Call Central Intake: Toronto Dropin Drama Stories part 2

 I sure accumulate a lot of notes, every time. I'm going thru them now that I have the time and space to do so and there's some good stuff in there and I typed it out finally and sorted thru the rest that wasn't my writings and lightened my load.

 In society we often forget we are not making a positive difference by policing people. We make a positive difference by suggesting, being the change ourself, asking (but never ordering) others to help us be the change ourselves, thinking up and expressing ideas, all that. But not by policing (or letting others police) others or ourselves. Everyone has the right to swing everywhere except into anyone else's face.

Being passive: "I'm a POS because of me."  For me, being timid, my habits born of social anxiety, sometimes die really hard for me. I hate it sometimes because it makes me look either stupid, cowardly or both.  Feeling aggressive: "You're a POS because of you." Or "I'm a POS because of you." Or the other way, being offended by shit that should go over my head, but I'm scared to let it go over my head for fear I be seen as stupid or actually BECOME stupid from lack of brain use. Passive aggressive: "You're a POS because of me." When all this leads to misanthropy. We don't want to go there, but we need to feel our feelings in order to know they're not what we want. Because we are feeling them anyway, whether we admit or explain or express them or not. And we cannot change what we don't acknowledge.  Assertiveness: "Nobody's a POS." I wish I had more of this. 

 The staff are super helpful with resources and help accessing them, the women staying here just all sit around on their devices or having coffee and the ones that want to socialize go outside, and there's space to walk around. The shower room is single occupancy and is a huge room the size of most apartment living rooms and has a toilet and sink in with it in another section and lots of benches and counters to put your stuff on and a mirror. Like the other place, there's coffee all day and 3 meals and snacks and wifi and showers and a laundry room. This place gives you a mat to sleep on and maybe 10 people are sleeping in a big room the size of a small gymnasium whereas at the other place you just had the floor (which nevertheless they cleaned twice every 24 hours, like they do here) and there was a lot less space to sleep at the other place and people fought over spots. At the other place people were sleeping under tables, scrunched up in corners with no space to lay full len...

 There are 2 worst case scenarios for me so far. So I'm luckier than many here. 1. I get on Ontario Works and that isn't enough to get a place but I stay at the dropin till I get a place, which will not be too far off, since I'm on the short list for housing. 2. I get ODSP and then I get a room (not an apartment, can't afford one) and continue to wait for housing (as in, an apartment.) I'm on the list for a bachelor or 1-bedroom apartment because I'm one person alone, and that seems really good to me now. To think that when I was a kid I thought I might one day own a 4-bedroom house! HAHAHAHA!!! Not in THIS lifetime I won't, probably, unless I go build one in the woods on crown land or something.

 I notice that whenever I get stressed like I was starting to at the other dropin, I start feeling and in my opinion looking physically worse... aches and pains, hair growing on my face (perimenopause type of hormones I guess get effected by stress), gray hairs, either too-slow or paranoidly-fast and inappropriate reflexes, mood swings, night sweats (again, the perimenopausal shit doesn't go well with stress I guess), hot flashes (very occasionally with me as in once every few years but some others get it more often including at younger ages than me), snoring, crappy immune system, easy weight gain, fatigue, and of course blaming yourself for it all thinking you're just a lazy pig!