Chapter 8 – Monrad Mansion – My Prison in My Own Camp

Moving on to month three, prior to my discovery of the M Miester’s infidelity, I was stuck alone in my home.  MM found out that Spidy Man and the Meesh were the behind the calling of the cops.  He called them rats and warned me that if I had any contact with them there would be consequences.  Although the M Miester often spoke but didn’t act, I wasn’t sure of his unpredictability, so I decided to keep to myself.  Sha hadn’t visited in a while either.  I was uncomfortable, upset and felt trapped.  I would visit MM on occasion when he called and asked me to take a cab because he had lost his license for 90 days and didn’t want to chance anything.  But he refused to come by.  I tried to make it work, but the fighting was getting out of control, and he kept accusing me of being involved in the cop calling, and that I was apparently messing with Spidy Man, calling me all the horrible names a woman should never be called.  He drank whiskey excessively now and it was unbearable.

For a while I just stayed away.  The horrible thing is that I had already isolated my friends that lived in the area before I had moved away, when M Miester and I “lived” together.  Well, I took him in because he had no home and his job wasn’t paying him.  But during that time we did start our relationship and it was very suffocating.  We didn’t go out, and if we did I couldn’t speak to any other man, let alone say hi.  Even my girlfriends became a threat to him, and in time, it was only him and I.  My new friends now far away, and my old friends “estranged”, there I was on a farm just outside the city, no car, no one to speak to, except my friends on the internet.  The internet had become my best friend.

Then one day I called and a woman answered his phone.  It was during the day.  When he called me I asked who it was.  He said it was Mac.  His ex girlfriend.  I knew she had been in love with him since way back when and my heart sunk.  It was a reminder of my previous relationship with my ex husband.  He said they were just friends.  Typical of a man to say such things.  Although suspicious, I put it aside and went on the way we were.  Some nights were good, but most continued not to be.  On one particular evening, his daughter came downstairs and was angry at her father.  It was then the truth came out.  She accused his father of being a player and that it was not fair to me not to know about his relationship with Mac, who apparently had been visiting on nights her husband wasn’t at home and staying through the night.  Apparently it had been going on since the summer.  Alas, that was it.

Okay, no it wasn’t.  MM was still my only friend and having had been one of my best friends prior to our dating, I wanted to hold on to that.  Truth be known I was dependent on him.  So when he would invite me over I would go.  If he made an advance I refused it.  He kept trying, telling me he loved me, but it was always the same thing.  Pictures of Mac were taped to his fridge while mine remained hidden in a drawer.  During this time however, his daughter and I were building a friendship.  She would even take a cab over to my place to visit from time to time.

Back at my home, I had decided that I wouldn’t take MM’s threats seriously, nor hold me captive in my own home anymore, and began to socialize once again with the little community.  No longer a prisoner, I began to feel freer.  Between that, and being away from alcohol, and having been placed on meds for severe anxiety, things were looking up.  Even my fear of leaving the home on my own were subsiding.  The only thing left was to get a job.  This was to prove to be much more difficult than I had hoped.

Chapter 6 – Monrad Mansion Month TWO – Meet the Spider Man, And The World That Continues To Be My life…

There was the issue of getting to work and back that was weighing on my mind.  How would I manage?

Along the passage of a day, Dill showed up.  He drove.  I asked if he would be willing to drive me to work and back if I paid him.  He seemed all excited about the prospect of his gas being paid.  So that in place another nerve that was bothering me relaxed.

This was my first week of true occupancy, in the second month of being at the MM.

Week two I managed to get to work and back with Dill and sometimes Sha along.  They were a couple.  He drove a small, older model car, and Sha would let me sit in the front.  She was pregnant, about 4 months in, and I kept telling her I was more than willing to sit in the back, but my 49 years of age made them feel I should be the one in the front.  As sweet as that was, I did take a bit of offense to the fact they saw me as “old”.

The arrangement lasted for a short time.  There was a day that I sat and waited, and waited and waited, and it became apparent that my ride was not showing up.  I had not a penny in my pocket.  Luckily it was a sunny day, so I started to walk.  I was too proud to call anyone else to take me home.  I figured the 8 km walk would be good for me anyway.  However, wearing open sandals and walking on gravel sidewalks was not the most wonderful feeling.  An hour and a half later I arrived at my front door with blistered feet and pebbles in my sandals.  Being in the retarded mind that I was, I just thought that this journey would allow me to eat more.  But the heat was such that I wasn’t hungry.

