CHAPTER 3 ~ Part II: MADE MADDER IN AMERICA

 CHAPTER 3 of MADE MAD IN AMERICA: PART II  

MADE EVEN MADDER IN AMERICA

As I traumatically sped away from the awful  “trailer park human trafficker” and Randy’s trailer park full of women with traumatized faces that still haunt me to this day,  I was without a plan…  

But I did not care.  

I resolved to get as far away from the criminal enterprise Randy so wanted me to spearhead with him and somehow get back somewhere SAFE. 

I would like to mention two GOOD last things that did happen to me in the MetroEast IL and again it was by the work of truly amazing religious entities. 

I realize that MOST of you reading my Pandemic Memoir are likely NOT Christian and I do not tell you how helpful a handful of churches were to me during this most dire Season of my entire life to try and “convert you” - please know that from the outset.   I mention those who DID GOOD because more than anything - looking back on it all - I am livid that 99% of the churches charged with helping the poor, the homeless, the orphans, the widows, the disabled, the abandoned etc opted to SHUTTER THEIR DOORS during this harrowing time in our Country and made the conscious decision to CHOOSE NOT TO HELP.  

As such, the very few churches THAT DID STAND WITH GOD  and decided to help those in need anyway, I think they deserve like a whole heaping amount of credit for doing so.  Most churches shuttered, slammed their doors, refused to return FRANTIC CALLS from distraught people needing the very services Christian churches ADVERTISE that they allegedly provide. And yet - those same churches who SHUTTERED still trolled for tithing online during all of 2020.  

So these FAKE CHRISTIANS who took money in but gave no help out - they are a big part of the reason WHY I always, prior to 2020, said “twelve years of Catholic education made me a practicing agnostic!”  I do not believe many of the things Catholicism teaches and I want you to know that the CATHOLICS rendered me NO HELP during my entire Pandemic Nightmare.  The Catholic churches and Catholic Charities in every town I resided in IL 100% of the time refused me any assistance.  Why? Because I do not have small children they can indoctrinate into future Catholic breeders.  They actually told me “We prioritize helping only women WITH children so you should call somewhere else” and for that they should be admonished, rebuked and denied all future charitable donations.  Why? Because it wasn’t JUST ME they turned away during 2020.  Catholic Charities refused help to SO MANY of the truly struggling people I knew and some of those very people absolutely died as a result.  Catholic Charities claims to be “pro-life” - until you’re an adult life in need of a lifeline and they literally slam their door in your face.  As such, Catholic Charities of IL should truly be renamed to the reputation they earned during Pandemic 2020: Catholic Mercenaries.   

But a handful of churches in the MetroEast DID help me and it is important to me that you know WHO they were.  

At this point, it was Thanksgiving 2020 and I had nowhere to be and nowhere to share the traditional Holiday meal; and I was in really bad MEDICAL health having received NONE of the therapies I entered the SNF/physical rehab Facility for the past two (2) months.  

But then I learned that a local church was providing the full Thanksgiving meal via a “drive-thru” in their parking lot.  They do this amazing community service for their Community in O’Fallon IL in the MetroEast area of Illinois EVERY THANKSGIVING - and for that they SHOULD BE applauded.  The church that does this is called Faith Lutheran Church.  I went to their “Thanksgiving Day Drive-Thru” and they actually took one look at me (visualize: emaciated) and alone in my car and they gave me TWO whole dinners with all the trimmings and two slices of pie.

May God bless those angels among us at Faith Lutheran Church all the days of their lives. 

That meal was SO DELICIOUS (especially after the “zero nutrition, cancer in a can food” I tried to survive on in that nursing home for 2 months). I will literally NEVER forget that Thanksgiving 2020 meal as long as I live.  It tasted both homemade and top-tier restaurant-level catered and the stuffing/dressing was the absolute best I have ever had in my many decades of eating. The turkey was moist and delicious and the green bean casserole was REAL green beans in a garlic sauce with pine nuts.  The pie slices were also delicious.  Those two Thanksgiving dinners Faith Lutheran Church charitably provided to me were literally  my only sustenance for my last few days in the MetroEast.        

So if you want to know where to donate charitable dollars to at Thanksgiving when you are worried about your struggling neighbors and want to be sure the money goes to ACTUALLY FEEDING THE HUNGRY (and not enriching the opulence of The Vatican) - give to Faith Lutheran Church in O’Fallon IL at Thanksgiving time.  Please. You likely cannot realize how nourishing and lifesaving those meals were to me.  

But Thanksgiving 2020 turned to December 2020 and there was no housing or other help available in the MetroEast for me and the kind food pantry ladies could not afford to house me in the hotel indefinitely.  

And frankly, I was still beyond creeped out by Randy the human trafficker.  I was now miles away from “his area” yet nevertheless, when I think of just how close my near miss was with him I still shudder.  I was dodging his phone calls and finally blocked him entirely on my phone and made the decision to GO BACK TO SPRINGFIELD IL.  

MEMORABLE INDEED 

So, I packed my belongings into my car and I headed back to Springfield IL as a woman without a plan; but I reasoned that the resources simply COULD NOT be any WORSE than the clusterflop I witnessed firsthand in the MetroEast IL. Because as we like to quip in Illinois, yeah I know I just penned 25 pages on the many failures of Centerstone in MetroEast IL and all the horrible things that  happened to me as a result of Centerstone’s negligence  “but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”    

So there I was, barrelling towards Springfield IL having never received ANY of the handicapped housing assistance/resources I required, having received NONE of the medical treatments my post-COVID, severe malnutrition, sudden onset deafness post-COVID and my Huntington’s Disease required for a full 7 months; and then ALSO too, not receiving any VALID or THERAPEUTIC mental health care during those same 7 months of back to back cumulative traumas which Centerstone contractually promised to provide. 

I will be the first to admit that I likely wasn’t medically well enough to be doing what I had decided MUST BE DONE.  No caseworker was coming to help me, I had not eaten nutrient-dense foods on any regular basis in for almost a YEAR, my health was failing fast, I was wheelchair and oxygen-dependent and my emotional distress was now spiraling and circling the drain due to my near miss with that predatory monster human trafficker and the ongoing stalking of the lunatic landlord in STL.   

But I have learned that desperate, perilous times call for bold, decisive action; for it is too often in the INACTION and the fear and hesitation of changing course completely that people perish.  Not me.  I was determined to find a way forward in Springfield - even if I had to do it all on my own with only Reddit to guide me - which was largely how I had thus far managed to not die.  

