My sympathies. A couple of things - I also wonder why the $1000 wouldn’t have better served the landlady. But that having been done, consider it like this:
In Eastern cultures they cut their hair to signify a new life. You know, a loss of possession. Consider losing your things the same. I know it hurts…but they were holding you back.
Good luck.
My $1100 CDN Vancouver 2BR apartment is “cheap.”
lissener, I’m more distressed by your post than is probably reasonable. I feel like I’ve come to know you a bit over the past eight years, but rationally I know that I don’t really know the first thing about you.
I do recognize that I could easily find myself in the same position, as I have some of the same tendancies and truthfully only manage to keep it together on a day-to-day basis because of my SO.
For sure, take this as an opportunity to feel liberated from all the crap that you’ve accumulated. Yes, there were jelly-babies in the bathwater, but let it go. This is trivial.
Work on your depression, however it works for you. Pharmaceutical or professional help is great, but Microsoft actually held the key for me for the day-to-day stuff: Outlook tasks can take the place of nagging from people around you, and if you OBEY THE OUTLOOK TASKS, it can go a long way towards keeping things from getting too overwhelming to deal with.
You really need to keep on top of that shit, and if you do, I think you’ll find that that in itself goes a long way to helping with the depression. (It did in my case, at any rate.)
You ask if dawn necessarily follows the dark. No, it doesn’t – sometimes rock bottom is just rock bottom.
I don’t know if you are even peripherally aware of me, but for what it’s worth, I really hope that you take the opportunity to pull it together.
Igni Natura Renovata Integra
I did read a quote in a magazine the other day that I liked- “When life looks like it’s falling apart, it may just be falling into place.”
Thank God I went to college in the USA. Splitting $600 rent three ways was way expensive to me back then.
Anyway, lissener, I hope everything works out for you.
It sounds a little to me like the old conservatism that you might need to do a little “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps” in conjunction with addressing your depression issues might do the trick.
Good luck, man.
I’ll add, if you can pick out the minimum that you must keep, it’ll help. All the stuff I abandoned in Ottawa did not include my Fireside Book of Baseball, nor did it include my kitchen tool for frying tortillas for hard-shell tacos, nor did it include my Elvis Costello CDs. If you can select out three or four boxes worth of stuff that is very important to you, that will give you a base for reconstruction. I’m not by any means implying that you should lose everything.
Isn’t it already too late for that?
PeacePlease–Normally I would have too much pride to accept your offer; I might even console myself on the loss of your generosity by dressing up my pride as “dignity.” But I really am far more desperate just at this time than I’ve ever been. Any help you’d like to give me will be appreciated more than you could imagine; and if my website takes off and begins to pay, you can be sure I will repay you with interest. My email is my username at gmail.
(I’d’ve sent this to you privately, but I get a message that says you’ve elected not to receive private messages. All the more test of how much my “dignity” is worth to complete this exchange publicly; it will not go unremarked upon.)
What it’s actually inspired me to do–since really all the very most important possessions are gone–is to just get rid of pretty much all the rest of it, live lightly while I couch surf till Sept 1, and then just start over, with a newly conceived life. (I just noticed the possible pun on “conceived,” but I like it; I’ll leave it.)
Apparently so; I misunderstood.
lissener, one time in my life I’ve lost all my posessions. I was home visiting for an extended stay and my boyfriend got kicked out of our apartment and the contents were sold for storage. Most all of my clothes, linens, books, household things my aunt and mother had bought me, record albums, my 10-speed bicycle, etc. etc. etc.
My best friend sold me a car for $1 and I crawled my way back out of that hole.
Twice after that I’ve gotten divorced and took only clothes and my kids’ furniture, left all manner of other items behind.
It’s not easy to lose things (and some stuff I’m still sad about), and it’s discouraging to have to start all over, but in a way it is very freeing. It gives you a chance to remake your self - to restart your life. It also helps one to realize that the gathering up of posessions isn’t what life’s all about.
