Near me is a sheltered care residence for the mentally ill. They don\u2019t need to be confined, but they need help. My wanderings often take me past this melancholy place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The residents loiter outside, smoking, sitting on the benches, rocking to the Thorazine. They wear old, worn, institutional clothes \u2013 whatever they had on when they went in; what loved ones bring, if they have anyone; cast-offs from charity; what the State doles out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They have a haunted look \u2013 shoulders rounded, heads down, shuffling along aimlessly, going nowhere. They\u2019re unkempt, not altogether clean. The men have the beards you get when you don\u2019t bother to shave. It\u2019s a life of meds and neglectful custody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could have become one of these people, sitting there with them, swaying back and forth from the medication, smoking stubs of generic cigarettes, waiting for the next meal, the next meds call \u2013 the high points of each day. No one to visit me, no friends, no money to go anywhere, nowhere to go. Maybe we\u2019d have movies in the dining room on weekends. Seeing these people I say to myself, \u201cThere but for the grace of God…\u201d I was almost driven to that journey of despair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After my hospitalizations, they told me I should enter a residence, that I couldn\u2019t make it on my own. Sometimes, alone in the darkness, I believed them. It was tempting \u2013 have my physical needs met, no worries about job or rent or food \u2013 the State would drug me, feed me, give me a bed. No life, just a sufferable tomb. It was so hard not to crumble, let the State take over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This residence is across the street from Chicago\u2019s Lincoln Park, a large and beautiful area with a zoo, museums, lagoons with geese, the Lake. It\u2019s a pleasantly upscale neighborhood, the Starbucks crowd invading and taking over. I see these people, too \u2013 the ones who sneer at the shelter residents, thinking they\u2019re different, eyes averted as they pass them by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could have been one of those people. I was a paralegal, living in that area. Had I not fallen ill, I might have made a career, earned a living wage, married, bought a condo, become another Starbucks asshole. When I see those people I say to myself, \u201cThere but for the grace of God…\u201d They must feel the same about me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I pass these memories of what might have been, awed at the broken path that led me between the possibilities, wondering whether I was the lucky one. I kept my independence without losing my soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then I wonder: Was it worth it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Near me is a sheltered care residence for the mentally ill. They don\u2019t need to be confined, but they need help. My wanderings often take me past this melancholy place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dark-night.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}