11/25/16 Black Friday

November 25, 2016-Black Friday

Douglas K R David

I’ll never forget the couple of weeks leading up to my incarceration in the New Jersey Department of Corrections. Much and more occurred in those few weeks leading up to my demise. There were many precipitating factors that led to my fall but the day when all was truly lost was a cold fall night in November. Jason and I were in the dark bedroom when we learned that Hillary lost and that our 45th President would be Donald Trump, a reality TV star, and up jumped politician who hijacked the Republican party. I wept and Jason held me, something broke inside of me that night. No longer could I support Hillary and my purpose ceased. Drugs beckoned and I ran to their familiar siren call. I was personally defeated, too, on that day and I quit taking my medications and relapsed. The benefits of my psych meds ended and the old me came back in full strength. There was no slow progression or starting light as I know no moderation. It was all or nothing and I dove in head-first. Shortly thereafter all fell apart in earnest on November 25, 2016. I lost my freedom. It was the day called “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving. I committed a horrible crime that I’ll never forget or forgive myself for. The next thing I knew I was watching Donald’s inauguration in a county issued Jumpsuit, orange foam shoes and behind bars.

I have a history of self-sabotage and I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. The events that led me to the most horrid circumstances imaginable, the ones in which I wrote my first organized draft, are a direct result of my own self-destruction. The level of sabotage that landed me in a cell for a long time, by my own hands, was the worst that day after Thanksgiving in 2016. I hit a low unlike any other. With no more Hillary I retreated to a more familiar place. I went low, the lowest I’d ever gone and that’s saying something, I’ve gone quite low.

My name is Douglas and I’m 30 years old. I had a very unconventional childhood to say the least. My parents met at AA, got married, had 2 kids then got divorced. In that order. It was all said and done in a few years’ time. I have no memories of my parents ever being together in a relationship, instead all I have of those early days are the memories of the 2 of them bickering over child support checks and the like. My Mom, who died from drug overdose, opiates, the day after my 21st birthday, had several relationships and marriages after my father. My Dad, who is fortunately sober these days, about 6 or 7 years if I’m not mistaken, had only 1 serious relationship after his marriage to my Mother. The girl, who was much younger than Dad, despised my sister and I. Particularly my sister, the apple of my Dad’s eye, his beloved firstborn baby girl. Our Dad’s new lover and lady, Christina, was very jealous of us kids but mostly of my sister as it was very clear she was the favored one.

I have 4 siblings but only 1 of them is by the same Mom and Dad, the rest, Moms first 3, have separate Dads than Britt and Me. There are 3 boys and 2 girls, although 1 of my brothers, like my mom, succumbed to addiction at only 19 years old. Drug use and alcoholism is very prevalent in my family. Unfortunately. Ryan, my brother, was born during my Mom’s 2nd or 3rd marriage and his Father was a “pagan,” in a biker gang, a Harley-Davidson type of guy, and very abusive to my Mother. He, Ryan, was my Mom’s baby until she met my Father. He’d grown a taste for opiates from pills prescribed by his dentist. In those days, the 90’s, opiates were everywhere, and they called it “hill-Billy heroine” where I grew up and before long Ryan was a full blow IV addict. He died November 9, 2003 at 19, just about a month before his 20th name day. My other brother, Jamie, is also the son of a biker but Mom didn’t marry his Father. He is almost exactly 10 years older than me. He was Mom’s firstborn son. Melonie, the eldest, was a product of Ma’s 1st marriage. She was 16 and married a biker, a “Hell’s Angel.” Seems she had a type back then. Her Mother, my Gramma, refused to sign the marriage license and she had to hunt her Father down. He’d left the family when they were young and had, reportedly, become a, in the words of my Gramma herself, “Gutter Bum of New York City.” She found him and he signed. I do believe that is the last she saw of him. She had three children and thought to have no more. Her tubes were tied but for my Father she had the surgery reversed so that she could give him children and she did, 2. My sister and I. She, Brittany, and me are the only two from the same Father. When Mom was done having kids, she had 5 children, in order from eldest to youngest, Melonie Lynn, James Joseph, Ryan Peter, Brittany Kristina and me, Douglas David, after my Father.

