it's all world work arnie public housing

OK. I am sitting here crying about a tiny thing that just happened to me. I will try to write my way back to happy.

I have lived in a public housing apartment for the past three years. For folks who don't know much about public housing, most public housing buildings that do not accept children are society's warehouse for the mentally ill. When, during the Reagan years, 'they' decided to get the mentally ill out of hospitals, no meaningful provisions were made for meaningful social support for the mentally ill. The lucky ones end up on public housing. The lucky ones manage to hang on to their apartments and their independence but it is a lot of work.

I landed in my public housing apartment after a life crisis that rendered me very emotionally sick for a long time. By the time I moved in here, I didn't really care what happened to me. I wasn't exactly sure I wanted to stay alive. For my first year in this apartment, about all I did was breath, pee and grocery shop. Simply holding myself together enough to stay alive was literally all I could handle.

I was so alone in the world at this time. I had, literally, months go by without talking to any human beings other than a bus driver or a grocery cashier. I assiduously avoided getting to know my neighbors because I knew that most, if not all, of them were just as troubled as me. Yes, I might have a pleasant encounter with a neighbor who was having a good day . . . but it was just as possible that I might nod hello to a neighbor having an emotionally unstable day and I could unwittingly trigger an unhappy encounter.

Gradually, I grew well. I am well and happy now and, glory be, I am moving into a regular apartment in Mountain View, CA.

One of the things that has always set me apart from my neighbors is my education. I am overeducated. My sentence to public housing and destitution was always temporary. For virtually all of my neighbors, their sentence to public housing and destitution is permanent.

My building is full of vulnerable, fragile human beings, many of whom have more family and friends than I do. Virtually all of them have mental health problems far more serious than mine. Even as I write this, I am full of love for my neighbors. I am proud of many of the ones I now know. Some of my neighbors have to fight every day just to stay alive and some of them have been doing it for ten and, even, twenty years. My life is so easy, so rich and so full compared to theirs.

When I learned, in May, that I would be leaving my building, I made a conscious choice to get to know my neighbors just a little bit. Until this time, I had formed very limited, nodding relationships with just two or three people in my building. I decided to expand these relationships. I invited Arnie, a six-foot, four-inch, enormous neighbor with schizophrenia out for coffee. I thought I would be moving out of the building by the end of July and I thought our friendship would have been over by now.

Well, it has taken me longer to exercute my move than I thought. I am definitely going to be out of this building by the end of this week.

I have spent a lot of time with Arnie and his sidekick, Al. It is pretty boring hanging out with them.