Friday, July 28, 2023

 Friday, July 28, 2023

    I saw some natural color in my face this morning for the first time. It means I can walk the street and go to town without scaring people. I started applying some make up. I notice how nice Judy and Paulette looked every day. They apply mascara, darken their brows, put on rouge and lipstick. I haven’t done any of that in years. I wore mascara and eye liner when I was in grad school until a male friend of mine told me I looked better without it. I haven’t applied anything to my eyes since then until now.

  We’ve had drama galore here. Yvette’s friend who lived here for over a year and did a brilliant job taking care of me when I first came out of the hospital, cracked up. I’m not using that term loosely. He posted suicide intentions on Facebook. He called his mom to tell her his intentions and hung up. His behavior was so erratic the cops were called. Our Kona cops were wonderful. I don’t believe they violently restrained him at any point. However, they did cart him off to jail after a long standoff. He was in his van parked on the street. The cops barricaded the street and called for him to come out of the van for about an hour. I wasn’t directly affected by it. I could hear the police speaking to him over their megaphones. I could hear his voice shouting but not his words. I once went out into the driveway. I could hear less there than I had on the lanai at the back of the house. The fence between me and the street muted the sound.

Our neighbors up and down the street weren’t as insulated. They had front row seats to the action.

   When I told my hanai sister jean the story the next morning, she encouraged me to call the police and be sure he was still in jail. The duty officer for the jail told me had screamed all night and had just fallen asleep. His bail hearing was on Thursday. A rich friend he knew from a work situation bailed him out. He and another friend came around to move his van from the front of our house. We thought he was going to stay with the  rich friend, but that didn’t work out. The owner of the storage unit allowed him to park his van on her property and live in it. Not a perfect solution but good enough given the housing shortage on the Big Island.

   This poor tortured soul. He’s capable of brilliant work. He’s demonstrated that with his construction work and the care he gave me. There’s disagreement among us about the nature of his problem. Of those I’ve talked to, they argue for the biochemical diagnosis. I checked on the internet. Yes, indeed, bipolar sympyoms are often the same as those of complex PTSD. I prefer that explanation. It was mine for me and it gave me a handle on my problems which allowed me to heal.  I’m still a work in progress. The problem with this young man is nothing is his fault. He always is an example of the true nature of man, love.  He denies his dark side. What we resist persists. If we resist complete, we are completely overwhelmed.  This is such a sad situation.

  There’s more drama. I checked my credit card transactions.  Between my two cards I had something like $600 in charges I hadn’t made. This was the second incident for one of the cards. It all occurred when my home health care services started. I had already had to cancel one of the cards. I had to cancel it a second time. While I don’t know if it was the health care worker who planned to rent from me, the coincidence was overwhelming. She had access to both my cards because I order uber services for her. There was also cash missing from one of my kitchen drawers. I had been dipping into it; I don’t know how much was missing. I just told her I decided against renting the room. She persisted in asking me why; I told her. She wasn’t

defensive; neither did she outright deny taking the money. It wouldn’t have made any difference. The coincidence is persuasive on its own. Another sadness.  I am living in interesting times. My fall and subsequent injuries have ripped the veil off a lot of things.  Some revealed as better than I could have imagined, some worse. There have been some shockers.