Growing up I experienced a lot of trauma. I was molested and raped by people close to me. I lost so many people that I loved; a big brother, a little sister and a Grandmother, all before puberty. There were always untoward whispers about my Mom perhaps nudging my Gram into the permanent sleep, her grave. But who knows the truth as they are both now gone? Many say, in the family, that Ma did it for the insurance money. She certainly did have a new car within a week. The part that made no sense to me as a kid was why Mom would, if she did, do it on her very own birthday? My Gram had recently moved in with us and on my Mother’s birthday she died. Strange circumstances. I sat there as Mom told the gathered family how my Gramma had been sick and in a steady decline. She was lying and I knew it, yet I said nothing. I always protected my Mom and that was no exception. I thought to myself about how Gram was fine that morning when I said Goodbye before school.

I never stayed put as a kid. I bounced around from house to house and never quite felt at home. I was always an imposition and uncomfortable. No matter where I went, I was wracked with overwhelming guilt and shame. As I look back, I see that my childhood years were spent in a state of constant stress and anxiety. I always worried if I’d be thrown out. Would I get tossed out for eating too much? Where would I end up next? Would the kids at the next school be as mean as the last? I got bullied relentlessly for being girly and many nights I sobbed to sleep and begged to not have to go back in the morning. I never stayed in 1 school long enough to complete a full marking period after 5th grade. I stayed at 1 elementary school for the entirety but after that nothing was permanent. There was Edgewood middle, living with my grandparents, on my Dad’s side. There was Havre de Grace and Rising Sun Middles. I went to Elkton Middle and Edgewood High. Later, Kent County High school, 1 of the worst, and New Town High, which I seldom attended at all, it was my last regular school. I went on to complete an abbreviated track to get my Diploma. I received it in January of 2007 at 16. These are only the schools that I remember; there surely are more if you count the various institutions and youth detention centers I’d been conveniently tossed in.

Until I was 10, I grew up in a rural area called Rising Sun. It’s in Maryland and it was only years later when I realized that I’d never seen any people but white ones until I left there. Once I left my childhood home, at the behest of my father, as my mother had finally surrendered fully to her vices and simply abandoned Motherhood, I bounced around Harford and Cecil counties in MD, before landing is Baltimore.

The 1st home I had, before the bouncing, was built by my Father. When I was born all of us lived in a small trailer, a single wide, until the house in Rising Sun was complete. There was a picture that I had been very fond of in which my mother was in the front yard of the house, before it was finished, and in her arms was this little chunky toe headed baby. The baby was me and the joy on her face at having a home of her own, built from the ground up, albeit a modest little home, was unmatched to any other visage she wore when I knew her. The joy was emanating from her and I wished I could remember. That Mother looked like one I would’ve loved to know. She stood on the yard before the grass was planted, dirt and gravel, and contentment shined through.

Prior to my Father’s entry into her life she’d been with several bad men who liked to abuse her and even sometimes the kids. My Father took her kids as his own and loved all of them unconditionally. He even started a construction company called “Doug Roloff & Sons” before I, his trueborn son, was born. The boys wanted for nothing and Dad bought them 4-Wheelers and Dirt bikes. There was no shortage of love in their home. I used to look back at the pictures of the times before and things seemed so good back then. But then it all began to fall apart and by the time I was walking they were at a perpetual war. He with anger at her taking the house and she with anger at his drinking. They each went back into active addiction is varying degrees. Eventually, though, I landed as a ward of the state, in the custody of the department of social services. I was in group homes, foster care and all sorts of other temporary housing.

