Friday October 6th, 2017 11:36 AM
"Museums are for dead things
I would put all my stuff in them
They can look but no one can touch
I would be inside my museum
With all my stuff
So no one can take it away
and ruin it
It will all stay the same
Nothing will change"
--My Private Collection by Emerald A.
Behrens (c) 2014
It's October again. Soon it will be
Halloween, my favorite time of year.
I'm still stuck in poverty here in
Chinatown, San Francisco. But as I keep saying now, I'd rather be
poor in San Francisco than anywhere else. Even Chico.
My Grandparents are dead. They died
last year. It was a terrible ordeal that split our family apart. I'm
no longer on speaking terms with the rest of the family. I've come to
accept that this is what happens in life. All I have left are their
things.
I currently pay $180 for three storages
in Chico that I rarely visit because I have a full-time job. It's the
first time in my life I have a job that pays the rent and bills. At
33-years-old (soon to be 34-years-old), I have finally become and
adult. Better late than never, right? I know this journey has been
hard. I could never have gotten this far if I hadn't made the
decision not to rely on others.
I think of all I've been through and
still can't believe I'm here. I narrowly missed having a life of my
own and having everything taken from me. I know better now not to
sacrifice freedom for so-called security. The life I had in Chico is
not for me. My bills and rent were paid by my grandparents and after
suffering three jobs at one time with not enough money, I soon
realized I would never have a proper life in the small college town I
had to grow up in.
I'm thankful for the good memories I've
had in that town, when my grandparents were still alive, when I was
allowed to go to college for over eight years and travel and be with
friends. Never again.
I miss the nature and the easy-going
lifestyle there of college kids who could waste their lives away,
smoking pot in the park (I never smoked pot and still can't stand the
smell). I miss being able to sit in cafes and write all day. I miss
my car. I really miss my car. I miss driving around and listening to
music. I miss the freedom of having my own car. Having my own car was
also expensive.
I can never have a car in San
Francisco. It's too damn expensive: gas, maintenance, insurance,
parking, did I mention insurance? That alone would put me over $5,000
in the hole--which is what the IRS demands from me every year. You
might say I sold my car to the IRS, every single year.
Taxes are terribly expensive. I pay
over 20% of my paycheck and make less than $30,000 a year after Big
Brother and their ilk snatch most of my paycheck away. Very little
goes to CA disability or even Social Security. It takes about $40,000
to live in San Francisco. I pay more than 35% of my income on rent
alone. Without my savings and money from my grandparents, I'd be
screwed.
The lucky people can live out of their
cars. I've seen them, parked along streets in San Francisco, usually
near the closest 24-hour gym. But there are car break-ins every night
and it's not safe here. I've already been attacked by a crazy
homeless dude who wanted to pick a fight for no reason. Living in a
tent is hard to imagine, though I've done so in the safety and
security of someone's backyard. I was not a welcome guest there and
people's patience wears thin.
San Francisco has no charity or
patience for the homeless. Crimes against the homeless are rising. If
I become homeless, I will no longer have a life.
I think of these things every day as I
attempt to fit in with normal people and live a normal life. I wonder
how much longer I can keep pretending. Life is so much harder without
parents, without family and support. I feel like I'm the only one
without parents.
I've seen many people here in San
Francisco, many of them rich. A lot of the rich inherited from their
rich parents, and continue to live their rich lifestyle without ever
worrying about being homeless. I don't need to be rich; I only ask
for enough to live. This is not the motto for the rich. I've seen the
lucky youth who came here with techie jobs in hand from a good
college paid by their parents and their part-time jobs. The lucky
youth usually make $60,000 a year; double what I make without any
college degree or techie job.
As a woman, I'm not sure it would make
much difference in the techie industry. I've seen how things are for
working women here. The rich girls in their high-heels who follow the
men old enough to be their father's older brother, carrying their
salad as they hobble along listening to the men do all the talking.
I've seen many things here in the city
of San Francisco. I've seen pimps yelling at their girls and heard
the girls crying, "Give me my money! It's my money!". I've
seen women suffer abuse at the hands of their boyfriends because they
have nowhere else to go. It happens a lot in my building. I've seen
old people die alone here because they had no family to care for
them. I've seen their things dumped outside for the trash people to
take.
I know my things will end up in the
trash when I die. No one will care about my things. I wonder what
it's all for when I waste my life to pay for rent, only to be stuck
with things I can't take care of: my grandparents belongings, their
pictures, their writings, their furniture, their books, their photos.
It's all in storage in Chico, plus taking up space in my closet, in
my 8X10 room I pay over $850 for with rent control.
Also, my things are in there too. My
pictures, my comics, my writings, my furniture--all the things I used
to have in Chico, packed away and never seen again. All of my stuff
here is a mess and packed away as well. Without my computer, I
wouldn’t have anything.
The life that everyone else has is not
my own. I realize how quickly those things can be taken away though:
a house lost to fire, a city lost to a hurricane, a whole country in
debt and destroyed with no help from the outside as with Puerto Rico.
I know security is temporary.
The life I have now may change. It may
be gone. All the things I do now won't matter. My stuff will be
thrown away and destroyed. I know this and continue to write, to make
music, to make movies and shorts, along with Grim Goblin Jack.
What
else would I do with my time?
