I was really depressed last night. I’m kind of afraid it’s going to return tonight.
I was lucky to get a place indoors to sleep — when we arrived at the assigned church, which allows up to 58 people overnight, they all ready had 28 family members signed in, leaving 30 spots open for probably about 50 people waiting outside.
My ride moocher also got a spot inside. I ended up in a big room, all ready nearly filled with family members (which means: Moms who can’t manage to watch their kids. There are only 2 people with a single child: One has a grown up (in his 30s), who is apparently somehow “slow” — they get into the sites every day — and another was “granny” to a 5 or 6 year old with autism, who she apparently “parents” with threats. I completely understand why she couldn’t manage him, but it just added to the general insanity in that room.
Another lady has only 2 kids, but one is a 2 year old who cannot speak words, and the other is 8 months. The older kid has a tendency to bully, especially girls who don’t fall prey to his flirting. It wasn’t that mom wasn’t trying, she just couldn’t handle both at once.
And then the others had anywhere from 4 to 6 kids.
The room was FUCKING loud, kids running around, someone walked past me holding a chair, but not actually high enough to get it — you know, over my head…
Granny was threatening the autistic kid with going to the car or returning to the hospital, over and over… Kids running, screaming, parents ignoring. At some point Granny’s kid just took off running — she calls out, “Don’t let him go, he’s a runner!!!” I don’t know if she expected us to trip him as he ran by, or what…
It was nothing to return to that old wish: that I’d never been born, or that I’d died somehow in the past. I begged a coordinator to talk to me as she passed by, hoping to get a spot, maybe out in the hall or something — she either ignored me (possible) or didn’t hear me (likely — did I mention, it was fucking loud?) I lay on my mat and cried. Finally I turned on a movie saved on my phone and listened to music over the yelling.
And here’s the thing… it wasn’t worse than Sunday morning. We were at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Hinsdale — the only site open on Saturday nights, with just over 50 pads available. Somehow, for the third week in a row, everyone who showed up on time, got in. (October should bring 3 sites a night, and I can’t wait to see the calendar, showing that...)
Weirdly, Saturday night was quiet, and I’d managed to get into the dining hall on Sunday morning. As I was finishing my breakfast, The Bully walked in and said, “Princess is on top of a woman in the sleeping area. Do you know who has red slacks? The lady underneath has red slacks.”
Princess is our drama-causer, normally just with her big mouth and disgusting racism. She used to bring in residency information about people she suspected of being non-residents. These people were nearly all black. She told me and my ride moocher that she brings the information she has to friends of her ex — like him, county sheriff’s deputies — she said she brought their license plate numbers — in some cases that might work, but she also had information about people who do not drive. All PADS uses is first name and initial of last name, so either someone is providing her the last names she wants, or they are using some listing of homeless. (Per my ride moocher, Illinois has such a thing — I have no idea whether or not that is true.)
Eventually a man who looked well into retirement said he pulled Princess off of Ms. Red Slacks (though another lady in PADS, not generally inclined to elaborate, said she’d pulled Princess off. Maybe they both did.) Everybody called the police, and soon a dozen police and EMT’s were walking around the site.
I got out of there, but figured that Princess would finally, FINALLY be going to jail, if only for a day or two, for assault. But, no. Ms. Red Slacks did not press charges, and Princess has been back at sites each night, arriving too late to get lotto’ed in, and calling the coordinators racist for not accepting her ID after the lottery had begun.
Princess (of course) is the same drama queen who wished me dead (and more) after I stated that while it was too bad that a PADS client had gotten injured, he should not have been riding a bike on a 6 lane road while he was inebriated, and that I felt sorry for the poor person who hit him. I’ve assumed since the day I met her (when she used the threat of ‘gonna kill’ people) that she was going to take it physical, eventually. While I do fear her eventual probable attack on me (after all, I’m classless...), in a way it seems like a Willie Wonka’s Golden Ticket — normally I don’t think about suing PADS for things like when they failed to clear the walk of ice and I fell, or when the room divider clonked me on the head (STILL hurts a little, if I press down where it hit...) I have filed many grievances detailing Princess’ hate, threats and racism — and have never had any indication that anyone has listened.
In the meantime, I’m waiting to hear from the HR department of the company where my friend works… if they don’t call soon, I will be contacting a temporary staffing agency again, and will be looking for anything long term. But stuff that’s happened between Sunday and last night — I feel like I shouldn’t even be thinking about employment — clearly, anyone who can live in PADS is just fucking insane, and I should just be locked in a mental ward.