There were many challenges and issues, which seemed insurmountable to me. I was seemingly loathed by all and the sidelong glances, snickers and whispers were enough to put suicide in my mind almost constantly. I was feminine and overweight and the bullies were out of control, I got no respite or solace. It was incessant and nonstop. My clothes were ragged, and I was seldom dressed in anything but old and faded clothes from some bin or hand me downs. I smelled like cigarette smoke. I wasn’t social because I’d learned not to be. My classmates and family members showed me early on that I was just…not right. Something was wrong with me. The looks of disgust and shame from my parents or teachers made no sense to me at first but once I learned what “faggot” was and why everyone called me things like “he she” and “queer” it made a bit more sense. Although not very much because I never thought that me simply being me meant enough to cause every and anyone hate me. I used to ask myself why? I cried and cursed my existence. I desperately wanted to be like everyone else, in all regards. I wanted the normal peaceful family and to be able to pay for field trips. I wanted to be able to have friends over my house for dinner and sleepovers. All the things that the other kids did I couldn’t do.

The neighborhood’s consensus was that my house was “bad”, and they weren’t allowed over. My friend Chris, from down the road, snuck over anyway. He was my only friend and he had to help me carry my Mom in from outside and often smuggled me food from his own house. I didn’t want him to see these things but he did and he was the only person I allowed entry to the true life I lived. He didn’t make a big deal of it and he simply fell in behind me, acted like everything we were doing was normal, and assisted where he could. He feigned indifference but we both knew and I never could face him immediately after an incident. Yet he never made me. He never shamed me. He understood my reluctance and fear and we were best friends, no matter what.

Back then things were a lot different. Not just for little gay boys and girls but for everyone. Myself included. I had so many strikes against me from the start, it seems. My parents met at AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, so I was instantly predisposed to addiction. From what I saw they fought like cats and dogs too, probably due to their various vices and substances. My Mom was known to drop a little quantity of Meth in her coffee to give her a little extra push while Dad drank a 30 pack as a start. The household was tumultuous at best and toxic in almost every way possible. I wasn’t the only gay sibling though, I grew up hearing my Mom call my eldest sister, her first born, a dike. I didn’t know when I was little what it meant, only that it hurt my big sister very much. I was a pariah everywhere I went, there was a distinct stare that I became familiar with, the stare of disgust. Home was no exception and the look in my Mom’s eye hurt the most. She looked at me as if I were a disappointment and I knew that at a very young age. Only later could I connect the dots and tie it all together.

My femininity caused a lot of pain. Before I was even in Middle School, I was ashamed of who I was and felt guilty for being who and how I was. The looks I got from my family members were like daggers. I hated myself. Only once I comprehended that my mere existence seemed offensive to most, did I learn to dim my light. I changed and stopped being the jubilant and rambunctious social butterfly and receded inwards. I gave up, in essence. It wasn’t as acceptable to be different. Today, to be who you are and live in your skin, however “girly” it may be, is much more common and acceptable. I like to think that maybe my pain and hurt helped progress the cause.

I was below average in school as well and excelled in nothing. I had the stress levels of an adult and always feared what was going to happen to me and my family. I hated myself and wanted to be normal. I couldn’t though, no matter how hard I tried.

Eventually I found a relief in drugs. Not only drugs but cigarettes too. I was a pack a day smoker by the time I was 14. Not long after I was introduced to the justice system for the first time. My Mom was a cop caller, and I was placed in cuffs before I hit high school. Often it backfired on her. I had some anger issues and behavioral problems. I was a child starving for love and affection. Not just anyone’s but my Moms. Unfortunately for me she chose to give it to her suitors and lovers instead. I hated them all and it hurt my heart in indescribable ways to see and understand that my mother preferred and chose her men over me.

My story is not unique in that I had it rough. I know we have all had challenges, trials and tribulations. As the story goes on, more and more will be revealed. I just thought a brief introduction would build a slight foundation to build upon. There is so much that I can’t yet divulge but more will come with the tale.