Home at last, my dogs greeted with me a great desire to take them out.  At the time I had a Jack Russell and a Jack Russell/Shih Tzu mix (otherwise dubbed a JackShit).  Jenny, the JR, was 13 with still much spirit in her.  Rolly was 3.

It was shortly after that that I ended up with severe anxiety and quit my job.  The job itself was highly demanding, minimum wage, and between that and the lack of transportation, I couldn’t cope anymore.  I guess all the previous challenges in the previous two years along with this pressure did me in.  By September I was unemployed, and locked myself in my house, for fear of leaving.

Avoidant Personality Disorder.  I like that term.  I believe this is what I was suffering from.  If it hadn’t been for the many visits from Sha into my home (and bumming cigarettes), I wouldn’t have seen anyone.  I hadn’t seen my family since mid-August.  I did get some visits from my ex-boyfriend who was trying to rekindle our relationship.  He’s for another chapter all together.  I call him the M Miester, and anything that occurs that reminds me of his actions, I call that the M Syndrome.  Suffice it to say he has the Othello Syndrome, which I will expand on later, but he was company INSIDE my home when I needed it.  But to leave for me was difficult.  Other than going to the grocery store or the bank when little cheques came in from the government, I remained shielded behind the walls of this absurd little apartment.

At the beginning of September, a new person moved in.  That is Spidy.  He drove a small, older model yellow car with spiders painted all over it.  Spidy moved into the second trailer.  He was about 5’8” tall, bald, with tattoos (some homemade).  Stocky, kind eyes, but disturbed eyes as well.  He sported an unkempt goatee.  Spidy and I, however, connected as friends, even if he did look weird.  He liked watching movies with me, listening to country music, we would drive around, go shopping together.  It was a pleasant friendship, and only a friendship, which I made clear from the start.  But what was nice is that I was overcoming my fear of leaving the house in the second week of September.  This, however, did not remove my fear of seeing my family.  Maybe it was shame, maybe it was, what the doctor described as severe anxiety.  Maybe my feeling better were the pills the doctor prescribed.  Maybe I was too confused to know.  But I had a friend.  No strings attached.

Spidy had a strange obsession with skulls, and with spiders (he owned a tarantula), and his trailer reflected this obsession.  He was in his late 30’s, divorced with a child he never saw.  He had gone through a comma which caused him some issues with memory, and the comma came about through severe diabetes.  At times he would share with me how angry he was that he ended up with these “disabilities”.  I never knew what to say.  He didn’t believe in God, and I do.  I can’t explain the plan, the reasons, or anything, I just know my faith pulled me through so much.

During this mid-September I was anticipating the soon to be turning 49.  No job, no social assistance because my ex put my children through private school and they saw that as “in-kind support”.  That didn’t help me pay my bills, and he didn’t support me in anyway.  But that is our system.  It’s unfair.  For all the ones in the community on welfare and disability insurance, I sat there selling my possessions to pay my rent.  And I put out resumes in hope for a less stressful job – from burger flipper, to receptionist, to retail at pet stores.  Over qualified, under?? qualified, and really, I believe, just “old”.  Doesn’t matter that you feel like 28 years old at 49, are fit and willing, and well educated.. they don’t want you.  I couldn’t return to the prison job I had that pushed me over the edge even if they asked me to.  The thought nauseated me.  So I moved forward, always believing it will be okay.  I will get a job.  I will be okay, all the while hidden behind my walls.

Chapter 5 – Monrad Mansion Month TWO – Meet the Spider Man, The Sha, The Dill, The Meesh, The Marlon, The 12 Year old, The World That Becomes My life… continued

Okay, so let me move on before I go back again to T.  Month two at MM.  I have all my “stuff” moved in, my front room is the way I want it, the back room is a mess of boxes, and I start to meet the neighbours.  MM is a large farm house, as I said, made up of two bachelor apartments, my two room apartment, and the one side of the house with three bedrooms, a huge living room and kitchen, two bathrooms, a washing machine, and access to the basement.  Alongside the house are two trailers hooked up to the house’s electrical and one the plumbing (or so to speak).  Water is brought in from outside and dumped into a well.  Upon arriving, next to the sub-landlord, I met The Dill.  He was a young black man, in his mid to late 20’s, about 6’ tall and slender.  He has large brown puppy dog eyes.  He had a Trinidadian accent and a hardy laugh.  Anxious to help me move things in, he quickly began taking boxes from the back of the truck and moving them in.  My first impression was “this is nice”.

