For Ari,
All I can say for all of that is that not only is Howl right, but that there is no bottom to the awful, and it’s all normal down there too.
Fight to keep your footing. A slight slip can mean free fall, and it sounds like you’ve alienated your support network the way I have in the past. It IS recoverable, but move fast and give up on having pride. Pride is for people, you and I have to be worms for now: vulnerable and disgusting.
(Also, Pride as in last month has become a ridiculous, cartoonish display of respectability politics and corporate sponsorship, so fuck that kind too.)
Don’t end up like me. Let go of your pride fast, learn to kiss ass, and use the time you just bought for yourself by doing so to do some SERIOUS soul searching on the relative importance of your various physical health issues and REALLY HARD work on your personal brain shit. It sucks, but you need to be palatable to others to keep your feet under you in this world and there are trade offs you will need to make on your healthcare. I wish it wasn’t that way. But it is.
I’m speaking from a decade of homelessness, largely spent on this very forum. Please listen to me when I say all of this is recoverable, but that it can quickly become beyond recovery if you don’t salvage connections or forge new ones, and fast.
I spent time trying to think of how best to balance writing this in terms of urgency versus sympathy, but the cold facts are that every minute is a risk for you now, and you will not get out without making that network and working on your brain. Cannot get out. It is impossible for you to do it on your own, and it’s impossible for others to give you stability if your brain is shaped for a different, kinder world rather than our current hellscape. This work is mandatory.
Do the work, do it fast, do not spend time mulling over mistakes, just move point to point and build a support network. Nothing else can ensure your safety, and you need it, you need it, I can’t stress it enough.
I can’t give you any other advice until and unless it is too late and you’re in the same fucking pit I’ve been in. Don’t let me give you any other advice.