Prior to my incarceration, I was no stranger to jail. Prison and jail are very different and I’ve been arrested over 10 times for various drug related offenses. I never spent a substantial amount of time in jail, a few months, or weeks, here and there, but never PRISON. There is a MAJOR difference. I have some extensive mental health history and my first diagnosis was Trichotillomania in 1997 which meant I pulled my hair out due to stress. It was my first ever condition that was put on paper and I only learned of it when, in the start of my incarceration, I requested copies of all my medical and mental health records.

I grew up in a more rural area the treatment facilities and centers are not plentiful. The place my Mom brought us kids was the same as where I went as an adult. I received what I thought were solely adult records and it proved otherwise. When I brought it up to my Father, he reluctantly discussed it and as soon as the words came from his mouth I began to remember. It was 1997 when I was diagnosed but it started in 1996 when the monster first came to my bedroom in the night. My Mother’s lover, a live in by then, paid me the first horrific visit late in the night when I was 6, and seldom did he miss more than a day or 2 between visits. I learned to dissociate from my battered and beaten body because of that monster and I also tore clumps of my hair out. I found it strange how it all came rushing back when my Father spoke of it. It was as if the damn broke and a torrent of pain ran through me. The sound of my Dad’s voice, his tone and timbre, as he hesitantly described it was almost, if not worse, than the grotesque images in my mind’s eye. Strange. Intense. The visit got to be expected and I had them fixed to a schedule, my Roger Rabbit movie. Back then we had VCRs and VHS tapes. He usually showed up somewhere around halfway through the 2nd playing of the tape. I knew that if his breath smelled of beer he’d be there for a while. I knew more than a 6-year-old ought ever to know. It didn’t stop until I was 10 and my Dad took us from the home. Mom worked nights then and when she didn’t, she drank so many mudslides that even had I the courage to call for her help she wouldn’t have come, as she would be dead to the world in an alcohol coma.

I guess I was destined to be a mess…

The weeks leading up to my incarceration were, to be blunt, a shit show. In earnest an absolute shit show. Chaos. Drugs. Illegal activities. It wasn’t always that way though. See, I’d gotten clean for a short while before I relapsed for the umpteenth time. Instead of being fully addicted and tied to drugs, the way that was my wont, I became obsessed with Politics. I couldn’t exist without some sort of fixation. Peace and stillness and I just didn’t vibe. It seems to me that I MUST’VE been involved, unhealthily of course, with something or another. Quiet and contentment didn’t work for me. Sobriety can’t work either UNLESS I have something to focus on. I must have a man or a hobby or a drug. Nothing in moderation for me. Heavy pours, long hours, extremism in all. Such was my existence. My usual victim is none other than myself. I am always the unintended target, hit by the shrapnel of my own chaotic, ridiculous and haphazard meanderings. Except, naturally, when I am destroying things, like my life, on purpose. The difference is the journey not the destination. The result was always ashes and bitterness either way. I destructed and destroyed because, well, better to do it myself than allow anyone else the power. A sad and pitiful way to live, or rather, exist it was. Obsessive and Compulsive and Impulsive and add some unwarranted God-syndrome and well, is the surefire recipe for the desired and comfortable chaotic toxic environ I’m accustomed to. Such it was in 2016.

It was a Historic year and candidacy for the Democratic party. We were all sad to see President Obama go and the candidates on both sides looked, well, pitiful. SAVE for Hillary. My girl got the endorsement and built a coalition unlike any other. The pollsters said it was in the bag, guaranteed. I am not one who comprehends much of the innuendo and underhanded and beneath board workings of politics but I know that I was as much of a Hillary supporter as anything else. I was pro-Hillary the first time and she was who lit the fire of politics beneath me. Had she not been the candidate I surely would’ve found something else to obsess unhealthily about. From all the polls and pundits that I watched Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady of our 42nd President, who my 2nd cousin, Doug, worked as a Secret Service detail for, would be the next President. She’d be Barack Obama’s successor. I threw myself into the Political wheel in my own small way. I thought I was helping her and helping the country. Surely, I wasn’t delusional enough to think anything grand or extreme would come of my zeal, but it felt good to teach people how to register to vote and stoke their energies to motivate them. Galvanize people. It got very intense for me.

