"Almost to the exact day, 11/95"

I never in a million years thought that this process of trying to create a normal life for myself would take years upon years upon years upon years, but sadly that's exactly the case.

In 11/95 (the letter is posted on my blog somewhere or another) I was living with an elderly man in Randallstown named Aaron with mental illness and I feared he might kill me. I reached out to a church whose members had never even met me before. They were the Unitarian Church of Baltimore city, and I told them that I needed emergency housing.

One of the members put me up for about 3 months. (I did pay rent.)

Now, 13 years later, I'll again be turning to a group of strangers (different group) to see if I can get out of La Pew..........................................

About a month before I bought the car, I began to fear owning a car at my residence, as I fear it would be vandalized. That fear did come to pass. It's been vandalized more than once. I'll call it light vandalism, but it has lowered the resale value of the car. I can no longer park the car in my assigned parking space overnight. Our bldg. has these "worthless" safety meetings once every 2 months which I occasionally go to. The tenants go and chatter through the meetings not really hearing each other. I mentioned that cars were being vandalized and that I'm terrified to come home after dark, or leave the house after dark. The leader said: "that parking lot is getting deadlier and deadlier every day. They need more lights out there."

(Management isn't going to put more lighting out there as they have never listened to any of our safety concerns")

Perhaps many in my bldg. have resigned themselves that they are too poor to move and they are stuck there for life. But living this way is destroying my health, and I will not ACCEPT la pew as my destiny..................................