I can't explain just how alienating
this pandemic has been for me.
I'm poor and I live in an SRO.
There's no house for me. There's no
kitchen where I can bake bread, like all the housewives are doing now during the pandemic. There's no garden where I can plant my own
food.
I have no car to drive with.
My friends are online sometimes and I rarely talk to them. They all live in houses. I do not.
It's even more alienating during a
pandemic when you're witness to violence.
I had to call the police after hearing
something very disturbing. A man was committing violence against a
woman upstairs from me. But the police wouldn't believe me because I
didn't “SEE” anything.
The man is moving out... but there's
nothing else I can do. No one believes me about the woman.
I can't tell you how alienating this is
for me.
Victims of violence are often
gaslighted and so are witnesses.
I can't do much more.
People like me are the first to die,
especially during a pandemic.
I've seen how the homeless are treated.
It's beyond frustrating. It fills me
with rage.
All the normal people are complaining
they can't bake their bread well enough. All the people safe in their
houses complain about having to clean out the garage now during the
pandemic. All the “work at home” techies complain about how slow
Amazon is during the pandemic—with no regard to the unprotected
workers. All the other people are hoarding toilet paper.
Meanwhile, I still have to deal with
violence around me.
I can't socialize very well with people
whose only priority is ordering dresses or knitting or baking
bread...
I can't talk to people who've never
witnessed or experienced violence.
It's a total disconnect.
I cannot connect with these strange
people who seem to be another species from me.
I know people who lose their minds from
this disconnect. Some people do drugs. Others drink. Some people kill
themselves.
I don't know what I'll do yet.
But I do want to escape.
If I'm going to be trapped somewhere,
it may as well be nice.
Where can I flee to?
There was housing discrimination before
the virus. It's even worse when people don't have any income.
I'm still trapped in poverty. No matter
how hard I work I can't get over poverty.
I'm trying to study more about PTSD and
C-PTSD to understand my symptoms and why it's affecting me so
strongly. I realized the underprivileged suffer more from trauma than
privileged “Normal” people.
I don't have the luxury of baking bread
during the pandemic.
Judith Herman (about self-/conscious
raising), “It was okay to trust your own observations... even if nobody else seemed to think that what you saw made any sense.”
It's too hard to recover in isolation.
I have feelings of guilt and shame. I
believe the perpetrator of violence upstairs was taking revenge on
me. He knows I can hear him. I don't know what happened to the woman
or if he killed her. Cops won't do anything without proof. Even if I
hear violence it's not enough to call cops.
I was listening to music and laughing
and being myself. I was getting back in shape and watching videos
online. I was fine.
And then this creep upstairs violated a
woman. He's been doing this off an on, bringing women over on
weekends... and I don't know what happens to them after.
Women have disappeared and their bodies
dumped—cops won't do anything.
I can't heal in a place like this.
The guy upstairs is supposed to be
leaving but the violence won't end.
I don't know how to make it end.
Trying to study more:
The Impact of Trauma on Adult Sexual
Assault Victims 2019
Report Submitted to: Justice Canada
by Dr. Lori Haskell, C. Psych., Dr.
Melanie Randall
indicate that the reproduction is
a copy of an official work that is published by
the Government of Canada and that
the reproduction has not been produced in
affiliation with or with the
endorsement of the Government of Canada.