But also, this stretch of extreme adversity in 2020 and witnessing that CATASTROPHIC failure in the homeless outreach scam system at the COVID Homeless Hotel in Summer 2020; and then, in Autumn 2020, witnessing the subsequent CATASTROPHIC failure of Medicaid-grifiting by-private-equity nursing homes in IL  - where so many of our disabled and elders perish needlessly; but THEN ALSO simultaneously being failed and actually harmed by Centerstone Behavioral Health of Alton in my mental healthcare - I was incensed.  How could the State of Illinois be THIS BROKEN with so many for-profit agencies and private equity welfare mooches profiting off the abject suffering of so many vulnerable people?

How was THIS steaming dogpile of dysfunction the dystopian reality for SO MANY vulnerable people in the State of Illinois? 

I needed rest and respite somewhere safe where I would not be preyed upon, exploited, trafficked or harmed in any way. 

So somewhere between MetroEast IL and Central IL - I went and stayed for only a brief two weeks at a closed convent.  I knew about this place because I had once visited it for research on an article I was writing.  They were stunned to see me appear on their doorstep in early December 2020.  They seemed horrified at my medical deterioration.  And for two weeks they fed me, prayed with me, counseled me and held me safely in their space.  

But upon realizing just how PEACEFUL their home was - I knew that I could not stay.  For ultimately I was not one of them; AND I was terrified that I would somehow inadvertently unleash danger at THEIR doorstep given the lunatic landlord in STL and Randy the trafficker - for he did know what my car looked like and for all I knew he recorded my plate etc.  Randy honestly strikes me as an opportunist who likely just found “a queen for his enterprise” in the next dire straits woman that met him for dinner.  He did not strike me as someone who would chase me to the ends of the Earth so long as I did not topple his illegal enterprise - and I did not - at least not then - to protect  my own very fragile safety.    

But as it happens, nuns living together have a wealth of knowledge and information about many various topics.  It was the nuns that told me to get an entirely different Lifeline Phone with a different number so that the lunatic landlord would no longer be able to leave terrorizing death threats for me on my phone.  And it was those nuns who recommended that I have my car inspected for any tracking devices - just in case - with a local mechanic who serviced their vehicles when needed.  For they reasoned that the lunatic landlord HAD to have some way of knowing how to find me in that COVID Hotel Program.  Two very reasonable observations and recommendations.    

And for this assistance I owe those nuns a debt I can never repay because their mechanic did find a GPS tracking device on the underside of my car giving real time data directly to the psychopath stalker (former) landlord in St. Louis.  The mechanic destroyed it and told me: “He won’t NOW be able to know anything about you ever again.”  Oh. My. God.  Relief flooded my entire being.  

And then the nuns suggested: “You must get your medical tended to because in normal circumstances YOU would have thought of BOTH of those actions to safeguard yourself. Your mind cannot heal FROM ALL OF THIS ONGOING TRAUMA until your body is healed by medical intervention.   So, please go back to Springfield IL and get immediate medical attention.”  

And they were so right.  About EVERYTHING.  These nuns are cloistered and completely closed to the public so I will never reveal their name or whereabouts FOR THEIR SAFETY AND PROTECTION.  But please if you are a nonbeliever reading this who has come to think, as I once did, that nuns and priests are ALL bad -  I am here to tell you that’s not true.  There are likely just as many good as the bad; so, in that sense they are no different than American society at large.  And they provided me sanctuary, safety and good counsel when I most needed it.  And for that I will always love them and carry them in my heart as I do so many people that I met throughout my entire Pandemic Nightmare.  

INTERLUDE: The one last remaining phone call I received on my old Lifeline phone was actually Centerstone Behavioral Health trying to engage me in their “Internal Grievance Procedure because of all of their abject failures and malpractice level of mental health care in my case.  This “opportunity” of participating in their intentionally dishonest “Internal Grievance Procedure” went like this:  all of the gossip-girl “helpers” of Centerstone Alton all sit together around a table at Centerstone, listen to your ALREADY FULLY DOCUMENTED LIST OF CRITICAL LAPSES ON THEIR PART via speakerphone, and then unanimously conclude that Centerstone did nothing wrong.  

I did not tell them about the food pantry ladies who sheltered me in a different Metro East hotel after they utterly failed me.  I did not tell them about the nuns and the convent who gave me shelter.  So their understanding of my dire situation the day this “Internal Grievance Procedure” occurred in December 2020 was that because they failed me I was a medically failing disabled female living alone in my car in the December Winter elements.  

And they DID NOT CARE.  NOT AT ALL.  

This whole “CONVERSATION” called their Internal Grievance Procedure was nothing more than a CYA - FOR THEM - where they could document for Corporate that they gave me this opportunity to tell them everything they did wrong and then, as a group incentivized to always absolve their own horrid failures, they then collectively decided they did nothing wrong in my case and actually also never do anything wrong EVER.  

They refused to acknowledge the ACTUAL HARM they caused, they excused their horrible employees by telling me they removed my “Trifecta Team” at Centerstone from my “care team” and I was down to only my therapist, Rosalind.  They had no interest in creating objective measurable performance metrics wherein their future failures could be actually FULLY REALIZED BY THEM and they would then work to improve.  Nope.  That was not in the offering…. 

And all I heard from Centerstone DURING THAT CONVERSATION was a coordinated rehearsed chorus of  “We really don’t see how we did anything wrong and, in fact, maintain we did so much EXTRA for you in our care and treatment of you.” Sorry gaslighting girl gang bullies - I’ve seen that ambush tactic before and I don’t fall for it.  Don’t ever wonder why I hung up the phone that day mid-meeting; instead, wonder why I remained on that tommyrot CYA call for so long.    

HEAR ME NOW: Anywhere these “Internal Grievance Procedures” exist in any corporation or organization - DO NOT EVER PARTICIPATE - for it is nothing more than a SCAM and duplicitous CYA for the agency so they can CLAIM AND DOCUMENT that they gave the aggrieved party space to air the many lapses and failures of said Agency - but ultimately nothing changes - ever.  And if you’re really unfortunate - as I was - they then retaliate against you for even filing the Internal Grievance and they thereafter maliciously and with harmful intent cause even more irrevocable damage to your life.   Don’t ever engage this SCAM of a process, wherever you may find it,  for it is FOR THEM - NOT FOR YOU - despite their protestations to the contrary.  Save yourself the hassle and just hire yourself a lawyer straightaway.  That is the only way to see justice in the face of such catastrophic and ongoing daily failures in mental healthcare in America.   

For if we REALLY want to do mental health care oversight correctly in America, we will need to begin having Community Civilian Oversight Boards who listen to these critical grievances from the patients/clients and decide if the agency did, in fact, fail the patient.  These Civilian Oversight Boards should consist of people with lived experience in the many catastrophic failures of mental health care for they know best how to judge FROM THE CONSUMER'S PERSPECTIVE if an egregious lapse in care occurred.  Such independent scrutiny is the only way to guarantee true transparency and improved mental health care outcomes within these failed Medicaid bottomfeeder agencies like Centerstone.  

