I am a misfit...Part 6

Nancy and I began to pray together over Charles and this situation.

The next day, I had maybe had 4 hours of sleep, after driving 750 miles, I met Rob at the VA Hospital with Charles, and activated his benefits.

Charles was completely insane. He could not stay inside the building and wait on line, so Rob and I sat there and he sat outside on the ground, smoking. This worried me because there is a "camping ban" in Denver, in which people are not allowed to sit on the ground. Charles always sits cross-legged on the ground, because of his arthritis, because he can't stand up. In Berkeley, there is no "camping ban". Charles does not understand these trivialities of man's law.

Finally he got an appointment. He was given full medical benefits, access to medication, and a referral to a supported housing counselor. He was given the option to go into the Domiciliary right then and there, or to be put on a list for an apartment. He opted to get put on the list. We got an appointment to meet with his VASH counselor the following week.

After all this, I was driving with Charles back to Nancy's house, while he continued to yell and harass me, and I missed the flashing yellow lights of a "school zone". I was going 35 mph in a 20 mph school zone, and a cop pulled us over. Yes. Things just got worse. School zone tickets are notoriously expensive in the land of traffic revenue. Mine was to turn out to be $296, at the fake arraignment where they "make you a deal" and unlawfully reduce your penalty to "faulty vehicle" and get you to agree. But that was a few weeks away. So much was to happen before then.

Night 2 at Nancy's, Charles started acting up again. He began howling as if in pain at 1am. Then he went outside and started smoking cigarettes and talking to himself on the deck. Nancy came in and told me, she cannot have this behavior, and tomorrow we are going to take Charles down to where the homeless people camp, near the soup kitchens, and drop him off.

OK. That's tough love I guess. I mean - if he were a 3-year-old, he would need to go to his room for a time-out, so I guess in the situation we were in, that was comparable. I mean - My car was still crammed with stuff. I was totally strung out on exhaustion and disappointment, and could not think straight. I had to rely on Nancy's wisdom to know what to do in this bizarre situation.

That's what we did. We had countless times already explained to Charles that if he wanted to stay inside he would have to behave himself and act quietly, and since he was not willing to do that, we were going to let him fend for himself on the Denver streets with his sleeping bag and back pack. He thought this was a good idea. He had a cell phone. We dressed him up warmly, with a new scarf and hat and gloves, fresh pairs of socks and long johns, and drove him down to the St. Francis Center on Broadway, with a map of all the shelters and food distributors, and set him free.

I stayed at Nancy's for the duration of the week and then I had no where to go either, so I called Rob. Rob told me I could come stay with him, he said his back was really bad and he was not sleeping in his bed - rather in his chair, so his bed was available... but it was not easy conditions he warned me.

He was living in an Airstream Trailer in Golden, CO in a beautiful trailer park nestled in the foothills with no plumbing. The pipes had frozen the winter before and he was flushing with gallons he filled from a hose outside - no shower, no running water, was I willing? Yup. I had to be. He also had a crazy little dog, who was blind, and had barking fits because he saw things in the middle of the night. Whatever, it was par for the course I was playing on...I drove to Golden.

I had to pray considerably hard at this point. I had no job and a $300 ticket to the city and county of Denver looming over my head. I was staying in an airstream without plumbing with a friendly dude who lit his next cigarette from the previous one he was smoking. I called a wisened old friend of mine who knew me very well for advice. This guy turned out to be my saving grace. He offered to let me come to his house once a week and take a shower, and he gave me the first $30 toward the payment plan I was to set up with the city, but he told me "You have to get a job - take the first one that is offered." and he said "If you don't dig yourself out of this mess you have made of your life, you will never get free."

Ok. This was my surrender. I had to continually pray and bite the bullet, but I was living in the most beautiful spot on earth at this trailer park, underneath a beautiful oak tree, on the edge of open space where I could hear the coyotes yipping at night and there were horse farms and a bike path...I new it was right. I could not expect a man to save me or a pile of money to save me or friends to save me - I had to save myself, simply through hard work and vigilance - NOT my strong suit.

Truth be told, I was spoiled. I had been raised to be entitled and marry a rich doctor and it just had not turned out. I expected to land on the top without working my way toward it. It had not dawned on me to get "just any job" after the 08 crash. I had been working as an adjunct professor of at a college making $50 per hour and I thought I was going to get another job like that. It had taken me 6 years to get to a state of willingness to work for minimum wage. But I needed any job to pay of this ticket so this was to be my starting point.

I filled out a ton of applications and Safeway called me, out on West Colfax across from the Trail's End Crack Motel. I was given a job in the gas station and convenience store and the crack whores came in and bought candy and gave me fake fifty dollar bills. My shift was usually 3pm - 10pm.

