COMFORTABLY NUMB

Bookmarking - this should be a great thread. I'll comment when I get back from work this afternoon.

Re: COMFORTABLY NUMB


Quite an indepth analysys there, Set. I think that I can say no to most of these things, in the true sense of the meaning.

Lonely? No. I met my wife when we were fifteen and started going steady when we were eighteen, and married her at twenty. So I can count myself very lucky on that score.

Homeless? No. We rented a place for the first year, and worked every hour under the sun, so we could save up a deposit on our first home.
So....lucky again, although we made most of our own luck on that one.
How someone copes who is truly homeless is beyond me.

Broke?....Yes, but only of our own choosing. Both of us were earning, but putting every penny away for the aforementioned house purchase, so there were many times when our friends were living the high life, while we were living on toast and other such crap for a year or two, but we were not broke in the true sense of the word.

Hungry?.....YES, I can honestly answer yes to this one. A couple of summers ago, I was in Hospital for over eight weeks. It was at the time when David Blaine was doing his "living in a glass box" thing, in Trafalgar Square.
I had been put on "nil by mouth" two days before he started, and received only a drip feed, alternating between saline water and glucose water, right through the period of his "stunt". I was finally given a non fat fruit yoghurt to eat, three days after he finished. So, my one claim to fame is that I outlasted a hyped up "fasting" magician.
I thought about food virtually every waking moment of my 49 days of drip feed, so I devoured the yoghurt in record time and was promptly sick all over the bed.
It took me about two weeks, to get my food intake back up to the usual piggish amounts that a normal male devours at each sitting, and I have regained most of the three stone in weight, that I lost during that summer.

I like to think of it as relaxed muscle.

Final question....You ask...am I like you? Well, I have seen your photo, and can say that I am almost as ugly, but not quite as tall.

Hope this helps.

Indeed, Lordoftheendlesssonganddance . . . it helps a great deal . . .

Will get back to you later, after I've had time to earn the daily bread and cerveza.

I was going to put in my bit about living in a tent on some scrubby reserve ground near work for a while, but it would appear that I was living in the lap of luxury at this point (ie I regularly went out and got hammered and scarfed down pizza).

Migod I would have been trying to screw all the nurses at this point - death-bed request sort of stuff. Lord E-pus, I salute you!!

Re: COMFORTABLY NUMB


Hmm.. being one of the younger ones, I'm still going to throw my hat into this ring.

Have I ever been hungry? Yes. To the point where I was hospitalized. Why? I was homeless from 14-19.
I started out moving from friends houses to another friends house and soon parents tired of me. And they began to wonder why i was always around. My mom had no clue where I was , seeing how I ran away from home, so the thought of someone calling me at home scared me into the streets.
Quite the typical story I guess. Young teen frustrated with violent confusing life at home, dispatches to a more violent confusing world and considers it freedom.
These were the best years of my life . I will never dismiss that. In my silent moments , I find myself reliving some of the terror, and alot of the fun. Shelter hopping was the extreme survival action that I learned quickly. In spending so much time in shelters, I met some really great people.
One man, who I will not name, had a gold medal from the olympics. Drugs snatched his muscle tone and brain all with in a year of winning. As most addicts, he never regained control. His stories of traveling were always fascinating and he dealt them out willingly. He was a great influence into MY drug use . Sad but true. I was addicted to cocaine by the time I was 14, and heroin by the time I was 17. Both had truly ugly endings.
Traveling across the country was a HUGE escape from those problems. Many nasty things take place along the rail lines though. One time I was traveling up california cost from LA to Concord. The train slowed to about 20 miles an hour because of a police blockade. When that happens ( police arrive I mean ) all transients prepare to jump and run.
This time, it wasn't illegal passengers , it was a triple homicide. On the side of the rail about 30 feet from the train, I saw 3 people. One propped against a tree, the left side of his head gapping . His skin was ashen grey and he looked like a human balloon. At his feet lay another body. His or her hair was matted and dark like mud. Laying a few feet away was yet another body. I couldn't see alot of details as the train begun to speed up and my vision remained locked on the sitting body.
The murderer was caught several years later and called the rail road killer.. or something corny like that. That little ball of freak was famous in news circles for about 3 years.

During my stay in Northern California, I did alot of pan-handling. Large cardboard sign , a street corner, and some clean clothes was all I needed to make enough money to eat and if lucky, get a hotel room for a shower . Funny thing, famous people have no problem rolling the windows of their car down to hand you money , sign your hand, or talk to you. But they cant walk in public as freely...

My street escapades ended when i was 19 and had been in a terribly abusive relationship. The man was a sociopath and had no restraint on his hatred for other people.
I returned home and quickly entered college. Nursing degree in hand, I spent 9years working with alzheimers patients. I often took extra classes more for fun then anything else.
I began taking religious and cultural history, archeology, and attended mathematical theory seminars.
Then, out of the blue.. I had a baby! ( gasp ) Now how did that happen??
With her birth, I stopped working 16 hours and monopolizing the rest of my time taking classes. There is something truly wonderful about watching a new life develop into a full blown human being.
I don't want to miss a second of that. :-)

So here I am, on A2K passing long nap times away with mindless silly , 5 year old humor-type posts.. while this new life develops at my feet. :-)

Wow, you are an amazing human, Shewolf. You have seen a lot in your short span on this planet, and have come out of it stronger and wiser.

