Saturday, August 11, 2012

Washing machine woes, condo hating/911 calling/upper body strength lacking/run on sentence fun

Disregard egregious spelling and grammar errors please, my eye strain is still very bad, therefore I can't edit.

The agitator in the crappy washing machine in my crappy condo has taken to eating clothes.  I am not pleased.  I know agitators can be pulled out so I can rescue the clothes but the brand of the stackable washer/dryer combo that my landlord bought, as far as I can tell, sometime before electricity was invented, is not recognized by google.  After much googling of other brands I was able to at least figure out how to get the first bit off but the second bit, the bit where I have to pry out an agitator that is glued in place from approximately eighty trillion tiny loads of laundry since this thing only washes like, one pair of socks at a time, is impossible.  I don't have the strength.  Which brings me to my real topic:  Being alone.

I did text a friend who lives in the same complex as me to request the man strength of her spouse and explaining that lo, I cannot get the agitator out by myself.  Her helpful response was that they are busy all weekend and can't swing by to help.  They live ten doors down. I have done a cumulative SHIT TON of stuff for this woman, and her guy, and now their baby.  I rarely, if ever, ask for help.  And I still find that when I do instead of being like "find time bitch, I need help and you owe me", I immediately just feel kinda ashamed that I asked for help in the first place and would rather hand wash my clothes in a creek, or pay someone to come out, then push the subject.  And believe me, after years of therapy this is my HEALTHY response, it was much, much worse before.

I worry about when (when damnit, when!  I will move someday...) I move to a new city that I will be totally, utterly, absolutely alone.  I won't have a soul to call to help me with anything.  But even with friends and social connections and co-workers and family nearby my life is still laughably devoid of anyone, anywhere, to help me with anything.

People know me as the reliable one who will be there to watch their kid, help them move, be the emergency contact for daycare, pick them up from and drop them off at the airport, and any other variety of supportive things.  I have always been this way, but after I dumped my POS ex (18 months ago, but really, who is counting?  Oh, right, me.  Fuck him.  I hope he is getting his face punched in at a bar right now) I really took it up a notch.  In an effort to work through my pain I turned to every self help outlet I could find and they all basically resolved down to: be the change you want to see in the world, be the things you want.  You want love?  Love.  You want kindness? Be kind.  You want someone to actually give a shit and take of you for once?  Take care of others.  Take all that stuff  you want, crave, need, and pour it out into others.  Which I did, done, do. 

For the action itself the above is a useful way to spend time otherwise spent drinking, crying, watching marathons of TV seasons on a laptop in bed while your cat destroys your curtains and you wish you were dead just so that for one freaking moment the pain will finally leave you the hell alone, but, big picture, it has not generated any more love, kindness, or care for me personally.  Selfish, I know.

If loving creates love then why am I drained, lonely, and stuck probably having to call a plumber to pry out my agitator?  Given the options of productively giving to the world or being so depressed that showering is out of the question of course I choose the former, but I am honest when I say I struggle to see the benefit in the outcome.  Selfish?  Probably.  Honest? Yes.  And I need a place to be honest. I'm sure that if I had spent the last 18 months laying in bed I would be jobless, homeless, and weigh like 800 pounds by now.  But I do question the wisdom in the hours of time I put in to get essentially nothing out of it. In writing that I see that I did get something out of it, time passed, and it passed without me jumping off a bridge.  So there is that.  I have an answer, it is just small, and less than I would have hoped for.

So, I fear moving to a new city because I don't want to start from scratch and am terrified that it will take me damn near another decade to meet people, and actually have social support.  My biggest fear of all was realized last Friday, which is important: After nearly dying 5 years ago and only making it to the hospital because someone was at my apartment with me to make me go I have since worried that something like that would happen again, only the next time there would be no one with me; and this time there wasn't.

Friday I wound up with a migraine so bad that I don't remember getting home from work.  I do know that I was sick, throwing up, for hours, and could have died.  I do know that around 1AM my subconscious had finally had enough and made me call 911.  I went to the hospital alone in an ambulance.  After they figured out what was going one and pumped me full of drugs they sent me home, hours later, alone in a taxi.  For all the work I've done and all the people I know and all the "friends" I have I still was in a very dangerous situation alone, blacked out, called 911 alone (Thank you God, seriously), managed the hospital alone, and took a cab home alone the next day.  This would be no different if I lived in another city.  Sad and scary, though it is, the last thing that scared me about someday moving is gone: I'm already alone as fuck.  Moving to a new city won't change that.  No one takes care of me in this city but me.  No one has ever taken care of me but me pretty much ever.

I don't have to be scared to move because I'm really not leaving anything behind.  I have worked so hard, for so long, to have some kind of social structure here and on a superficial level I do but when I actually need help, as opposed to someone else, I get none.  If I have to hire someone to come and pry out the damn agitator from my washing machine here it makes no difference if it is in another city.  And at least I can hold out hope that in another city there are decent single men who have all their teeth and wonderful quirky women who are simply dying for a friend like me.

I abhor this condo.  I only moved here "temporarily" after my last condo was destroyed by fire/water in March 2011, which means my "temporary" condo has been my crappy home for 17 months.  I had intended to be here no longer than 6 months.  I also abhor this city.  If there is ANYONE on the planet like me or that I would enjoy spending time with they aren't within 300 square miles of this place.  I don't know how to move or where to look but I do know that no matter where I wind up it can't be any worse than this, and even though I will be totally miserably alone at least I know I won't die because of it, my subconscious will see that I call 911.  Plus I bet there are plumbers in every city.