Slaveaway is the most disgusting place I have ever worked in my life. They don't dump the garbage out of the dumpster regularly so the entire back of the store smells like rotting meat and food and vomit. They don't clean the machines in the bakery because they just don't, so there is caked on food stuck to all the racks and slicers and equipment back there. They don't recycle anything but cardboard in Denver - everything goes to the landfill. There are long time workers at Safeway drunk on the job morning noon and night - don't get too close to them - or you will smell the booze on their breath. Then again, Slaveaway was bought out by Cerberus Capital Management - and Cerberus is the 3-headed dog that guards the gates of hell... but that's ok. I was doing this for Charles because if I was doing it for me, I would have quit.

I am a quitter, usually. I have had over 30 jobs. I hate work. I am an artist. I feel that I should be able to make art all the time and it is only slavery imposed by the "owners" that now I have to also work doing something else other than that which wants to flow out of me every second.

When I got the job at Home Depot, which came after the Safeway job, later on, I decided to stay at that job until I got a better one or they fired me, but not because of something I did. I decided to do the absolute best I could there, and see what happened, because I decided that my quitting was proof that I was not trusting God. I decided to keep the job for Charles because Charles needed me to be his caretaker, the VA wasn't going to pay me to be his caretaker, nor were they going to let me live with him for free, but they would allow me to live with him as long as I was supporting myself.

I surrendered to the lessons that are provided by showing up every day whether I want to or not and dealing with assholes and nice people alike, because the sun shines on the just and the unjust alike, so I have to learn how to do that and it started at Safeway.

In the meantime, Charles was living on the streets, and he was happy. He was going to the Denver Rescue Mission. Eating 3 squares. Getting bussed out town to a big homeless warehouse at night to sleep and bussed back in in the morning...he was thoroughly enjoying himself. We talked daily. As it turns out, he had been in pain the whole trip which is why he acted that way. ??? Really???

Well, things changed abruptly - it was the end of May in Denver. It began to hail. There were huge golf-ball sized hail falling out of the sky and pummeling Charles and the temps dropped abruptly to 30 degrees! Nothing like this ever happened on the balmy Berkeley streets! It's amazing how Mr. Schizo-effective can suddenly be changed into Mr. Niceguy to get out of bad weather!

He called his VASH counselor and begged to go into the Dom. Charles was admitted into the Lakewood Dom on June 2, 2014, and he stayed there for 6 months. He ate 3 meals a day. He went to classes. He got socialized. He made some friends.

Charles' bank account was frozen for 4 months while he was at the Dom. Somehow the small local bank in California which had received his SSDI checks for decades would not allow him to transfer his money to a national bank where he could access his money in Colorado and Social Security would not stop sending the money to that bank. It was red tape snarl that did not get straightened out for 4 months and hundreds of phone calls, so Charles had no money for tobacco or for anything else. He became completely dependent on God and on the VA and on me.

As it turned out, it was also a way for him to save what ended up being his security deposit and first and last month's rent. Unbeknownst to me, the VA decided that I was to be Charles' informal caretaker. They decided that even though I was not a family member, I still qualified to live with Charles in an apartment. This is a total miracle for me, making minimum wage in what has become the latest Boomtown in the US since the passing of the pot laws in 2015 has been bringing several thousand people per week to Denver and other parts of Colorado. Rents are at an all-time high.

They did not just let us fend for ourselves in the DHA lottery system, either. They helped us fill out applications. They helped us go to the appointments, and by Grace we did get a joint voucher and then we were awarded the most beautiful enormous furnished apartment in a VA building at exactly the moment we needed it.

Literally! November 14, 2014 temperatures dropped to 18 degrees. Rob had secured a place for him and the devil dog to go - and Charles and I got our apartment.

We have lived here for almost 3 years now. Charles has drastically improved. He reads books and listens to classical music most of the time. He cooks food. He walks the dog. (We got an old dog for him almost 2 years ago.) He is doing art. He has some volunteer jobs he does a few times a week. He has some friends here. He has a bicycle he rides. He got his learner's permit so he can drive my car when I am too tired. We took him to my chiropractor and got rid of his arthritis.

I worked for 2 years at the Home Despot and they did fire me finally, but I know it was not because of something I personally did. I got unemployment, and now I am trying to get a bunch of creative jobs going so I don't have to go back to working for The Man. I have about 6 months of unemployment and I am steadily working toward being FREE.

Charles, as it turned out, has been as much a blessing for me as I was for him. God blessed us both together.

Read Part 1
Read Part 2
Read Part 3
Read Part 4
Read Part 5

Artwork © 2017 Joanna Whitney