Tuesday, July 20, 2010

my life as I have known it is over

This message will be posted on both the new blog that I tried to start in 2010 and on the journal I started in late 2006.

If things stabilize back to some kind of a norm again someday I may reactivate these.

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I have been stricken by a black swan event or a rogue wave. It has cascaded into a meltdown of my life.

Here is what happened, starting from the beginning:

It had been becoming unbearable for me to live in my condo anyway since early 2009 because I have been unable to restore the financial health of the treasury, in spite of extreme stress and sacrifice of huge amounts of my spare time. There are fifteen units here, in a building that needs lots of care because of it's age. Too many owners have not been paying their condo fees and although I put a huge dent in that problem, it has not been enough.

Unless ALL the remaining delinquent owners pay ALL that they owe NOW, there will be NO heat in this building in the coming winter.

I am going to call all the owners together for an emergency meeting, make this fact clear, then resign from the treasury and announce that I can't continue to try to solve these problems because I can't live here anymore anyway and am ready to give my condo away for $1 and just write off the $17,000 I paid for it in 2007.

This is just the backdrop for the natural disaster that struck like a rogue wave...

I am referring to something I never heard of until last year known as "bed bugs".

These have exploded into a frightening epidemic and are making whole buildings permanantly uninhabitable in Dayton and other cities.

Not only did we need to mobilize several weeks ago to make sure we don't have these infecting our building, but I had to take extra precautions because my employer wants NO chance that even one of these bugs could infect our workplace via my clothing or cell phone or any other way.

This is an extremely tall order, so as of last week, at a cost of many thousands of dollars of my savings, my condo has been gutted to make sure none of these are in the walls or floors, and it has been treated heavily with strong chemicals. I have been told that my condo and my car must be inspected every two weeks for a year, and there is no guarantee that it won't be gutted further.

I do not know if I really still have a job after being there over 20 years, or if I do, when I will return to it.

I will never feel secure there again because if a bug is found in my condo during any of the inspections twice each month I will be quarantined away from my workplace indefinitely again.

The insurance company threatened to cancel the policy on the condo building if the 5-car garage roof was not replaced immediately. Just by luck, this was just finished yesterday (but I had to lend money to the condo treasury from my savings to pay the roofer). This means I have a place to hide without going 30 miles out to Camden where I own my own garage. A week ago the roof in this 5-car garage leaked like a sieve so the whole structure was permanantly soaking wet. Now, it is dry and I've scrubbed and swept a part of the building and have been sleeping here on a lawn chair and feeding the cat in here. If I need something I go up the balcony four stories and get it from my trashed condo.

This can't continue very long. The neighbors will be getting uneasy if I try to stay here for long. Some of them don't like me anyway since I have been harassing them for their condo fees for a year and a half.

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I am doing OK because it is Summer when I never have problems with depression.

However, I am having those PTSD-type episodes where I have "dread waves" that sweep over me, especially in the middle of the night. But luckily they subside quickly enough and then I just calmly try to plan my next step to get through all this and my moods stay calm. I am getting help, but this too is depleting the savings I worked so hard for.

I am only feeling sick from the chemicals when I get really hot from the July weather. But when I go to the bathroom, my liver or kidneys get activated and that stuff pours out of them and I feel nauseous and have a horrible taste in my mouth for about two hours.

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I don't think anybody but my Dad still read these journals, but I told him all of this on Sunday so I am not worried about shocking him. If anybody else is reading this, I love you very much, and wherever I have to go to try to re-build my life, I will start a journal up again if I can.