My personal attachment to Hillary grew and I took affront to her critics. She could do no wrong in my eyes. I was biased and saw her almost as a Savior or deity. The fact that drugs, all of them, I wasn’t even smoking weed, were absent made my zeal all the more…unbalanced. Of course, in the moment, I saw nothing wrong. I genuinely felt useful. I honed in on CNN and MSNBC like never before. There were so many years that the only “news” I paid any attention too had to be related to celebrities: TMZ and Perez Hilton. I’d had odd and unrealistic attachments to celebrities before but with Hillary I could take action, or so it felt. It was HER. Not policy or anything else. I agreed with most of what she said but she provided me with something, a need or sustenance, that I didn’t know I was lacking. A purpose.

In April of 2008, I’d finally been released from the foster care system to my Father. It was 2 months before my 18th birthday and I should’ve stayed in until my 18th so I could go to any college in MD for free, as a ward of the state, but, alas, things go contrary to how we wish. I wasn’t smart enough to know the implications of those choices. For me that was almost always the way. There was a time when I was a child that I thought I should have been a girl. I always wanted to be one. All female villains were my favorite. The princesses and Queens, too. I suppose part of Hillary’s appeal was the edge she had. She seemed so poised and strong like a hero, only she was a woman. I loved Poison Ivy from the 90’s Batman, Xena the Warrior Princess, Calisto, also from Xena the Warrior Princess, Catwoman and the Pink Power Ranger. Jessica Rabbit. All my favorites. feminine. I have a fixation with strong and powerful women and Hillary epitomized this. In my eyes she personified grace. I watched her when I was a kid on the television as she ascended to a position of power in her own right. Her political influence and rise went in time with my growing up and I always favored her. When she ran the first time, I was devastated she lost the candidacy to Senator Obama BUT the way she handled it only made me love her more. My love grew and grew and I knew she wasn’t to be so easily discounted. I bided my time, knowing shed run again!

I was 25 and 26 in 2016 for Hillary’s second bid for the white house but my 1st Presidential election as an adult was in 2008, when I was 18, and Barack Obama became POTUS. Obama won. A historic event and then he ran again and won again and then, finally, it was Hillary’s turn and I wanted to be a part of the history. I had patiently waited, knowing that Hillary would soon get what she deserved, what she was destined for. After all, we’d had our first Black president and then we’d have the first Female! There was something special about it. This was the work of my generation, I told myself. I was feeling a sense of usefulness. Hillary was the “cat’s meow” to me, she was everything. I was and always have been a major feminist and always will be.

I was right and glad of it. She did in 2016 and the timing couldn’t have been better for me. I was going through 1 of my phases of being lost. I spent a lot of time trying to find my path but the only way I ended up going was the way that at the end was drugs and selling the only asset I had. The only thing of any worth. My body. With each transaction a small piece of me left with the man who paid me. I thought there was no more of me left but still I went on and still, the remaining pieces of me dissipated incrementally.

In 2016 I was especially ungrounded. I had recently, once and for all, left a very bad domestic violence situation. I fled the state of my birth, Maryland, at the behest of my eldest sister, the other gay 1, and went with her to New Jersey. I got a job and worked hard and tried my best to lead a normal life. I was smoking a lot of weed at the time but nothing else. No heavy drugs. I spent the majority of my addiction to hard stuff with my Mom before she passed. Even when she died when I’d get high without her, like I did with her, it proved in vain because it just wasn’t the same. No matter what I did nobody compared to my Mom and using the drugs without her seemed wrong somehow. Inappropriate. This is when I honed in, full time, on politics and Hillary in particular.

