I swear, I was asleep two hours ago, snuggled down and starting to dream. I didn't even have a very hard time of it. And then a pizza guy came to the door. Well... I guess this is how life is when you live on someone's couch. Or more specifically, on the couch of people who are unmistakably night people. Not that I wish to complain; I am grateful that I have a place I can lay my head that isn't crowded with curfews and enforced structure that doesn't suit my natural rhythms. I am naturally a night person too. In this house, it looks like any attempt I make to keep more normal hours, though, for the sake of productivity, will be stymied with ease, completely unintentionally.
Besides that, the dog pup of one of the six people stuffed in this modest three bedroom townhouse (myself included) isn't house trained and tends to piss on the stairs and everywhere else. The kitchen, even when I clean all the dishes in it, will be cluttered to near-uselessness again less than two days later. The cat litters in the basement are not maintained, so the only one any of the cats use is the one that my partner cleaned about a week ago, right at the other end of the couch that serves as my bed. And several of these five cats fight and race about and knock things over. One of them stole my partner's wallet a few days ago and hid it away in a box of bags and non-perishables in the kitchen. Besides my partner, there are two people here I get along with well, one I hardly know who is clearly very different from me, but with whom I share a quiet politeness in passing, and one that I actively dislike, and the feeling is mutual. He is loud, aggressive, and acts with an exceptional air of entitlement.
Would I rather be back at the Evil Old Man's place? ... No. Conditions here are undeniably worse, and even the social atmosphere isn't much better, if at all, but it is a step forward, from stable misery to comparatively unstable misery that I may be able to resolve into non-misery. If I allowed myself to be overcome by the negative transitory period between one stable situation and another, I would remain forever paralyzed. It's the old saying, you can't take third base while keeping your foot on second. Or something to that effect.
But in these conditions, I am backsliding. I don't feel terribly upset about this right at this moment. At this moment, I am giving myself more patience and credit than that. Besides, I'm starting to turn around to effort and courage again, as can be demonstrated by my coming back and writing again. Earlier, when I was caught completely in the mire, I was very upset about it. I don't mind admitting that my general default state of mind is bad enough that any particularly bad situation or attack of panic and doubt brings me back to thoughts of suicide. It's less threatening than that might otherwise be, because I can think of no means to suicide that I am both able to access and think I would have the strength of will to go through with. I am too frightened of and unfamiliar with the associated pains. Blades terrify me, and I naturally shy away from them. I suspect poisoning would be unreliable and I would almost certainly suffer hideous nausea and probably terrible migraine as a result of the attempt even if it didn't work, and particularly potent poisons would be difficult to obtain legally, for incredibly obvious reasons. Exposure to elements would be slow and even more unreliable, drowning is classically terrifying, getting licencing and funds for a firearm would be prohibitively expensive, out of character for me, and... well, I just don't like guns. Something about them fills me with distaste. So essentially, even leaving aside the dread of something after death, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that dying would be phenomenally unpleasant - possibly even more so than living, even in the worst of times. Also, my mood always stabilizes eventually, and it doesn't usually take more than, say, a day or two.
I have been, as always, rediscovering that there are, in fact, things that fairly reliably cheer me up. Going for walks, especially with my partner's company, is one of these things. Surprisingly enough, doing downtown and noticing the people seems to tend to cheer me up a bit, too. People often depress me with their ignorance, shortsightedness and cruelty, and yet... maybe it's that certain je ne sais quoi I always liked about this city, but I find the human life here more reassuring than condemning about humanity as a whole. And it's certainly not for a lack of ignorant or cruel people, but maybe... maybe the worse people here tend to be a little less worse than in other places I've seen. Or maybe it's just the healthy bustle and liveliness of the place that seems to bring it all into a more forgivable context. Or maybe it's something else. I really noticed it when a passing cyclist on a biking trail thanks me for moving over to let her pass. The question is whether such decency really is something I didn't see in Saint Thomas, or whether I'm just... noticing it more. I suspect the former, if only because I feel quite certain I would be able to remember an example of it if it was present back there.