A couple of days later I ventured around the house and met up with The Meesh, and the Twelve Year Old.  Okay, here’s the deal.  The TYO is not really that.  She’s 22 at the time.  Tiny though.  The body of a 12 year old, and a new mother.  She, like Dill, had an inviting smile, and hers would melt a man.  Short hair, big brown eyes that smiled when she did, she also couldn’t stand still.  In her, however, I could see there was something behind the smile.  The Meesh was next to Tiny.  She was renting one of the trailers and helping to care for Tiny’s baby boy.  I think he was about 5 months old.  Piercing blue eyes like his father, who is the sub-landlord, AM.  (AM is a misnomer for him, by the way, as he is not usually up early.  Ideally he should be PM, but we’ll stick to this.)  Meesh is about 38 years old, although I would have thought more 45.  Pleasant enough but there was something of internally that made me feel not so comfortable with her.  Green eyes, a pleasant smile as well, but a know it all and obviously a strong desire to be needed and loved.  Tiny, who I will now refer TYO as from here on in, was excited to meet me.  But behind her happy face you could see frustration.  Maybe it was a life she inherited without planning that led her to have eyes that reflected a loss soul in need of attention.  Did her son take that away from her?

A few minutes past of sharing informal greetings when Sha arrived.  Sha was wearing her pj’s, tall, dark, with a very inviting smile too.  It was all surreal to me.  I felt a longing to belong, yet at the same time I felt like a stranger in this place I decided to call my new home.  The discomfort of that feeling led me back to my apartment, on my computer where I just twittered, facebooked and hid away yet again.

Hollow

Tonight I learned a lesson

A lesson I devised

It doesn’t make me smarter

It doesn’t make me wise

But awareness is the word I sought

In what tonight I was taught

 

I am a stubborn human

Who likes to hold her own

And to rely on someone else

Just makes me feel ungrown

 

I fight the fight

In constant search

of total independence

And yet I can’t seem to find

The proper simple elements

That join together to

Allow me to get through

That phase…

 

I no longer know

The path I follow

I no longer know

The me who’s hollow

 

Okay, it’s not that bad

I say

Because it’s only me

That may

Make it happen

Make it right

And follow

What fills the hollow

 

So here I go

And where it takes me again

I don’t know

But one thing that I do

I to myself I must be true

No matter what

Stubborn, weak or strong

I will trudge and struggle along

Until the day

When I will stay

Where I belong

 

Where that is I do not know

But I will follow

Until that day that fills the hollow.

 

by Bullimiaddict on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 12:22am

Chapter 4 – T, the Town of Weirdness Yet Beauty

I lived in the town of T.  I moved there after I lost everything.  I lost my business that I invested all my retirement fund into in a town not far from T.  I was hoping to start all over again, but things didn’t work out that way.  My “partner” became frightened about the concept of being an entrepreneur and bailed.  So there I was in T, alone and wondering what I was going to do.   I had found a place in an old apartment.  Yes, OLD… older than I was.  Way older.  It was built in the 1800’s, started off as a hotel, word has it was a brothel at one time, that is just speculation, then it was a convent, then a boarding house, then an apartment building.  This is where I came in.  The landlord designed the main floor front shop for me, with a small apartment in the back.  It had beautiful wood doors and huge windows with 12 food ceilings that were decorative.  Where I resided was apparently the mess hall when it was a convent.    Two large wooden doors led into the hallway. 

