Irrelevant Changes Are Us

Am I done yet?

I ask the young man behind the drug store counter. I have my prescription in my hand, and I'm just wondering why I'm standing there like an idiot while he's dealing with another customer. I grow patient. I can do that. Breathe in, breathe out. The young man leaves the counter to talk to the pharmacist for the man next to me, who was after me. He's irate also. He had left his prescription earlier today, around Nine this morning and was told to come back at Six to pick it up. The young man comes back, "I'm sorry," He says to the man next to me, "there was a mixup and we don't have your medicines back there, we had to order them from the warehouse." The man shakes his head. "I was told to come back at Six." I look at my watch. Time now, Six Thirty.

The young man keeps shaking his head. "Look," the man says, "I don't have time for this. Give me my prescription and let me take it somewhere else." The young man returns to the back, completely ignoring me. The man and I sigh tiredly.

The young man comes back, to the man, he says: "She'll have it ready for you in a few minutes."
Hey, I call out to the numbskull, Am I done? The young man presses a button on the cash register, snatches away a receipt and hands it over to me. I take it from him and stalk off, stupid fuck. Is that all that it took to get me on my merry? I'm angry, but after five paces I stop and smile. Across from me in the aisle is the small appliance section. On one of the shelves is a facsimile to a George Foreman Grill, just half its size and easier to operate (what do you have to do to the little fuckers? Plug it in and it gets hot. Period). Just what I wanted to go with 'Darling'.

I check the price. Well within what I expected. I go to put it in my shopping cart but then realize that this time next week I could be planning to leave my SRO. There's no way that I can carry around a compact grill out of there. That is some impossible shit. I put the little bastard back and continue to stalk off, getting some low calorie snacks before leaving.

When I get to the Mantrap at The Spot, I ask security for my mail. Nothing. Nothing. Now I was told by Duffield Street Social Services in Brooklyn that I have a 9:00Am appointment with my Social worker this week Thursday. This is only two days from now and I still haven't gotten my appointment letter from these motherfuckers. If I didn't go to Duffield Street on my very own and ask, I wouldn't know shit right now. This is the very same shit that I'm talking about with Social Services. They date stamp shit and hold it in their stupid assed mail room for two or three days and then mail it to you....late. They WANT you hopping through hoops.

I see through them now. I'll find a way around them too. I'm smarter than any Civil Servant working. We'll see. No wonder people crank and complain about these people when they have to show up at Duffield. They're completely pissed and stirred up like a nest of hornets prior to getting there. Irate is not the word for it. Murderous is more like it. I just hope that I'm not there when someone comes in with a mysterious package. This motherfucker, whoever he will be, is going to do some major damage.

GODDAMMIT sometimes I do wish that I could have gotten on Unemployment when it was worth something to me. When I had things to keep, when I had a roof over my head, and a car in the parking lot. Shit, now I have to deal with institutionalized frustration and helplessness. Here is a phrase for today. It's called LEARNED HELPLESSNESS. Wikipedia puts it this way:

"Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helpless in a particular situation, even when it has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation."

Depression and MENTAL ILLNESS comes from an absence of control. I take WELLBUTRIN for depression and ABILIFY and LAMICTAL for mental illness. Do you fucking wonder why? Having to deal with this shit once every two months. NALTRAXONE for alcoholism, and LYRICA for anxiety, you don't think this constant rollercoaster ride makes you want to take a drink or fray your nerves??

No wonder I take pills for my brittle blood pressure. These fuckers are designed to send you to an early grave. That's why they keep FUCKING WITH YOUR BENEFITS. They know that you are on their medications to survive, and so cutting or sanctioning (suspending) them will only fuck with your health. They know this.

They can eat the corn out of my shit. Fuck'em. That's my motto for now on. Get it together and get the fuck up and out. This is the year for change. I want to change. I want to move ahead and do something far different than I was doing last year. Every year upwards and onwards. I sat on my bed in the shelter and one of the guys sat on the bed across from mine and made mention how I had been there in the shelter the longest time than anyone, and didn't that make me depressed or angry? I told him that in Five years all of this will be gone, and everyone here will be irrelevant. Everything. That was a little less than a year ago.

This too. Social Services, this SRO, all of this around me will not exist for me in five years.

I better get ready for the change.

Hobobob