Despite their many & catastrophic ongoing failures in my care, I had no other option but to continue treatment with Centerstone throughout 2021 as Medicaid via Aetna Better Health of IL simply had ZERO other mental health providers in their database.  But the final blow to my ongoing “weekly teletherapy” with Centerstone was FINALLY being told by Centerstone that they were unable to render the services for which they had been initially hired by me in May 2020.   At first they tried to insist that they never were aware that they had been hired for any such specific purpose.  When I pointed out that I had a copy of my medical records from them and that they documented my “need and special request” on Page 8 of my 300 pages of records - at the very beginning of my treatment with them - they then punted and said “Well, we cannot find that reference in our own copy of your file (which we provided to you) and now we fully admit this is just not something we can professionally handle.”  

It was both tragic to finally hear them admit they are a failed agency AND an enormous relief for me to no longer have to send them near-weekly emails of the many ongoing problems in my LACK OF ACTUAL TREATMENT with them.  Eighteen (18) months with them and still NONE of my “therapy goals/objectives” had ever been even mentioned, much less accomplished, with the therapist, Rosalind Young.  You don’t get to be THIS NEXT LEVEL INCOMPETENT - where people’s lives and mental wellness is literally at stake - and NOT have me call you out and publish for all the World to know just how tragically your agency has failed so many.  And don’t you dare “but the Pandemic” me.  I am so tired of hearing that excuse from literally EVERY FAILED AGENCY since April 2020.  Either step up or step aside - because due to Centerstone’s reckless disregard for competently managing people in crisis, we will now never know how many of their clients just like me languished, suffered needlessly and even died (suicide) due to this abject atrocious level of substandard care by Centerstone Behavioral Heatlh of Alton IL.  It goes well beyond medical malpractice and deep into depraved indifference for the welfare and mental wellness of the patients they purport to serve.    Centerstone causes irreparable harm and damage to their clients. Avoid that failed Agency entirely until I can finally get them shut down. 

BACK TO SPRINGFIELD IL…

As I arrived back in Springfield IL I had the sudden realization of two very bad things.  I had not urinated in over a day - despite copious amounts of water intake by me - and my right leg was suddenly neurologically not responding.  If I stood, I would abruptly collapse.  My right leg had been my “good leg” ever since my left knee was shattered to complete obliteration on February 13 2020; so my right leg suddenly deciding to konk out on me was a disaster.  And why no urine? And why had I suffered from one of my TBI headaches for the past five (5) days yet it pounded unabated despite the ibuprofen I usually take for the headaches - for it was suddenly not working.  

Because of my father’s own medical history, I began to worry that I may be suffering stroke-like symptoms.  With Huntington’s being a neurodegenerative condition, it’s always so hard to tell what may be some new change in your medical status for NEW REASONS; and what may be just your body deciding to betray you in some altogether different way because that’s what Huntington’s does.  

So I presented to Memorial Hospital in Springfield IL on or about December 16, 2020 and told the ER about my sudden onset symptoms AND my unrelenting TBI headache.  They rushed me immediately into a room for evaluation.  

The ER personnel listened to my various medical complaints: I went inexplicably deaf after my COVID hospitalization, my TBI and shattered left knee remaining at a permanent right angle from the violent assault I sustained in February 2020, my Huntington’s diagnosis and my sudden onset of new neurological issues happening with my right leg and urine output issues, my reduced pulmonary function post-COVID and need for rescue oxygen, my total lack of medical therapies at the SNF I was in for those two full months and all the craziness I witnessed THERE and my malnutrition and alarming weight loss since February 2020 due to ongoing food insecurity issues. 

In listening to these various MEDICAL maladies and how I sustained them, and what I believed to be perhaps causing the sudden NEW symptoms, the ER staff  kept repeatedly asking me about the violence I had thus far endured, the many failures of  Centerstone to help me in any measurable way or attenuate my diagnoses of GAD, extreme panic disorder and PTSD in any way.  About the violent assault in which I sustained several injuries including my shattered left knee, my TBI and some other lingering issues etc; The staff seemed oddly alarmed at my matter-of-fact presentation of all of this violence and trauma.  I was as honest as I could be about all of it, believing that knowledge equals power and the more they knew of what landed me in my current MEDICAL condition, the more they would be able to help.  

They then sent a doctor in who stood across the room from me and spoke softly under his mask.  I kept telling him I was now profoundly deaf post-COVID and could not hear him.  He just kept looking at me, talking too softly for a deaf person to hear, and then FINALLY got right next to my ear and said “we are going to admit you for evaluation.” Gee, thanks, doc. 

Yet as soon as I was rolled off the elevator, I realized some horrid miscommunication had occurred.  I was in the MENTAL HEALTH WARD of the hospital.  Interesting. At first. Then perplexing.  What had I said that had caused this turn of the “my new reality roulette wheel” I wondered.  A kind nurse came in and told me and I quote “literally NO ONE could be mentally OK given all that had happened to me in 2020” and that they were alarmed FOR ME that I was so FACTUAL vs FULLY FREAKED OUT by all the horrible traumas that had happened to me.

 I told her it was kind of them to care about my mental wellness (as Centerstone sure had not) but my MEDICAL issues were my primary concern.  She shrugged sadly and said “Yes, those, too, are an alarming part of your trauma, honey. Nothing that has happened to you is OK.  I hope you know that.” She then said there would be a doctor in to talk to me in the morning and that I should try and sleep.  

Huh. Wait..what? 

I never once said I was in an acute mental state or in acute MENTAL distress nor did I present as such.  I had presented to their ER as a calm, reasonable person able to give a detailed chronological history of events.  

But because of what other horrible people had done to me I needed help with my “obviously suppressed MENTAL distress?”  I was - at first - livid at their stupidity.  

But then I contemplated this latest bizarre turn of the wheel of fate in my life and realized something important…

You know what…there’s a pattern here…

Every time some horrible place or person or broken system suddenly was thrust upon me with all of THEIR BROKENNESS CALLING OUT TO ME during the Pandemic Year 2020 

 - it was so that I could bear first-hand witness to how broken and horrendous it is.  

 Maybe God was trying to show me another level of Dante’s Hell at work in America that was ALSO previously completely unknown to me. And that I could later testify about and tell America just how UTTERLY BROKEN everything is in America for the bottom 50% of Americans.   

Color me intrigued…..

For what did I know about mental wards and what happens within these VERY LOCKED DOWN & HIDDEN places?? Nearly nothing. 