I wasn’t sure what to do so I opened a small business shop, offering small business services.  Although there was no other business like it, there were enough non-direct competitors to make it a failure.  But during the time I was there it was appealing.  The little town of T was a walk away from anything you needed.  In my case, this also included the liquor store, food store, restaurants, access to cigarettes and if wanted, after hours wine from friends.  It was perfect.  Just across to the back was a beautiful river to swim in in the summertime.  It was like a year around country resort, so to speak.  Like renting a place in a reclusive, yet active little environment which was quite different from what I moved from – a two acre piece of land with a house too large for me, myself and I, although I crowded it with animals.  The previous place was outside the town limits and other than the customers I saw during the day, I really didn’t see many people on off hours.  In the little town of T, I saw people all the time.  All the time.  Whether it was screaming couples in the apartment running up and down the stairs, outside, inside, with the front door slamming, teenagers lost in a place where there was nothing else to do but to ride their bikes at all hours of the night and stealing the oddest thing from a porch flower pot, the walkers, the lonely corner group looking to hang out, there was always something going on.  On quiet nights, not much activity was going on, but there were always trucks driving by heading through the town from one major highway to the other, or buses from one major city to another.  It was a main route.

It didn’t take much time before I had people rocking on my rocking chair on my front porch with me, socializing.  It was a low income town.  It was there that I first learned what it was like to be living with that level of society.  Now I’m saying this in the kindest way.  They came in all forms, all type of backgrounds, all kinds of experiences.  They were real.  They didn’t try to be high society, to prove anything.  Suddenly I was around people who saw life in a different light.  It was relaxing.  I didn’t have to prove anything either.  It was where I decided I liked to be.  Around real people.

During my time in the town of T I was struggling though.  Although I was finding myself, I was also still fighting my demons – alcohol and my eating disorder.  Although I had more human friends – and real friends – than I had had in a long time, there was still something missing inside of me.  That was ME.  The little town of T brought me home with a new respect for humans, for real people.  But when I moved in with my sister for 8 months, where I stopped all together my eating disorder, it was then the real journey began.  But the little town of T to me was where it was beginning.  And sometimes I feel it’s where I would like my journey to end.

In the interim, I will continue with this story, because T had some amazing ones.  Good ones, not so good ones, but in the one year I lived there I must admit, I sure did live.  And on these pages is what the beautiful building of the 1800’s turned out to look like on the outside.  But no matter what I called it home for that year.  And a piece of me will always remain there.

Monrad Mansion Month TWO – Meet the Spider Man, The Sha, The Dill, The Meesh, The Marlon, The 12 Year old, The World That Becomes My life…

A world in a little community made of love, hate, gossip, a strange world that I had somewhat inhabited in my previous life, in the little T town, but now is yet another experience I personally was not sure if I was ready for.  Now that I am writing about it, I know it was what was meant to be.  But before I begin this Chapter of my life, let me reflect.  I will return to this one in moment…  First let me go back to the T Town story.  The picture is an original of what the building that I lived in looked like back in the 1800’s.  I will have what it ended up looking like!

Chapter 3 – Welcome to My First Month at Monrad Mansion

Woe be me, as I said before.  It wasn’t the 1^st of August I moved in.  I think it was the 13^th.  AM was nice enough to help me with the first load of crap I had to move in.  That and a kind stranger I bought a bunk bed with a futon like on the bottom for my one room.  It was, truly, after all, a bachelor pad-ish home.  Front was going to have my main computer, my bed/couch, my dining room table.  Back was going to have another couple of computers, my books, my dressers, my bike, my closet of what clothes I had left.  And lest we not forget it has the bathroom sink. The bathroom sink is in the back room, the bath and toilet in the hallway going into the back room.  It was something else all together.  White walls in the back were perfect for me because eventually I would fill them with the myriad of paintings I have from my grandfather, good friends, daughter, sons, and of course all the useless diplomas I have from Honours Journalism, Bachelor of Arts, Private Investigation, and my copyrighted unpublished books.  Oh yes, and paintings I painted.  They are not great, but they are my memories.  I even knew I would end up with pictures of one of my previous lives with my ex and my children.  They are a part of my fabric.  And pictures of my “friend” of six years.  Another part of my fabric.

