The storms have crashed into this part of the world and brought some difficulty. A carer came and took me to the hardware and garden store to get some things. During the trip we brought some things I wanted for the garden, A glazed bowl to use for a small pond under the grass and so on.
After the return while I was still ill and very tired the power blacked out. I went to check on a neighbor and had a bad fall. It was a bad injury and I was unable to get to my feet without assistance. People came in the dark and helped me and afterwards we stood in the dark while the lightning clashed and thundered about us. I was too hurt to walk back immediately and I didn’t want to admit it. They knew and didnt want to leave me out there when hurt plus it was a blackout and nobody had a television working so we gave in and chatted..
somewhere on the internet
When the lights came back on the next morning the beautiful little computer I have so much care and time on seems to have been hit by the lightning surge and destroyed. I am realizing what a gem it was and how well set up to process and view images and all the other things I do. It took years to get the setup to the most friendly and easy it could be so it didn’t tax my strength.
I have been buying a new computer for some time and after it was moved into the apartment the backup files were used to try and recover the twenty years of images and stories that had built up in the machine. I will never understand how I had been so careful and methodical only to end up with the backup drives being empty of any useful files. I broke down and went into shock. The pain I already suffer on a daily basis overlain with the pain of the accident and the terrible thought that I had lost the work of twenty years of photography and writing and drawing smashed me down to an emotional horror-scape.
I didnt stop trying. It was a strange time. All of the computer repairers I rang to try and get some old hard drives recovered had phones that were no longer in service. Has that happened? Have most of the small local repairers ended up with their phones out of service or was it the storm knocking out sixty five thousand homes and affecting the phones long after the power was back on? It was shock on shock and the sense of helpless displacement grew almost as fast as the storm clouds. I had to find someone soon as it was Friday and the storms were coming back. The thought of sitting in an unlit apartment with no way to even attempt to recover all my precious work over an entire weekend horrified me. I kept trying but the exhaustion and pain were gripping me and would have even if there had not been a painful injury over the top of it all.
My mother rang to tell me she had closed most of her accounts including the joint one I keep filled so she can help with my paying of bills. We had done a thing a while back where she accidentally paid a bill out of my proper account thinking it was the joint one. She got the numbers mixed up. The bank had allowed her access because when she had built the joint one they had done it on the understanding I was often confused and ill and she might need to take some control. On hearing that she had closed accounts I almost collapsed. Could it be that I was cut off from funds all together right when I had to get help in that window of a couple of hours? I was ruthless to her demanding she tell me what she had done and reminding her of the time she paid that bill.
not my mother, borrowed from the web
She had expected me to be sympathetic. She has been suffering depression and a huge sense of impending mortality. I am horrified that my own terror filled day prevented her from getting the support she needed and it becomes another thing adding to the emotional debt incurred over this day.
I am “hitting the wall” right now. Seriously ill and emotionally blasted after trying to sleep and being wrenched awake by harsh nightmares. Still in considerable pain from the accident. Still crippled and struggling to get this clumsy body to do anything at all that doesn’t hurt.
The nightmares are of me in a suburb of a city. My mother drops me there. For some reason I have no way back and no way out unless she comes back and gets me. I have no addresses and no wallet. Suddenly the street evolves into someplace else where she will never know to look for me. This happened to me when I was homeless and in the grip of the amnesia and is the most complete horror I can think of. I lose track of where I am and where she will be to pick me up. The shock of suddenly being alone and with no way to describe my situation to anyone who might help me usually throws me awake and leaves me sickened for days. This nightmare is reliving itself every time I close my eyes and as I am ill and tired and sore it is creating a significant physical burden when I need rest.
Eventually one of the numbers being rung answered and told me they would relish the opportunity to attempt to rescue the data off the old hard drive. The repairers were LDR Computers who have a repair store at an adjoining suburb, Tumbi Umbi. Yes, there is such a place. I hopped on my mobility scooter and prepared for the long ride, firstly the kilometer and a half to Tumbi then four kilometers to the bank at Bateau Bay to see if I was without funds or not. It was almost a case of holding my eyes open with sticks I was so tired and emotionally blasted.
Days later and one of my feet was going purple. There is a constant threat of the diabetes causing them to become so bad they have to be amputated so that prcipitated another long drive to the doctor. There were a lot of other things to see him about such as continuing the marathon to get a straight answer from mental health professionals. The foot was broken in a few places around the toes. That is such a constant now we didn’t even get x-rays. I have referrals to psychologists and a big wad of new prescriptions
When I read back over these sometime the question must be asked why I am so pathetic. Why do small failures in life seem so immense they cause such grief. Your life shrinks when you are handicapped. The more handicapped you are the more it shrinks and the more easily it is held to ransom by simple things. Then the welfare spiral literally clubs you down and steals your attempts to rise above it. It makes them into nothing more than wasted effort. There is a progressive loss growing out of the disability, the welfare spiral and the rental pressures which doesn’t need to damage your life but is irrevocably sustained by the various departments and people who attend to your files and needs.
I will use this term a lot. It is disaster maintenance. It is where people are offended if they see you using your welfare to gain a better quality of life and actually restrain you to a state of permanent disaster. If I was unemployed that would be a reasonable thing but I am crippled and have done the work to free myself again and again only to be driven back into poverty by the people and services I needed to continue the movement. Add a natural disaster to those trends and you have a path of broken emotions beneath a bulwark of loss and frustration. I know there is a constant patter of this throughout thge journal. From my point of view I am slumped over with my face jammed against the constant negatives all day long.
Go to part 2