And that was all it took for me to be fully IN to investigate it all…   

And thus and so, I ventured out into the main hallway of that ward and was shook to my very core at what I saw.  

This ward was filled with Gen Z kids.  Young kids - already so traumatized by life that they somehow ended up THERE.  Several approached me because well, I was the new face on the floor and that is just how it goes apparently.  I told them I was extremely deaf so one person with a notepad started telling me his name and his story.  As I read it, I was mortified.  He was 22, diagnosed PERMANENTLY suicidally depressed and had seemingly long ago decided that that mental ward was a SAFER SPACE than any place he had been in the Real World outside those hospital doors.  

Oh. My. God.  That couldn’t possibly be true.  Surely this young man had experienced the beauty of Autumn on a University campus, and the excitement of falling in love for the first time and tasted wonderful and aromatic foods and had cherished pets that he loved and parents who wanted the very best for him….

I really need to just trash my rose-colored glasses once and for all.  Just because I lived fifty years of a mostly charmed existence, did not mean that everyone else did.  And this young man told me that his parents were both drug addicts so he was made a ward of the State at the age of three and had suffered only horrific abuse in foster care his whole young life and then when he turned 17 he just could not take the beatings and rapes anymore and so he had tried to repeatedly kill himself in many different ways which landed him in that Ward.  And it was in that WARD that he was determined to stay because, at least here, ALL OF THOSE HORRIBLE things did not happen to him.   

My God, My God WHY HAVE YOU ABANDONED THIS CHILD?!

And then one after another these kids all told me some similar version of the same thing.  These Gen Z kids were so hopeless that they thought subjecting themselves to whatever psychiatric experiments they were conducting in this psychiatric ward was a better option than the cold, cruel, vastly unjust realities in our broken America in which we all now must live. 

These kids were HALF MY AGE and yet they knew everything I was just learning about how awful life can be, how deeply traumatic and unjust it can be and how there is literally NO SYSTEM OF HELP for any of us in America TODAY. 

There is literally NO available help or resources for those who need help in the bottom 50% economic caste in America - no matter the kind of help they may need: monetary, social, housing, medical, mental, legal, safety from ongoing abuse, safety from trafficking and exploitation or help because you are a physically disabled American.  NONE OF THIS EXISTS IN ANY COMPETENT OR EFFECTIVE WAY in America and these kids already knew ALL OF THIS and had sized America up as the dumpster fire it is LONG AGO and just opted out.

Oh. My. God…  

And it was upon realizing THAT sad set of facts while talking with those GenZ patients, that for the first time since this whole waking pandemic nightmare of mine began, I wanted to cry.  I mean sob big ugly wailing shrieks of UGLY CRYING and not stop sobbing for days.  But I did not want to weep for me or what had happened to me. I felt this crushing, irresistible and overwhelming need to just WEEP FOR AMERICA and all that we’ve lost and all that is now gone from us.  And WEEP FOR THESE MENTAL WARD KIDS - who simply saw no legitimate path forward given the trauma they had already endured in this life and how hopeless and futile any kind of future seems for them in America today.

They asked me why I was there.  When I told them I had many unresolved MEDICAL problems but that I had “been through some things” and the staff seemed alarmed at my LACK OF ALARM of all that I had witnessed/endured/languished in; suddenly one of the patients there immediately called out “Oh, ha ha they likely labeled you as disassociated from reality.”  

Wait..what? They do that? They just make crap up on the fly to justify their misunderstanding of your acute MEDICAL distress? Yup.  All the time they do this.  Their own lack of insight and ability to actively listen labels others as “obviously in denial about how bad things really are.”  I was NOT in denial or disassociated about how bad my situation was but apparently the fact that the HORRENDOUS AWFULNESS OF IT ALL did not render me catatonic in a corner meant that I was obviously denying all of the awful awfulness. 

I was not denying it as much as I simply am too pragmatic (I blame my father for this) to sit around crying or complaining about it all.  I see literally zero point in belaboring the awfulness and instead became laser focused on FIXING IT ALL.  It’s called RESILIENCE, folks.  It’s called “I was not given any other option besides standing and dealing with all of this tommyrot and being resilient in the face of it all.”  For someone was going to have to live to tell America how DEEPLY BROKEN America is for the suffering, the wounded, the disabled, the anguished, the poor and the unhoused.  And I was determined to hold these failed agencies charged with helping yet critically failing to do so accountable.  I had no time for navel-gazing or DWELLING on how awful I should feel about how horrendous my 2020 year had been.  How dare they in that ER size me up as not in touch with the full-tilt AWFUL of my own reality.  

I was not IN DENIAL or DISASSOCIATED.  I was in “Dad-mode!”  My Dad always told me: “Life is going to be hard sometimes.  And it will kick you in the teeth.  But if life kicks you in the teeth 27 times, you get up 28 times, you hear? Otherwise, this World will swallow you whole, kid.”  I was rolling with the punches, documenting those punches thoroughly, and just kept on doing the next logical thing.  How is THAT denial? Jeez.  

And if you think THAT was bad just wait until you hear about my meeting with the actual “attendings” in the morning….

But for the rest of that evening I kept in conversation with the other patients in the ward with me.   Many of the patients there confided in me that they were on heavy antipsychotics, SSRIs and other dangerous psych meds of dubious value and undergoing ECT - a known treatment of quack charlatans - which has been proven to do permanent brain damage via long term memory impairment even at low levels. Also CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) which is little more than dangerous invalidation and toxic positivity in the face of real lived traumatic experiences - was their only other treatment tool there - and is utter bunk. 

The processing of cumulative life traumas simply cannot be accomplished with “rethinking” or “reframing” and should never be utilized by any rational, trauma-informed practitioner.   But the poverty populations with emotional distress don’t get “informed practitioners” - we get the leftovers after the smart kids in the same class were chosen to treat the worried well white people in Suburban America.  Also remember: I did bad drug litigation for years in the legal field.  I know about which I speak here because so many of those bad drugs were unproven psychiatric drugs used by bad mental health clinicians for off-label purposes.   .       

But these Gen Z folks.  They actually TRUSTED this process; or, they were so hopeless that they did not care about any long-term damage these dangerous treatments could do to them because they simply could not convince themselves to think about nor plan for a better tomorrow, next month or next year...And they just so readily accepted the dubious labels put upon them here: “manic depressive” “schizophrenic” “psychotic“ “bipolar” etc.  Because apparently “emotional distress and suffering” sounds too much like a NORMAL response to extremely painful life circumstances and the pseudoscience field of psychiatry via BigPharma cannot profit off of THAT.  The “language” used to describe mental health profoundly matters ~ and can be powerful. Imagine if instead of “side effects” from bad psych meds we called it what it really is: “harmful effects” or “potentially fatal effects” or “life-altering effects” - as was so often the case in my work in the law.  