Okay so back to my first month.  I managed to have the front in place.  Like one of my favourite movies “Under the Tuscan Sun” she said something about making one room your own.  I did just that.  It is the one with the tree and the once upon a time sun on the ceiling.  I made that my space, while the back room slowly built up with boxes and a mess, and I was overwhelmed.  I was.  I drank what little money I had.  I cried.  I felt like there was nothing much to live for anymore.  In the eight months I lived close to my children at my sister’s place I didn’t see them much.  I wondered was this the right decision?  But I did have a job.  I had started it just about the time I rented the place.  I even had someone to drive me.  Or so I thought.  He ended up being horribly unpredictable.  I found out how to take public transportation after walking the 8 kilometres the one day my ride didn’t show up.  But all in all my job was a prison and so was my lack of transportation to my nice little country apartment.  I was falling apart.

My job had great potential, but also great expectations that as a burned out 49 year old with wrinkles and sagging body parts didn’t want to challenge.  I couldn’t.  I ended up with that “must be here before 8:50 a.m. and must not go out until 12:01 and back before 12:59 and out at 5 p.m. and otherwise be at your computer and make sure you log in everything except for when you decide to go to the bathroom, because you are a NUMBER and everything is digitally watching you and monitoring you” turning into a “severe anxiety and depression” issue.  I was also isolating myself so badly because going outside stressed me out horribly.  Avoidant Personality Disorder.  Wow.  They still want me back after three months.  Why?  Because I’m too nice.

So first month of Monrad Mansion living, I left my job, had rent to pay and didn’t know what to expect from there.  Prison Job told me to keep working from home, but wait!  Wait until what happens in the second month.  Never accept to do anything unless it’s in writing…

Monrad Mansion – My Copyrighted, but yet to be published book. Chapter One

Chapter 1 – LA Goes To Meet The Landlord

Hi, I’m LA.  I am a 49 year old burnt out woman who wouldn’t attract a decent man if my life depended on it.  Divorced after my ex had an affair with my sister, a birth vessel to my three lost children to “him” with his money, and what money I did have I blew on a pipe dream – an auto repair company in a small town, where the recession of ’07 killed it and all my retirement fund.  So, one year later, after moving to another small town and drinking too much, although finding a best friend there while I lived there, I moved in with my sister back near home.  My kids asked me to come back.  Never listen to them.

After 9 months I decided that this independent woman would move out to her own place.  Four years in the country gave me an itch for remaining in that atmosphere.

“Available, bachelor apartment on farm land, internet included, and animal friendly”.  Yeah! I thought.  I found the perfect place.  With two dogs, and my love for animals, and the country, and admittedly technology, what more could you ask for?

Thursday morning, July 21, 2011 I visited the “landlord” of this place.  (He was more like a sub-landlord).  I checked out the bachelor apartment and agreed to lease it immediately, or so to speak.  Nicer yet was that I was paying first and last, but it was a month to month lease.  Couldn’t be better.

This young man was somewhere else on that morning.  It took me 45 minutes to get him to even write me out a lease.  I was on social assistance at that time and needed proof I was moving out.

There he stood, piercing blue eyes, about six foot one inches tall, fit, in his late 20’s and could not focus on the fact I was the real deal.  It was no wonder.  The place looked like a shelter for the wanderers.  I didn’t care.  I wanted a place to live and I couldn’t afford much, nor somewhere that accepted my babies – my 13 year old Jack Russell and my 2 year old JackShit.

My sister’s boyfriend had driven me to this location.  I had assured him it would be a ten minute deal.  As aforementioned, it wasn’t.  So here is why.

AM couldn’t focus.  He was concerned about his dogs, then concerned about his goats that went loose, and then his chicken, and was more interested in making sure they were attended to then his new tenant.

It doesn’t end there.

At 20 minutes I asked him if I could just see the place.  He sent me upstairs on my own and I checked it out and it seemed reasonable.  At 30 minutes I asked him to find me paper and pen.  He came out with paper and pencil.  He began to write the lease agreement, then ran off because he saw his goat.  So at 35 minutes I finished the wording of the agreement and at 40 minutes tried to find him to sign it so that my sister’s boyfriend wouldn’t become totally frustrated.  At 45 minutes I got the pencil written agreement signed and left.  August 1st was my move in date.  But it wasn’t.

Thus begins a life I didn’t expect having, much like my previous lives.  Lives?  Yes lives.  I have had many.  Of any of them I love this one the most.  Why?  I’m not sure.  I think this is where the beginning is of where I need to go.  Here at the Monrad Mansion.