The Fourth World

Physicians, aside from parental fallacies, have been the cause of most of my misery. Orthopedic specialists did nothing but rape my childhood. I do not care that my surgical butchery was *necessary*. I remember my history, and simple shin braces might have sufficed. What Shriner's Hospital did to me and countless others was reprehensible. Case closed. I was spared what they did to my acquaintances with spina bifida, beating them with poles while they were suspended in mid-air

Therapists? Psychologists couldn't save my brother, my mother, and I certainly cannot say what counseling achieved for me. Nancy Rubel, to her credit, found me a corrective course from the calamity that Temple University became, but she was one counseling psychologist out of many handfuls, and during our last session, she told me she was divorced. This was to allow me to absorb that no one is perfect.

During my accidental infliction of my first degree burns in 2005, the paramedics wanted to know what I was using. Rather than having a tear burst over my lack of control, I should have simply told them nicotine. When I was finally released back to Riverside, incapable of doing anything, and on attendant care, I might add, my coordinator at Liberty was impossible to reach. Ann was deaf, weary, and near retirement, and when she saw me she yelled "Oh my God!" and spent an hour on the phone when I had previously tried to reach her for over two weeks.

How am I doing? Making threats is illegal, yes, but the disability center is, in a word, criminally incompetent. Everyone knows this about Liberty Resources, and nothing happens, whether you survive getting ousted or spend your entire career there or something in between. The attendant Ann got me was a security guard who could not handle the care I needed before I was able to transfer again. I fired her on a pretext-- excessive cell phone conversations-- and as she once told me a story about a chauffeur who turned out to be a racist-- if she has online access and connected the dots, she probably wonders what she did, since my bona fides to join the club no one chooses to be in are burnished brass at this point. I replaced her with Marie, who was too disabled herself to stay on the job, eight years before her cancer returned. The powerful narcotics did two things at the time: ignite the desire to turn myself into a vegetable, and keep lighting up.

My bouts with withdrawal eclipse my abilities to focus, except for raw jagged entries like this. A guy from India actually wrote back to me, unfazed, about becoming room mates, and I knew that he would and knew that it would whet my anger against my fine fellow citizens. A day to go before my starving mind can afford vapor cartridges, but I am used to this too. Now I need to log off and fight like hell to work or try to sleep; doubt I can.