HEAR ME WHEN I TELL YOU THIS AMERICA: Gen Z is so NOT ok.  Check in with your GenZ ppl.  Now. Today.  Give them space to talk, or not talk - and just sit with them in their sadness or darkness.  Let them know you are there for them no matter what.  Don’t judge, don’t engage in accusations or bitter recriminations.  LISTEN TO THEM.  They have been literally dying to tell you that they are NOT OK.  And the isolation and stress of the pandemic just exacerbated their so-not-okayishness.  

Wheelchairing around the common hallways and lounges of the mental ward my first night there, I realized it was a carbon copy of the worst local City Jail lockup facility you might ever imagine : the same palpable desperation hung in the air clinging to the despondent faces etched with hopelessness.  The same pungent odor of trapped terror and of metal EVERYTHING is so pervasive you can literally taste it.  The pay phones corded to the wall in lines of 4.  The intercom system in your room/cell that did not ever “call” anyone to come if you were ever actually in distress.   The hard metal furniture nailed to the ground.  And the plasticware that is unbendable and unbreakable specifically so that you cannot make a weapon of some sort OUT OF PLASTICWARE and harm yourself or someone else.  

I WANTED TO SCREAM AND  NEVER STOP SCREAMING: 

What madman - and it could only have been a madman - ever thought that THIS ENVIRONMENT - this cold, brutal, sterile, punishing environment - utterly lacking any sense of love or understanding - could ever help those suffering emotional distress or mental strain in this life?!?

This HORRID PLACE was not designed to help or to heal.  This was intentionally designed to be as cruel as possible and cause further harm - all while declaring that it REDUCES HARM.  I am so sick of sociopaths in our society declaring evil as good and expecting EVERYONE else to fall in line and BELIEVE THEIR LIES…

 Please UNDERSTAND this much: People are UNLAWFULLY jailed in America every day whose only crimes are related to mental illness, homelessness and substance abuse disorder.  It’s all related and inter-connected and each component of those broken systems further breaks an already fragile human being.  These systems are unconscionable and MUST be reimagined from the ground up in America.

And thus and so, that was my sudden introduction to “crisis mental healthcare in America” on evening 1 and I was appalled, outraged, deeply shook and determined to make the John Lewis Brand of “Good Trouble” there and demand that this abhorrent treatment be called out and changed.  Because again - if not me - then who? If not now - then when?      

The next morning a female nurse practitioner named Michele, pretending to be an actual psychiatrist, came in to chat with me.  After five (5) minutes she abruptly declared: “Wait. You’re the MEDICAL patient up here who shouldn’t really be in this ward, right?”

Now, because of what I had heard from the other patients exactly what was going on in this ward and the barbaric and useless treatment modalities they were utilizing, I suddenly wanted to stay.  I had to think fast because I was minutes away from being discarded by this fraudbroad as “not her concern” so I said: 

“Well, I do have so much medical going on as the result of all the cumulative traumas that have happened to me this year but you already know that from reading my intake notes…” 

She studied me for a long minute and then said “Well you haven’t said you are going to hurt yourself or anyone else so…” 

But I cut her off and interjected: “Those statements are BOTH true.  I would never hurt myself or anyone else - ever.  BUT I am really, really tired of sociopathic people harming me.”  

FraudBroad looked aghast at that remark. Good, I thought to myself. I’m prevailing… 

She gathered herself and said tentatively  “Well, we could begin a course of antidepressants and see if you improve…” to which I immediately replied: “Why would you do that? I am not depressed; I’m empty. There’s a difference. My faith in humanity has been utterly irreparably shattered  and I’ve learned to TRUST NO ONE but myself.   Do you have a pill for that malady? Because if not, perhaps you should medicate the sociopaths that keep trying to harm me. Seems to me they would benefit far greater from your same-solution-to-every-problem cookiecutter diagnosis and BigPharma being the only answer via SSRIs far better than I would…” 

She looked even further aghast now….

I had her hooked…advancing my queen….  

But I also know when to STOP talking before they read into my words a bunch of utter bunk that isn’t there. So I simply stared at her in a very pregnant pause of silence…

Without any affect at all, Michelle reluctantly agreed to let me stay one more day “just for observation” - but then I would be transferred back to the medical floor where I belonged.  Fine by me.  I just scored myself (another) front row seat to something no human being in America should ever have to witness or endure.   Why did I do this? Because I felt that old-familiar internal calling within me as I had in that lethal nursing home saying to me “Don’t look away. Don’t run away. Bear witness to this, too. You will one day bring voice to the voiceless here. Do it to help the others…you will one day tell this story to America, too, and they NEED to hear the FULLNESS of this terrible place that so often happens INVOLUNTARILY to many Americans.”  And so stay I did... 

Thereafter, I then maneuvered to extend my stay on the ward from two days to two weeks by telling them SOME of my truth: that the quiet there reduced my anxiety, that not having my phone distract me and increase my frenetic worry with pinging notifications every 15 seconds was improving my war-weary state of mind and that regular and shockingly delicious hospital food was proper sustained nutrition I had not had in 11 months; and ALL OF THAT combined was doing wonders to stabilize my chronically hypoglycemic blood sugar which, in turn, was stabilizing my ability to be and remain positive.  All true statements - for the record.  

And that’s really all you need to do: reassure them they are helping you without admitting that you need far more help than the current mental health care system in America has to offer.  One simply just does not “recover” from what I had thus far endured.  Things will never be the same and that’s just the way that it is.  BUT if you give them that level of unadulterated, abject realism and  honesty - a level they know they simply cannot attenuate or heal or even absorb mentally  - you will never live to see the light of day again.For make no mistake: they do have immense LEGAL power in such wards to jail you there for prolonged periods of time if you demonstrate anything other than quiet and compliant behavior.    

So it is indeed a fine line one must walk when in one of these godforsaken hellholes - either willingly or involuntarily.  Our current mental health system in America wants to hear pleasant platitudes - not ugly and inescapable truths.  Know this FOR A FACT before ever becoming involved in it or languish at your own peril in this broken system.   

I remained in this Ward, at my own volition, for the next two weeks precisely because there was so much to observe, document and understand: things that I previously had absolutely no understanding were even a CATASTROPHIC PROBLEM in America.  Because fundamental and structural change can only occur if one has a full understanding of just how BROKEN something is.  