Before I go, let me share with you my current worst problem. As is not at all unusual, the source of my trouble is Ontario Works. I learned, when I was invited by the support structures in the city to go through an intake procedure here, with the company of some professional... well, caring company... that I would not be eligible for shelter and basic needs funding while I was staying at shelters in the city not even Crash Beds. Apparently OW expects that a bed, albeit not necessarily the same bed, but the promise of a bed, each night, breakfast in the morning and snacks in the evening, are all anyone really needs to survive and get by. Likewise, I am not eligible if I am couch surfing, because in that case I have shelter for free, so they don't have to help me pay for it. If I remain homeless and float around shelters and from that position manage to get a rent agreement (goodness alone knows how), Then I could apply to be kept alive but harassed constantly about whether or not I've found work yet like the child of a disgusted stepmother who just doesn't want to have to deal with me. Or, I could wait and float around shelters and put myself on a fast track list for geared to income housing. I have a friend who went that route. His words on the subject? They quote the official waiting list, for the actively homeless, to be half a year. Realistically, it may be half a year if you have no standards, if you are willing to accept absolutely
any form or state of housing. In his case, it took over a year for them to get back to him. According to OW, they can put me on a faster track if I am utterly homeless, and the waiting list for that is only three months - only! Imagine that... But I will be ineligible if I continue to couch surf. Even for one day.
When I tried to apply on my own, and at the intake told them I was currently couch surfing in the house of friends, into which my boyfriend had just moved, I was pounced. I swear the look in the intake worker's eyes turned from sympathy to disgust in an instant when she asked me whether this was the same boyfriend I left in Saint Thomas. Of course it was. As she understood it, I had been leaving an abusive relationship. Well, I had been, of course, it just wasn't a relationship with my partner. We were both being abused by his father, and if she had been misinformed about that, it was not my doing, I never claimed differently. But it seems that if you say you are in an abusive situation, it will be immediately clear to everyone that you are claiming spousal abuse. Certainly women are never abused by anyone else. At least not, it would seem, in the eyes of the government.
Anyway, my intake was terminated. I was told rather forcefully to sign a form of withdrawal of application. According to OW, regardless of my intent to stay under the same roof or not, my partner and I are common-law, since we were on the same account before and I still call him my boyfriend. Nevermind that Ontario law states that common-law only becomes default after three years of cohabitation and I haven't even known him for two. He brought that up when he went to his own intake, later, and the only response he got from his case worker was a simple and cruel word of blackmail. "You know, I can just close your file." I had considered asking what happened if I didn't sign the withdrawal form, at my meeting, but decided against it. I was already upset enough, and while I would have really loved to act rashly and refuse, just walk away, I was sure it would bring more trouble down on my head, either then and there or later if I had to come back, and I really couldn't have dealt with that.
Ontario Works says that if we are sleeping under the same roof, we have to be on the same account. No wiggle room, no exceptions. Boyfriend asked whether it was necessary for me to be on OW at all, whether I could just choose to go unsupported, and survive on scraps as it were. Ontario Works does not regard it as an option. No. We need to be on the same file, and both be on it, if we are together, because we are common-law, because they say so, and we were, once, happy to be classed that way.
So my legal options are these:
Run away, leave my boyfriend, whom I still care deeply about, but do not wish to live with, behind entirely and find some other form of charity, someone else to support me, and try to survive the leaving in my weak and depressed state.
Surrender myself to the mark of extreme poverty and live on the streets, sleeping in charity beds and eating charity food, and wander the streets while the shelters are closed until my feet are worn and bloody and my clothes fall apart, or until the housing system gets around to me.
Become a useless limpet clinging to my boyfriend in a place I do not wish to be, resigned to the ugliness of this place and its downsides, angry and miserable, considered and classed an extension of my boyfriend, the unofficial spouse. And of course, expected to job search effectively from this position.
Find work and/or housing on my own. Yes. Of course. That will work. I'm definitely strong and stable enough. Sigh.
Be the beneficiary of some kind of miracle.
Oh. I should probably also mention, because they are important developments, that I am out of thyroid supplements, at least of my standard dose. I still have some of the ones I was given before, which are 50% larger, and so I've started taking those again, and just trying to make sure I don't take them too close together, hoping it will even out somehow. Also, my boyfriend... is getting together again with someone he knew before me. They were always happy together, until they broke up the first time. They are giddy when they think of each other. Everyone accepts that they will be lovers again, and even they have had to admit it, struggle though they might. They even share dreams with each other. I find myself wondering whether I would finally be free of useless spouse status if he reported to Ontario Works that she was his girlfriend now. Probably not, unless she moved in, even though I doubt they would go so far as to assume something as unconventional as polyamory.
How do I feel about their relationship? Hell, how do you think I feel? Well, I probably feel significantly less bad than that. But it is still hard to accept. There are connections between them that I never managed to forge with Boyfriend, and I am jealous over that. I look forward to meeting her, though. From what my boyfriend has told me, I think we will get along well, like friendly sisters. I just hope that we can shift gracefully from me being the most important lover in his life, to her. I already know it will happen, it's just a matter of how naturally, and with how much drama. I feel slighted, but not by either of them. Only by the cruel hand of fate.
