S is for...

Suicide

I must have been around 15 or so when I first thought about killing myself, and I know I've thought about it off and on since then, but haven't really ever talked about it with anyone...except maybe some random strangers on a hotline, or something, but...not really.  it's come back around again due to 'circumstances beyond my control', and I spent most of the morning crying, and googling articles about suicide, single mother suicide, reading tool kits that led to broken links, calling/messaging hotlines, calling my insurance company for referrals to therapists, calling therapists to see if they take my insurance/are accepting new patients/have time for me, and yelling at the people who are triggering me into feeling like death is the only way out.

for starters, the property I live on has been seized by the New York State Department of Transportation through eminent domain, and I have been informed that my son and I must vacate the premises that has been our home for the past 5 years - the longest we have been able to make any place our home in the 15 short years that he's been alive, and it's been a real donkey kick to the gut for many reasons.  first and foremost, there are no apartments available for rent in my son's school district in our price range.  he is in 9th grade, and I REFUSE to move him out of the school district, as it would be a devastating blow to him at this point in his life, and as a 'responsible parent' (what a laugh), I Will Not Do That to him - even if we have to live under a bridge to keep him here.  this is simply the latest in a line of incidents that have made it clear to me that this town, this community, these people, and the institutions that run them Don't Want Us Here - well, they may not mind my son, but I'm obviously The Plague, and need to be destroyed...

we moved here because our former friends Karin and Ian encouraged me to, then dumped me as a friend when it became apparent that my abject poverty was obviously the product of a personal failing on my part, rather than the systemic power structures people like them work to keep in place.  then my landlord tried to evict us (after I had already told him I was moving out), and our next landlady raised the rent out of our price range after a year, forcing us to move into the Woodstock Commons - a subsidized housing complex we lived in for a year - where families who are the products of generational poverty simply couldn't abide my high standards of living, and made several attempts to gang up on and intimidate my child and me - and since it was easier to get rid of us than deal with all of them, the property managers kicked us out of there, too.  we were happy to leave, at that point, as my son could not walk outside unattended, and even when he was with me, he had to endure the neighbors yelling epithets at me/us whenever we stuck out noses outside our front door (not that the door stopped them, they made sure we knew we were hated by banging on the walls from the apartment next door, and yelling at us through them).  then the 'coven' I used to belong to - Lake Circle - excommunicated me for calling Ian and Karin out on facebook.  a few years later, while my son was studying for his Bar Mitzvah, I was thrown out of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation after their 'education coordinator' Dee offered to be my support system if ever I needed a break from single parenting, and after having dinner with her and her family once a week for a most of a year (holidays included), I took her up on that and dropped my son off with her, and she called CPS (child protective services) and sent the state troopers to my house to find me.  so we found another Rabbi who was willing to complete his study at her synagogue, and never looked back.

things settled down a bit after that, but since then, I was also asked to leave our homeschooling co-op, dumped by all my friends, and asked to step away from my role as toilet-scrubber from The Rock Academy because I had the nerve to get uppity when the other parents harassed me, and the other students harassed my son.  and no, the perpetrators of the harassment were never addressed, to the best of my knowledge.  on a side note, The Rock Academy did offer for my son to stay on with a full scholarship, but I see that as their way to get rid of me while continuing to honor the agreement I made with the original founders, and the fact that it would make them look like assholes to kick the kid out after he worked his ass off cleaning up after the rich kids for 5 years straight (he earned it, he deserves it, and to deny him that would make them look like serious douchebags, since they claim to care so much about him, though I doubt they spare him a thought, even if he's standing right in front of them).  

so now, after being dumped by long term friends, being kicked out of three apartments and ending up homeless for months, being kicked out of the Jewish community, and my long-time spiritual group, being dumped by my newer friends, not having had a date in well over 15 years (and recent attempts to date have yielded either losers I don't even want, or being dumped by even more people who have deemed me unacceptable, continued emotional abuse by my so-called 'best friend', and the overreaching implications of the fact that my own mother has made it clear that she never wanted me and hates me with every fiber of her being - adding in that time she tried to Sue Me For Custody Of My Own Child - what the ever loving fuck do I have to live for in this world?!  my kid?  sure - he'll need me for a few more years, but let me tell you - holding on to life when everything in it has told you you're not worth it, are nothing and no one, because your waiting for your teenager to grow up and make his place in the world is a HARD way to go.  there's nothing I want to do anymore.  I feel no passion, no excitement, no connection to anything, no love, no support, no meaning, no nothing.  it's done.  I'm done.  I'm over it.  there's nothing left.  there is nothing but an empty shell going through the motions of 'being here', biding my time until I can safely leave this plane of existence when my kid has proven himself capable of carrying on without me.  that is all.  I hope it's soon.