So I thereafter began to really try to know and understand the patients there AND speak with the CNA level staff.  Most of the “helper staff” in this Ward was extremely young and all-too-willing to “spill the internal secrets” of the place upon a little prodding from me.  Because that’s the thing about a mental ward in a hospital - often the staff are as desperate for empathy and a no judgment listening ear as the patients themselves are.  Many choose to work there because they, too, struggle with mental health challenges and want to be part of the solution rather than just an ongoing lost part of the problem. And if you provide a safe space for them to talk to you- they will answer literally any question you have and I had so, so many questions I wanted answers to from them.  

To be fair, I knew going into this scene what a total train wreck it would be.  I had already read on Reddit FOR MONTHS during the Summer of 2020 in subs like r/antipsychiatry and r/suicidewatch and r/narcissisticabuse and r/radicalmentalhealth just how hopeless all of the “mental hospital wards” are in America if you are actually in acute emotional distress.  On Reddit I learned from countless first hand testimonies that there is no real help for any one of us  - unless you are a millionaire and go to one of those “relaxation retreat spas” where all the linens and furniture are white and white lilies and other florals abound.  But for us of the poverty masses in America? We will get drowned in antipsychotics and will get no GENUINE help or healing at all from this broken poverty mental illness system and we will just have to deal with that sad fact, too.  Because if you are in the lower 50% of America, you get stuck in some pithole like this mental ward where I landed and where ZERO opportunity for healing can ever occur.  

I have read where many patients panic the minute they realize they cannot leave of their own accord in such JAIL-LIKE MENTAL WARDS and, as a result, they are thereafter immediately forcibly restrained, stripped and sedated - among other additional terrorizing and traumatizing protocols - in these wards.  I’ve also read testimonies on Reddit of young people repeatedly being raped by the staff in these locked mental wards.  I was fortunate to be a middle-aged female and that demographic - in a mental ward - and most of the rest of life, quite literally translates to complete invisibility. So I had that going for me, I suppose.  But I absolutely know that such violence and rapes occur in these wards.  I will always believe the survivors of such abuse.  Because I spoke with two (2) of them at this particular Ward and their stories are not imagined and their lingering fear and trauma is evident in their cries for justice.  But such justice never comes; for these victims are just dismissed and  invalidated by the Corporate hierarchy behind the hospital. The hospital whose profits depend on forever invalidating and silencing these victims of such horrific abuse - at the hands of people charged with “helping” them.       

I suppose I was “lucky” in that the locked down nature of this Ward did not bother me in the slightest - much like it did not at the janky SNF either (well, until the day I realized I HAD TO LEAVE FOR MY OWN MEDICAL SAFETY and they would not let me do so - refer to Chapter 2).  But much like the nursing facility, a fully locked down ward meant the lunatic landlord abuser still TRYING to stalk me could not get in and harm me again.  I was utterly unconcerned that I wouldn’t be able to get out when I wanted to but was oddly calmed to know that <he> could not GET IN to further terrorize me again.  So my constant internal fear, hypervigilance and fight or flight actually went down about 127 notches while I remained there.  And it was in that <calm> that I realized just how much those nuns really had done for me in obtaining a different phone for me and having the GPS tracking device removed from beneath my car.  In the calm of that mental ward, I was able to FINALLY REALIZE the lunatic landlord would never be able to find me and terrorize me again….God bless those nuns all the days of their lives…

While in the mental ward, I did not consent to any medications nor any of their unproven, charlatan treatments and since I was there on a strictly voluntary basis - I could control that aspect of it entirely.  Others FORCED THERE AGAINST THEIR WILL are not so fortunate.  I fully realize this.  Also, I imagine many do not possess my medical-legal background to know how to massage this fundamentally broken system so that my stay there could not actually do IRREPARABLE HARM TO MY BRAIN.  I was willing to bear witness to what others endured but I refused to be their psychiatric guinea pig for any of their proven failed drugs and sham protocols.  For you need only Google recent literature to learn that antidepressant medications are largely a placebo effect MENTALLY with very dangerous side effects for so many MEDICALLY.  That’s a hard NO from me.  They weren’t getting anywhere near me with their junk science and BigPharma scams.      

So I read my Bible a lot, meditated and prayed a lot, ate 3 healthy huge meals daily - a first in nearly 11 months of 2020 for me - and began to put on some weight. Not being constantly terrorized in my own personal safety also freed me up to pay close attention to my own self-care for the first time since my father died. That all seemed beneficial to me, at least.

But I was OVERTLY and VERY VOCALLY concerned about this ward’s lack of MEDICAL treatment for my ongoing medical physical issues.  First of all, I complained daily of my ongoing physical MEDICAL issues for which I initially presented to Memorial Hospital; yet they still had not treated ANY of those issues.  I became so vocal about this abject lack of medical attention that they FINALLY took 1 X-ray of my badly injured left knee (injured in the assault I sustained on February 13 2020) and pronounced it “needing an extensive orthopedic consult which would be MONTHS away due to the backlog caused by Lockdowns due to COVID earlier in 2020.” Ok then - no MEDICAL treatment for my shattered left knee at Memorial Hospital. Check.  

It’s important to note that at ANY TIME they <could have> transferred me to the MEDICAL floor where I belonged, did the knee surgery I required, and allowed me to begin post-op physical therapy there in the hospital.  But they chose not to do so citing “crushing patient loads from COVID due to the first Winter Wave of the Pandemic.”  Oh well.  So hobble and go in and out of wheelchairs I would remain doing….  

I would not learn the full damage to my left knee for nearly a full YEAR later when a 3-D MRI showed that in that violent assault where I was dragged down 15 metal stairs by my ankles, with my head hitting each step on the way down causing my TBI, that my left knee had a torn ACL, a torn PCL, a torn meniscus plus a shattered kneecap.  In short, my entire left knee was barely hanging on by a few remaining ligament threads.  But Memorial Hospital ONLY did an Xray and determined the damage to be too severe for them to handle without an extensive orthopedic consult FIRST.  What a load…Perhaps they were “covered in COVID patients” or perhaps they simply did not care to treat.  Like so many things that happened to people during the American pandemic, we will just never know the actual truth from the lying liars who lie….

If you are ever in Springfield IL and happen to find yourself in need of MEDICAL (or mental health services) AVOID MEMORIAL HOSPITAL like your life depends upon it because it literally does.  Because Memorial Hospital will either kill you through intentional medical malpractice or indifferent neglect of your medical complaints.  

I say this because of my own experience there but also because I would later come to learn that literally NO ONE who lives in Springfield IL who has REAL medical insurance (read: NOT Medicaid) ever goes to Memorial Hospital in Springfield. Anyone needing REAL medical attention either makes the trip  to St. Louis or Chicago because everyone already is fully aware of what an abject failure Memorial Hospital is.   Add the crushing blow of COVID patients pouring in daily and I have no doubt that Memorial Hospital was far out of their depth….

