Michigan has taught me everything I do not want in this life.
I know this statement will offend the Michiganders. I posted about a month ago on Threads how traumatizing life has been since moving here, and how I wish I never had. I had endless replies telling me “just go back where you came from” and how beautiful this state is and that I should be happy to be here.
This state is beautiful, but I haven’t had a chance to enjoy any of it.
Between the abuse I’ve endured and the lack of accessibility, I’ve only left my room a handful of times in over a year.
I have walked home from ERs after being taken in via ambulance for seizures and low potassium, because there were no public transport options where I lived in the UP. I’ve walked to the ER with a fever, pneumonia, and a tooth infection in the snow for the same reason.
The person who swore they’d be there wasn’t, and I think that’s where my bitterness started. There was no concern if I made it to the ER safely or back home safely. Not really. And I understand, everyone has their own things and not everyone is capable of showing up in a meaningful way, so they wrap their care in spiritual bypassing, saying they just had to trust that if I died, it was meant to be.
Those words made me want to die, and suddenly that nightmare where their eyes were black and the trees were begging me to go back home made sense.
I’ve been surrounded by countless drugs from roommates or neighbors, including meth. Moldy, falling apart buildings. All the progress I had made with my health was stripped away from me.
I became homeless. I was in a shelter receiving death threats from my roommate, and the staff didn’t do anything until she attacked one of them, but that was after I left and moved in with a drug addict who had.
I rented a room with shit smeared on the walls and no door. I was reinfected with COVID for a second time because people are a little too holistic and refuse to believe that masks and social distancing can help keep an immunocompromised person alive. The last round had me laying down towels to try to pee in bottles because I was too sick to make it out of bed.
Between boil water advisories and no access to water for my POTS, meth fumes, men at my doorway when I didn’t have one, just staring at me while I slept… endless screaming…
Roommate screaming bloody murder that someone was killing her. 911 calls. My number being given to random men. Sexual harassment.
I am not okay.
And I had no one to reach out to during this. Not fully. No one to come sit with me. No one to help me home from the hospital. No one to even call. I have had people show up in other ways, and I am grateful, because their kindness has kept me alive. But it’s not the same.
I really thought the things I had endured in Utah the two years prior to moving here were hard.
And it was bad.
Logically, I know that’s the cycle of trauma. We are perfectly primed to be abused again, and so the loop continues. We are vulnerable, desperate for safety. Being disabled and in poverty adds to this risk. If I were to tell the full story, no one would believe me.
It comes out sometimes, though.
I’ll bring up the cameras in my room. Being locked in the basement. The stalker neighbor. The lady at the Vegas airport threatening to take a knife to me.
I am tired.
You know, I used to not wear my headphones 24/7. Look back at my old videos from last year and before. I can’t exist without them now, because all of the trauma destroyed me.
I finally had a day yesterday where I was able to take my headphones off. I felt more at ease, despite everything. My heart rate was finally relaxed. I let myself rest for the day. And it all crumbled. I stepped outside my room to turn off the A/C only to be screamed at.
I assume the roommate was having sex, jacking off, or naked. It threw me into an entire PTSD episode. My headphones are back on. I jumped when my air fryer beeped and had a panic attack. I once again peed in a bottle last night, never thought I’d have to do that after that COVID-era, but I didn’t feel safe leaving my bedroom. So I laid the towel down, grabbed an empty Powerade bottle, and baby wipes. I wasn’t allowed to leave my room, and I really had to pee.
Why is this how my life is?
I say it a lot, but I wish I had died back in Utah. And no matter what progress I make, I still wish that, because this isn’t life.
I also say this often, all I want is to be safe. And somehow I keep ending up in even more unsafe, abusive situations.
No one will read this. Or care.
But I care. I care about me and my safety. And I really hope one day I can look back and be grateful that I am no longer here and that I am finally safe.
Serendipity Minds 