part one… landlady and crime-chick
June 3, 2011
Page Two
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The fourteen months leading up to moving into this woman’s property were months of unrelenting trauma and stress. Months of stress with an alcoholic landlord in the year 2003, which culminated in a nervous collapse for me that caused me to leave my animals and go to the respite facility, sure that authorities would come and take my animals away while I was gone. The psychological bullying by this alcoholic and his girlfriend, threats of eviction, insults about my personality, had completely worn me down. I had to get away from these people, but had no place for me and the animals to go. Over months, I decided that I would just have to leave alone, and that my companions, my friends, my children would have to be left behind to whatever ugly fate would descend on them. Suicide had also been an option, but then, as now, no matter how sincerely I wanted to end my own misery, I was unable to do it.
That particular disaster resulted in us going to live with the housemate. None of my animals ended up being killed that time, but two were stolen. The animal shelter that was fostering them sent my two pigeons to a wildlife rehabilitator to be fostered, and when I found a place to live, this woman refused to give my pigeons back to me. Even when her supervisor from Mass Wildlife and Fisheries in Boston told her that they were legally my birds and she needed to give them back. Even when I paid a lawyer to speak to her about this issue. No, these birds were neither neglected nor abused. I had saved each of them from certain death, and she herself even admitted that. She didn’t like the way they were fed. Too bad. I fed them the way a pigeon-keeper had told me to. If she didn’t think that was adequate, then she should have given me a list of things to add to their diet, rather than stealing my birds.
Seven and a half weeks after moving in with the housemate, Rick, he had died. And as his father wanted to sell the house, I had again had to start looking for someplace for me and the animals.
In December, nine days before Christmas, my nineteen-year-old nephew was killed in Iraq. I was informed of this by a cop showing up at the door at 8:30 in the morning. My human family didn’t know where exactly in Turners I was at that moment, so calling the cops was all they could think of to do.
And on January 16th, just a couple of weeks before I went into the office of the future landlady, I had been to a court hearing for the eviction, and the social worker advocate who was supposed to be on my side, had sat there and advocated for the deaths of most of my animals, so that I could find a place more easily without all those pesky creatures.
Can you empathize yourself into this mess? I’m fifty at the time, no relatives to assist me, one or two friends who do not very much at all. I have palindromic rheumatism and chronic fatigue syndrome and graves disease, to name a few of the physical issues. I also have Asperger’s, though I don’t know it yet, chronic depression, PTSD, and severe anxiety. Can you imagine how physically and psychologically beaten down I was after fourteen months of the things I’ve just described?
During the weeks that I dealt with this impending landlord (late January 2004 to April 3), she demostrated quite erratic behavior and words — including informing me on the telephone on 8 February that she was going to buy a house with apartments in it for us to live in. Another shock. I asked her repeatedly if she could truly afford to do this, if she wasn’t taking on too much, and she repeatedly assured me that not only could she handle it financially, but that there were good reasons for her to have a rental property. After telling my friend about the vicissitudes in this woman’s demeanor and behavior, my friend said this: Sounds like she’s really screwed up. Tell her thanks but no thanks. Don’t get involved with her. It was good advice, and I tried to make myself take it. Tried to go ahead with planning out the lethal injections for my animals, and then spinning rapidly, I hoped, toward my own death.
But I couldn’t make myself take that advice. I couldn’t summon the strength to give up on us only eight months after I’d walked out the door and given up on us at the alcoholic’s place. Those animals were the absolute center of my existence, the meaning and purpose, the love and sharing and companionship, the laughter and tears. They were, as I’ve said, what I wanted most in life. I couldn’t give up on us again so soon, no matter how many alarm bells were going off in my head about the impending landlady.
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read… Stolen stars… All my stars…
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