Another issue was the overt ADA disability discrimination Memorial Hospital engaged in against me while I was hospitalized there.  Because I now struggle to hear post-COVID, I could not participate in daily  “group therapy” and there was zero “one- on-one therapy” consultations - for this is Medicaid, baby, and no therapy or helpful individualized treatments is just the name of the game.  I repeatedly asked for audio accommodation so that I could fully participate in the “formal” group therapy sessions but was repeatedly denied any such accommodation by Memorial Hospital.  

But, fortunately for me, the tenderhearted patients there were only too happy to SPEAK LOUDLY so that I could hear them when we spoke INFORMALLY in small groups or privately during my time there - as I daily learned each of their individual tragic tales that brought them to that horrid place.  And that informed this Chapter of my Memoir - hearing directly from the patients themselves.  And the GenZ patients there liked me because I made them laugh - something that rarely genuinely happens in such a place as this.  I taught them the lyrics to a song by a favorite folk singer of mine named Cheryl Wheeler entitled “Is It Peace or Is It Prozac?” and we would often sing it together during snack time at night.  The staff did NOT find this funny in the slightest which made it all the more of a victory to savor in my mind.  

I did try to talk to these kids privately and tell them that they did NOT have to stay there and that they had rights and a whole life of really amazing things just waiting for them just beyond the ward’s locked doors.  Sadly, I was unable to convince them of any such reality before I left and that just truly breaks my heart for them.  

Of further issue was that Memorial Hospital also refused me the necessary ADA-compliant shower that I needed to bathe so I was just forced to remain unwashed (again with the cleaning things issue!) for a full two weeks.  On my second to last day there I made such a VOCAL ISSUE of this failure that they FINALLY brought up a shower bench so I could at least sit while washing.  I was in a wheelchair yet they had no ADA accommodations for mental health patients struggling with ADA accessibility issues there.  Surely I was not the first disabled patient they ever encountered on that ward.  Yet they were fully non-ADA compliant and <should be> sued out their bottom line for this abject failure with appreciable legal consequences.     

Memorial Hospital in Springfield IL is yet ANOTHER fully failed rural medical center that just lets people die for want of basic care. These places are far too numerous dotting the small towns of IL, and  the Midwest, and they are to be avoided.  Do as “the locals do” and go seek REAL MEDICAL TREATMENT in St. Louis or Chicago is my best advice to you.        

And, well, color me now FULLY INFORMED on that topic…. 

And just WOW: observe and become fully informed on just how AWFUL and HOPELESS and OUTDATED and unequipped these hospital wards are for poverty patients in acute distress who actually need REAL help. I observed EVERYONE while I was there and took copious notes of what was happening there or not happening.  The doctors. The other staff. The other patients.  And I was resolved that those on Reddit who had gone to such places before me were exactly right: there could be no help or healing in such abysmal places.  Not for anyone.  Not ever.  

I learned their only tools were CBT and ECT - as I suspected initially.  On one of my last days there, a nurse tech tried to tell me that ECT isn’t as barbaric as it used to be and  part of their “training” to work on that floor mandated that they all witness ECT be done to patients before coming to work on the ward; so they would NOT be rightly HORRIFIED when they first saw it being done to a patient.  I asked her “Yes, but, how does that prove to you it helps at all and doesn’t actually -as all the literature suggests - do long lasting harm and damage to the patients brains - just because they force you to watch it happen to someone as a condition of your employment here?” She got strangely silent then meekly offered: “Well, the patients do not seem VISIBLY PHYSICALLY WORSE afterwards… so that’s something, right?” 

Oh. Ok. 

So the Hippocratic Oath has now deteriorated to such an extent in these wards from “First: Do No Harm” to “Well, just try not to make anyone VISIBLY WORSE with your outdated, charlatan treatments.” Sigh.  

After two weeks, I decided I had seen all there was to see and had documented all that I could in my journal about this sad, tragic place. And I decided the best way to leave would be to challenge the FraudBroad trying to pass herself off as a psychiatrist on her treatments and methods utilized there.  I told her CBT is junk science and that antipsychotics used on the merely depressed are a dangerous gambit, at best.  I morphed right in front of her eyes from the compliant, quiet patient on the ward to the informed, legally trained, fierce advocate for the oppressed that was certainly willing to take her down if she did not get out of my way. From memory, I cited multiple PubMed articles stating what bunk CBT is and how ECT literally causes permanent brain damage.  

She was shook by my sudden criticism of her very professional existence.  

And I had my walking papers within 37 minutes….   

Yeah, FraudBroad, turns out - YOU and your locked down “mental health ward designed identical to a punitive primitive jail” were the subject of my examination and  under MY microscope all along. Shame on you all propping up that failed hellhole.  Forgive them, Father, for they know exactly what they do to our most vulnerable young people, and yet they do it anyway…Cuz PROFITS, baby.     

I think it important to point out at this juncture that many “long-term users on Reddit” (Redditors) will tell the homeless on the various homeless Reddit forums who are struggling with housing and have no good housing options to present to the ER saying they are contemplating hurting themselves JUST SO they can get a safe place to sleep, a shower, meals and a social worker attending to their housing crisis.  I am here to tell you: DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE FOR IT IS SOME OF THE WORST & UNINFORMED ADVICE CURRENTLY FLOATING AROUND REDDIT ON THE TOPIC.  

Generally speaking, Reddit is right on for most topics when you need INFORMED, helpful advice or guidance. But on this issue alone - I can only warn you - do NOT BELIEVE THIS FALSE fairytale some Reddit folks try to peddle. 

The social workers employed at area hospitals are not any more equipped to house the homeless or fix our affordable housing crisis in IL or America than the actual homeless outreach agency workers are.  And NO, contrary to this patently false advice on Reddit, these “hospital social workers do not actually have a secret list of immediately available, affordable housing that they open up to you upon presentation to their ER.”  They literally are only obligated to push you in a wheelchair to the curb, dump you in the gutter and turn and walk away from you - leaving you discarded there - regardless of the danger such “hospital patient dumping” causes to patients.    

There is no “case management” of your housing crisis in area hospitals.  There is no “after care” follow-up planning for your mental or medical wellness needs.  There is no “housing outreach” done on your behalf because of your stay there.  In short, as with every alleged “fixer helper Agency” involved in the firstline defense to help the homeless, hospitals got nothing for you either.  They can’t help you and moreover they REFUSE to help you because we now live in an America where our hospitals are morally tone-deaf instead of being the sanctuaries of comfort and care they were originally created to be.  What these current “it’s all about the profits, baby hospitals”  will do is literally dump you on the curb with no place to go and no safety plan in place. On Christmas Eve - during the Winter Surge of a Global Pandemic - which is when it happened to me.  And RIGHT THERE is the price of admission to any of these horrid mental wards when you decide you <might> have an informed opinion of your own or know your rights.  They brutally cut you off and with reckless disregard for your very life - dump you where they no longer have to ever think of you ever again.   