I’ll second the notion about the county mental health services. One of my relatives is very poor but she is treated at the Regional mental health services here. She sees a talk therapist monthly and a psychiatrist about every other month.
I wish you the best of luck.
lissener, your story is very heartbreaking and I can relate to some of your experiences… I too am in the depths of a really bad depression, and I feel like I have been close to bottom for a while now. But luckily I have a supportive family which has enabled me to keep a roof over my head (living with my parents) and maintain my health insurance, and I am on meds and have weekly therapy, which is vital, but I still don’t see the dawn quite yet.
I also have lost most of my possessions once due to apathy caused by anxiety and depression. I had most of my household possessions in a storage unit (all my furniture, furnishings, king-size brass bed, and a well stocked kitchen - pots, pans, dishes, utensils, etc.) and didn’t keep up with the payments, and it’s all gone. Luckily, my most important possessions - my photographs, important papers, and clothing, I kept separate, and still have. But even 4 years later, I still occasionally remember something in particular from the storage unit that I especially regret losing, like my large collection of framed Audubon prints (not originals, just reproductions, but it took me forever to collect).
Your job at the video store and your business venture certainly are bright spots in your life, so make sure to hang on to and focus on those to get through this toughest of times…
In my situation, the “final straw” before plunging off the abyss was losing my job, and I have been unemployed ever since (over a year) although, like you, I have been working on my own business venture and freelancing, so the past year hasn’t been a total waste.
Please check in and let us know how everything goes. You are in my thoughts!
About your apartment, I’m no lawyer, but I would think that you don’t have to leave your apartment until you have received a legal notice of eviction. She threatened you with the photo, but wouldn’t she need to go to court and get an eviction order from a judge?
Finally, please try to get some sort of mental health care. At the very least, basic antidepressant medication would likely benefit you greatly. Please look into your county’s mental health services.
San Francisco. Actually, across the bay from San Francisco. Actually living in the city is really expensive.
There’s been a lot of good advice on this thread, lissener, I just want to wish you brighter days ahead. For this, you really do need the right medication, and to be followed by a psychiatrist and/or psychotherapist.
You are an intelligent and articulate man, I hope you get the help you need so that you can make your plans a reality – whilst enjoying the support of loved ones.
Thanks everybody, including (especially) the private messages making it clear that, isolated and outside-the-human-race as I feel, my situation is not a unique one: I feel like I’m part of a secret society of Dopers who’ve gone through the same experience. Thanks.
I’ve found out that it can, and usually does, get worse.
Best of luck, lissener. Try to find a friend who can kick your ass into gear when your brain chemicals are making you unable to do it yourself–it helps.
Milwaukee, 1BR, 770 square feet, over $1k/month.
Are you bloody serious? I’m paying almost $800 for a 1BR in Saskatoon. Christ, inflation did hit us here!
Me too; I’m in the throes of a couple years of endlessly downward getting worseness; I’m just hoping it butts up against some kind of lower limit sometime soon.
Sorry, but… it’s not guaranteed.
We can’t even guarantee that you won’t die because all the air in the room you’re in spontaneously rushed into the corners, leaving you to suffocate.
That was a really low thing to do. You were obviously doing something about the problem. I don’t know if it’s illegal, but it’s definitely a scummy thing to do.
Is it the law where you are that landlords can’t enter a rental property without your permission or 24 hours notice? It was where I used to live, in California (in part of the Bay Area where my rent was much more than $1000/month for an apartment, incidentally).
Probably. But I don’t have the energy to fight her. She’s calling me at 6am, 11:30pm, every few hours, “Ven are you goink to be out? Ven vill you heff de monney? I gif you till today.” I won’t have it today. “Esk your friends, borrow it from someone, it’s my monney, not yours.” I don’t have anyone to borrow it from. “Get it from somewhere, I don’t care where. I gif you till today.”