In the fall of 2016, the election was in full swing and I felt a sense of jubilation. There was no possible way that the fool the republicans let snatch the nomination would win. There was no way in hell that Donald Trump, the host of a reality tv show would sit in the oval office. I even, at one point, believed in a conspiracy theory concocted in my own mind. If vows were worth anything, I would be dead 100 times over right now. I don’t know how many times I bet my life that Hillary would win. I thought there was no way whatsoever that America, a big enough chunk anyway, could get behind this lewd and crudely disgusting man enough to beat Hillary. Hillary, I thought, was a beloved fixture and we, as Americans, would be in glee to usher in the dawn of a new age. History. Things were changing then, and I knew that Donald Trump would halt the progress of the country. Hope was an up and down thing for me in the election, but the October surprise renewed my vigor. Surely a man who said he’d “grab em’ by the pussy,” couldn’t win.

I concocted a crazy theory about the state of the election. I thought that the Clintons were behind Trump’s campaign. The best way, the GUARANTEED way, to sit in the highest office in all of the land would be to run against someone who literally couldn’t get there, such was my logic. I certainly didn’t look at Mr. Trump and think “Hmm, that’s a Presidential guy right there!” Truth be told I never once considered the possibility that that man could win. I doubt he thought he could win, in earnest, either. I really thought Hillary had Trump run as a favor because he could not reach the presidency. I’d seen photographs of the Trump family with the Clintons and knew they had a history. This seemed ingenious to me, so I silently embraced my insane theory. His campaign was a joke, I told myself, and he’s running as a gag on all of us. A joke. A big prank where at the end he’d take a gracious bow and concede to Madame POTUS Clinton. The thought of him really winning never once entered my mind. Never, I KNEW Hillary would be the president and her husband, Bill, the 42nd POTUS would be the 1st Gentleman. I believed with all of my might in her.

Things started to change, though. Donald started really gaining. He had fans and a “public.” I began to worry when the Access Hollywood tapes were more of a BENEFIT than detriment. The polls showed a decline but now we know that the polls were, well, wrong. People, we’ve learned, aren’t truthful in them. Donald’s narcissism and celebrity status were something new and novel and he hijacked the republican party. All of the qualified candidates fell off, one by one, and endorsed. Even Dr. Ben Carson endorsed him, which I was shocked and appalled to learn.

There was a time when the Republican party was a respectable thing. Not anymore. Trump has distorted and altered every facet of the party. I saw him as a joke and clown and in my heart, I just knew he would never be the POTUS. He spoke about the unseen man and sold a bunch of lies. Lies and falsehoods tied up nice and neat for everyone to sop up. He fooled many and proclaimed himself a man’s man. An everyday guy, the non-politician. He had some radical stances and yet people followed. The Access Hollywood tapes, which ended the host’s career, Billy Bush, may as well have been nothing. Where he was strong and decisive, according to the right wing and Fox people, Hillary was cold and corrupt. She was this and she was that. They defamed her and destroyed her reputation. I took major offense, a personal affront, slighted, and to this day I still don’t understand why people hated her so much. Had she been a man, they would’ve called her stoic and poised. Because she was a woman, they called her cold and a bitch. “Smile more,” they said. “Why all the pant suits?” they asked? Double standards. As Trump labelled any female foe “nasty,” with no qualms.

The two nominees were really hitting below the belt. They were taking the political attack ads to new lows, Clinton and Trump alike. It was then I knew this was no conspiracy. He wanted that office. After all, what higher ascension was attainable? None. Clinton fought back blow for blow and stooped low. Trump has that effect on people. He manages to get them as low and petty as himself. Look at Nancy Pelosi at his 2020 state of the union speech. I never thought Nancy Pelosi capable of being like him but, miraculously, he gets it done.

