way. My experience is that people that smoke meth don't normally drink alcohol. They're not drunks and they really don't care for them. Alcohol has kind of an opposite affect from meth and they just don't have any desire to drink. For me it's a little different, my drug of choice is alcohol but I do like meth as well. I like repairing things and I'm pretty good at it. I also am fairly good at using computers. They had a lot of stuff to sell and they were always getting more stuff in exchange for meth. I gotta say that I actually enjoyed staying there and I met a lot of new people. We smoked a lot of meth everyday and were constantly selling something to make more money for more meth. I turned them on to Craig's list and Ebay as a way to sell some of the shit that they fixed up. We made a few sales and I pitched in now and then to buy some meth. Mike and I seemed to become pretty good friends, at least for the duration of my stay there and until I ended up disappearing. It took Rick a whole month to make that flight back from AZ. The whole time I kept in close contact with Rick and his mother and they assured me they were doing everything they could to get Mush out of the house. They didn't trust Mush and her boyfriend either and were afraid that they were going to strip the house of all the fixtures and copper wiring to pay for their addiction to meth. They had been known for doing that in the past. I was doing just fine at Mikes and willing to wait but when it started approaching a whole month I started getting nervous and started pressuring Rick and his mother to do something. Rick flew back as promised and sure enough he kicked Mush and her boyfriend out. I moved back in. Mush and her boyfriend had taken all my stuff with them. Somehow Mark was able to convince Rick that he was just going along with Mush because he didn't want to get kicked out himself. Mark was allowed to stay so everything kinda went back to normal.


There was one problem though. Rick didn't have a good experience seeing his old girlfriend in AZ and it had driven him crazier than he was before. His old girlfriend had turned to prostitution as a way to pay here own rent. Rick didn't say anything at first but eventually it all came out. Mike would come over and hang out a lot more now that he knew me better and was good friends with Rick. One thing I failed to mention about Mike is that he had a warrant for his arrest due to a probation violation. He had failed a urinalysis test and skipped out on court, just like I had done when Mush called the cops on me. Mark's dope dealing business wasn't doing too well and he ended up losing his drivers license because he didn't have insurance on his truck. He was smoking up all his profits to and trying to play the big shot dope dealer. Things were going downhill for him and he ended up selling his truck. The cops were watching the house pretty closely still and I even got pulled over leaving the house on a bicycle on my way over to Mikes house one night. They searched the crap out of me, they had me take my belt off and my shoes and searched me pretty good. They were looking for meth and gave me a lot of shit and asked me a hundred questions. Finally they let me go on my way, I rode around for awhile so they couldn't follow me. When I finally figured they gave up following me around I went over Mikes. I was still hanging out at Mikes helping him out in his garage. Mike was getting more and more paranoid about the cops because he didn't want to get arrested on the warrant and the cops were watching his house just as much as they were watching Rick's. You just didn't want to come or go from either house with any drugs on you or you were taking a big risk. I don't know how the other dope dealers were always coming around both houses without getting caught but hey did. For all we knew any one of them could have already been working with the police but even though paranoid we bought meth. I didn't really care, my DOC was alcohol but occasionally I bought some meth.


Mark was scamming anyone he could to make money and one day he showed up with this guy and his sister. He was banging the girl and conning them both out of money. I was just minding my own business but I knew what Mark was up to. Rick had gone completely manic and ended up in the psych ward for awhile so me and Mark had the house to ourselves. Mark was using Ricks truck to get around and he took off in it leaving this guy and his sister at the house. She didn't smoke meth but was a drinker like me and her brother was just the opposite. Mark had been gone a long time and the next day this chick shows up at the house and tells me that Mark got arrested for driving with no license as well as having got caught with the Ricks truck full of stolen property. Mark had been bringing a lot of strange shit to the house lately but I never gave it a second thought. I guess it was all stolen shit, Mark had turned into a burglar to supplement his income. A couple of days went by and I let this guy and his sister hang out at the house. She couldn't drive because she was always too drunk and her brother didn't have a drivers license. They were afraid to leave the house because they would probably get pulled over. She had to sober up and it didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon. There's a lot more to this story and I'll pick it up again in my next post.