Bloody Hell, Girl! Well done.

Wow shewolfnm, what a background, you are amazing!

Thanks.
I consider it more luck.
Actually, I just chuck it up to being one pissed off broad. Aint noone gettin over on this angry bltch.

shewolfnm

What a story. Congratulations on surviving all that & landing (so well!) on your feet!

http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/resendez/track_1.html?sect=2

here he is..
but this is a later news caption.
He started killing people as early as 1992 .
The ones I saw that he was associated with happened in 93'. Im not entirely sure he was convicted of those though......?

Quite a tale you've told, Lupine Queen . . .

I thought i might have been fishing in shallow waters, but you've definitely come up out of the deep end. It appears that your railroad experience comes from the beginning of Resendez' career, and i recall him well.



That's a hard act to follow . . . i had thought to answer my own questions a bit at a time.

I was never more profoundly lonely than when i gave up the booze. Like ol' Tim Finnegan, to help me one each day, i'd a drop of the creature. Actually, though, i wasn't the classic alcoholic who needs a daily fix, rather i was a binge drinker. In my binges, i could be quite the terror. I am physically large, and though by inclination a coward, i'm a "happy drunk" and would just as cheerfully offer to rip your head off as to buy you a drink--which transpired was a matter of indifference to me.

When i gave up the hard drink, though, my world was sent spinning. The first thing i discovered was how many among my acquaintance were friends and how many were simply "drinking buddies." Of the former, a few at most; of the latter, everyone else. Even among the former, those whom i might really consider friends, there were none who did not regularly frequent the watering holes, and so it was a very definite parting of the ways. Among the latter, not only were most of my acquaintance no longer interested in my company, many were overtly hostile. They saw my sobriety as an implicit condemnation of themselves. Perhaps it was, but this was about me, and not them. Their hostility and resentment assured that they got no consideration from me, and certainly i was not going to get drunk just to suit them and have the dubious honor of their company.

That was fifteen years ago, and i've acquired very few real friends since then. I am introverted by nature, so that staying home to read a book, or to play a video game (a replacement addiction) was not such a hardship. Many's the time, though, in that span, when i was indulging a little well-merited self-pity and had no one to whom i could turn for a comforting "there, there." And i've never been so lonely that i contemplated suicide. But i have been very lonely, indeed. What has saved me from this is the re-emergence of the personality which was submerged for most of my life--that of a happy-go-lucky child. Once again, so late in my life, i live in a world in which i never met a stranger, never met anyone whom i could not like (damned few, anyway). My Sweetiepie says that if i ever stop flirting, she'll check for a pulse and call the squad. And that so often reveals the degree to which others lead lives of quiet desparation . . .

My friend (a real one) and i had gone to the store for some items for a large dinner we were to have, and in the checkout line, i reacted as i always do, and was flirting and being silly with the woman at the cash register--a middle aged woman. As we were leaving, my friend said: "She was blushin'."

"Who was blushing?

"The cash register lady, she was blushin' to whole time you were checking out."

"Why ? ? ?"

"Because a how you were talkin' to her. Nobody talks to her that way, not even her husband--especially not her husband, he don't see her no more."

"Ya think? God, how many people out there live that way?"

"Most of 'em, Buddy, most of 'em."

Wow...what an amazing thread Setanta. I was going to reply immediately, but so many memories over so much time are flooding back to me that I think I need some time to put it in perspective....I'll be back.

13 years set
THAT is a hell of an accomplishment.
Congratulations
oh yeah,
thanks for letting the real you emerge..
those of us here appreciate watching you 'stir the turd' more then you know. ;-)

Whatta turd stirrer.

And an amazing tale, shewolf. (I remember Angel the Train Killer's apprehension on my second stay in Santa Cruz. I think he was caught in the area.) Your story reminds me a great deal of a friend of my mothers' (she's become quite close, and was the only non-family-member at my wedding). Except that she was in Berkeley in the '60s, which may have been easier in many ways...



As to me...

I've had the coddled life of the middle class of my age. I've never been hungry. We were on food stamps for a little while when I was very small, but we never lacked food and shelter.

(I have been very thirsty, on a solo backpacking trip when I misjudged the reliability of a particular water source. By the time I reached water I was getting a little delirious and had great difficulty swallowing, but I was never in any real danger -- and it was purely self-inflicted.)

I've never been homeless (though I have been without dwelling), and never been without a safety net.

I've never truly lived hand-to-mouth. Certainly, I've been broke, but that's been after all money has been spent on necessities first and various entertainments second. I've never been able to save; all income is disposable in my hands.

I had a very lonely stretch when I was 20. Had friends to go to, but didn't, was living alone, was not smoking much pot for the first time since my mid-teens, was drinking alone a lot, very paranoid about people... Came home one day, after imagining bodies hanging from streetlights, to a phone message that my uncle had gone to work one Saturday morning and hung himself. Went to the friends I'd been avoiding for months, and have never felt too bad for myself since.

Very soft, all in all. Love to hear about others, though.

I've lived hand to mouth before...never sure where rent money was coming from, when we'd be able to buy food again, how gas was going to get put in the car to get to work...sucks. We were still more fortunate than most.

Sheowlf is a truly wonderful person.

No, Setanta. I have never been any of those things, but I am amazed at those who have. At one time in my life, I did wonder what it would be like just to walk out into the ocean and keep on walking.

I was once down to seeds and stems.