Eventually, such ads and other personal attacks of one on the other crumbled the remnants of my own ideas and off the wall theories of the origins of Donald’s campaign. It became real. I realized that he was really trying to win. I concluded, briefly, that he had gone rogue, off script, and was running for real. Maybe, I hoped, Hillary could reign him in. All delusion died though, a quick death. Albeit briefly because once I really sat and thought about it, my theory on Hillary somehow funding Donald’s run, seemed so outlandish and crazy that I laid it to rest for good. No more entertaining idiotic ideas. Where once it seemed plausible and probable it seemed outrageous. Nobody, not even Hillary Clinton, former first lady and our Democratic nominee, would give someone leave to say the things Donald was saying. So, with my crazy delusion put to bed for good I looked at the situation for what it was. Donald saw that he could win and acted accordingly. It may have been a joke at first, some marketing scheme or means to promote his name and the rest of his grifter family but no more. He was deadly earnest in his desire. He would ascend to highest office of the land on a wave of hatred, bigotry and vile discord. His platform was a non-platform. He asked the African American community “what have you got to lose?” I assume that they have a thorough answer now after his first term. He must have comprehended that there was a real shot and he seized it.

I am an addict, and I am an obsessive person, always have been. Typically, it's drugs and men that I'm addicted too and fixated on but in fall of 2016, in the end of the two huge campaigns, I was clean from drugs. I was in a rehabilitative facility for a few weeks, at the behest of my boyfriend. And then into a halfway house, the former and latter both being completely rundown and in-the-hood. They were programs that most “clients” or “patients” involved were there via court-order or to be off the streets. I say that to say this : I went to these places because I needed shelter, as my boyfriend had told me I needed treatment, and I needed help. I figured I could check all the boxes he required by being there. He gave me a push and that's where I landed after a few detours. They were the type of programs that took any and everybody because the Government paid them too. They were dirty and crumbling but there were a few surprisingly good practitioners working in them. I tried to soak up as much of it as I could, many of my peers were there for ulterior purposes and were even getting high, some overtly, in the bathrooms.

The places I went were free and had open beds. My Father advised me to go to the Emergency Room and tell them I was suicidal. They couldn’t turn me away he said, if I told them that. I went from living with Jason, my boyfriend, in a beautiful home in New Jersey to the streets of Baltimore. I ran away because it is my wont. There was no legitimate reason because even after I’d done terrible things to him, he was willingly to let me stay. But when I wanted to return, he had conditions. I went to the University of Maryland Hospital, the only place within walking distance and they put me in the Psychiatric ER. From there I got the necessary referrals and arrived at Government funded programs, mentioned above.

I got all the drugs out of my system and I finished the first phase of treatment. From the first facility I got a referral to the second place. The second facility, a tiny 2-bedroom rowhome in Baltimore had a dozen drug addicts living there, all actively using drugs. Four and five people per bedroom, it was over packed, and nobody was clean. I was doing the work and wanted to be clean. Something clicked for me and I had my politics to fill the need of an obsession. I was going to meetings, 12-Step, like where my parents met. I did groups and actively participated. I welcomed drug tests and took them willingly, knowing I was clean. Politics and I were closer than ever even in those dumps and I watched Hillary from the small 5-inch screen of my iPhone. It was as if she was speaking directly to me. She was for my people, the LGBTQIA+, whereas her opponent made clear his true sentiment. Disdain. He seemed to want to bring the United State back to the 1950s where housewives served their husbands and knew their place. Hillary was trying to bring us forward in time with science and the public at large. Forward versus backward. Progress or regress. Hate or love.

Hillary. I went from a full-blown drug addict selling my body, when necessary, which it always seemed, and running around dangerous parts of Baltimore, to a Hillary supporting campaigner. A virtual one nonetheless but I played the small part I could. In my mind I was making a difference. I was helping everybody I could register to vote by posting the site to register for Mail ballots on my modest social media feeds. I was reading everything I could online about Hillary, my Idol, and making myself “informed.” I posted my own political opinions and stances. Sometimes I'd even post rants which I'd later delete, knowing they appeared the ranting and raving of an imbalanced person, which I was. Still, they had to go because I wanted to seem reputable.