poverty

I have lived most of my life in desperate poverty.

In high school it was food, I was afraid to eat.

in college, I was too busy drinking gin and tonics and other libations to be able to organize normal undergraduate activities. I was burning the candle at both ends, as the saying goes.

then, there was my experience of the harvard Advocate magazine.

next stop, Wernersville State Hospital. Who knows how these things work; but the one followed the other.

now I am a mature woman.

I have learned not to diet. That was another serious detraction from my well- being during those formative years–obsessing over my weight. Which was average, not like now.

I have left my diet and weight in the hands of the Lord. Nothing I do on my own to lose weight ever works.

the Lord recently showed me that I was in error in saying that I took an oath of poverty during my first stay at Wernersville. I just said to the dentist as I was leaving that my stay had “changed my values.” I saw this loving community where there was no money when i was in a weakened state and got some foolish ideas. And ruined the place. That was how I felt. They made paths with exercise stations throughout the gorgeous park-like grounds and it ruined them. And clear plastic barriers in the nurses station windows, I felt responsible for all this. So now they are getting rid of state hospitals.

I feel responsible. I couldn’t help it. I was from other places and had experienced things that made it impossible to fit the social norms there. I did the same thing as I had done before, I got into a relationship with a male patient. A harvard student should have known better. But I was so remote from that part of my life at that time, after the ghoul epiphany of which you have heard me speak, when a woman young in years got her womanhood fried, and woke up on the day room of Ward 35-1. I needed to be there. They just didn’t understand. They wanted to know why I wasn’t acting like a Harvard student. I was the WORST patient there and I needed help. I was told I had to associate with the other patients. So, next thing I knew I was involved with a patient who was extremely brilliant but very ill; and had a springtime experience that carried me out of the near-death experience in the ICU. And let me live again. In an ‘altered state’– that’s what my husband said when I met him 4 years later. By that time I had become a part of the community that one person called the “nut circle.” I had completely lost my way.

So, I used to say to my ex, “I can talk to absolutely anyone.” He didn’t like it when I talked about the state hospital.

We wound up in Florida and stayed for 16 years. He made a bundle of money and I could have bought anything I wanted; but it was like food in high school: I could only take things that were fake. Things that I bought online with a credit cards like fancy pens and pocket knives and clothing nicer than what I needed or not as nice.

so now I’m here in PA wishing we could get back together and do it better.

but he likes the lifestyle in Florida and I don’t want to go back. It’s been right about 10 years now.

I don’t want to put any pressure on him, it’s just a nice thought.