So do NOT believe anyone who tells you that presenting to the ER pleading desperately that “you might harm yourself if you don’t have a home soon” will get you housing in America.  It will not.  All it will get you is a mental health record that will follow you everywhere, bad Big Pharma drugs and maybe some voltage meters wired to your brain to “cure you” of your own innate instinct to try and fight the brokenness of every poverty system in existence in Illinois and America today. Do. Not. Do. This.Ever.  For it serves no purpose and is horrifically uninformed advice.  As I have said throughout this Memoir, generally Reddit gives phenomenal, lifesaving advice; but on this they are wholly misinformed.         

So, I allowed the hospital social worker to INTENTIONALLY and with malice dump me literally on the side of the road with Memorial Hospital fully believing I had nowhere to go and would die in the frigid IL December weather in the gutter in front of their hospital - and that was clearly fine by them.  This “hospital dumping” is a National Crisis, America and we must ACT to make it IMMEDIATELY UNLAWFUL for hospitals to do this.  Why? Because sitting here today, I now PERSONALLY know 8 people who have literally DIED as a result of this lethal, immoral hospital practice.  And if we do not ACT to make them STOP - more of us will die.  And again I say, if not us, then who? And if not NOW, then when? 

ALL AMERICANS in the bottom 50% socio-economic caste of America DESERVE both better MENTAL WELLNESS CARE and better MEDICAL CARE.  Fully funded and wholly comprehensive paid for by our taxes. Now! No copays, No deductibles.  Comprehensive Healthcare For All. Now. FULL STOP. 

 When that awful social worker retreated back into the hospital, I pulled my car keys from my jeans pocket, walked to my car and drove away.  For you see, I did NOT come this far to only come this far. I would hold that janky hospital responsible for all the damage they were doing to patients there, TOO - if it was the last thing I did…

But meanwhile, driving off from that Burning Ring of Fire from which I managed to escape intact, it occurred to me: Memorial Hospital in Springfield IL, too, billed Medicaid of IL for two weeks of “treatment” while NEVER actually ever attending to ANY of the physical, medical or emotional maladies I presented with upon admission.  Why is it so hard for these Medicaid Corporate Government Grifters to actually render the care they are charged with providing?!!!!? And worse - why do they get reimbursed with our tax money while providing literally no actually beneficial services?  

And why is there no one to complain to about all of this fraud, abuse and waste in IL Medicaid?  Why is there no oversight agency to which one can complain and say  “Hey I presented to Memorial ER with these 4 critical medical issues and although they billed the State, this Medicaid provider NEVER actually rendered medical aid or treatments to me!”  And why FOR THE LOVE OF GOD does this keep repeatedly happening to me?!!!

 I would later be told to avail my Complaints to OIG and the hotline for IL Medicaid Fraud and Theft of Services regarding Memorial Hospital but again - as with everything in this broken State of Illinois having to do with Medicaid - no one ever bothered to intake nor investigate my valid Complaints.  In fact, the people charged with doing so never even called me after I filed multiple online reports - as is the “official process” for this type of healthcare fraud in IL.  So, it would seem to me that the broken state of the State of IL is working exactly as intended for all those employed to ensure the Government Grift Game keeps on giving and keeps on grifting off the taxpayers all to enhance the bottom line of the corporations, stockholders and high level management employees.

   By now at this point in mid-December 2020, it had been over two months and now an additional two weeks wasted since the State of IL had determined, via in-depth evaluations, that I required comprehensive medical care for my many injuries sustained in the assault as well as my Huntington’s issues and my post-COVID pulmonary breathing issues; yet no medical treatments were provided to me.  What in the hell did a gal need to do in order to get proper medical attention in the State of Illinois? 

As it turns out…that would be a very slow-coming and complex question to answer over the course of the next two years…

And thus and so I hobbled to my car and drove away from Memorial Hospital in Springfield IL  - without a plan or a prayer of what to do about my dire situation.  As before, I was far better off than MOST PATIENTS this hospital dumps at the gutter as I had my car and my ability to GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.  But again - with no funds due to my IL Unemployment STILL never having been processed - I had zero dollars to my name and no idea what to do about it.  

Despite my horrid hospital experience at Memorial in Springfield IL,  I was determined to remain in Springfield.  For I had moved to Springfield after my Dad died and I was determined to find a path forward out of this nightmare there.  I did have some concerns about living there, though, because my stalker/lunatic landlord knew I had initially moved there when I fled his moldy, shoddy rental in St. Louis.  How did he know this? Because as a landlord he has access to all financial/credit/background inquiry databases and he is a skilled teck hacker AND stalker.  So, I found out in January 2020, while still living in Springfield before COVID, that he had hacked my bank account and I stupidly had opened a bank account at Bank of Springfield when I first moved to Springfield. I know, I know.  Stupid, stupid woman.  But how could I have known his psychopathic stalking of me would CONTINUE after I fled his rental and that State? Answer: I <should have assumed he would> after EVERYTHING that St. Louis cop had told me about the pathology of covert narcissists and the lengths they go to utterly destroy their victims - I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN he would be that next-level demented and obsessed with me.  

And I found out on February 3 2020 that he also walked into the St. Louis Post Office on Gravois Road and pretending to be a brother I do not have - stole all of my mail I was purposely having held there SO THAT HE COULD NO LONGER STEAL MY MAIL FROM THE MAILBOX that might come after I fled St. Louis and his rental.  This particular post office was also PUT ON NOTICE WHY I WAS HAVING IT HELD - because of a stalker lunatic landlord stealing my mail (they actually had it on my file at that post office) and yet - he came in with his narcissistic “charm and disarm ruse” he used on me and thoroughly charmed my mail away from the postal employee without ever having to show any ID or any proof that he was my brother.  Yes - this psychopath is just THAT premeditated dangerous and GOOD at convincing everyday people in society to HELP HIM be this dangerous and criminal.      

But after feeling “safe from him” at the nursing home, and while staying with nuns and because of getting his GPS tracking device off my car and yes, even while in the locked ward at Memorial Hospital - all those “short periods of safety” caused something miraculous to begin to emerge in me: a steadfast defiance towards him.  Not a RECKLESS defiance wherein I stupidly put my future safety at risk - no. But a defiance as in “YOU SIMPLY DO NOT GET TO TRY TO DESTROY ME, MY LIFE OR MY SENSE OF SAFETY ANYMORE.”  It was just a tickle in my beating heart at this point in my survival instinct but it was telling me to be smarter and braver in how I went forward instead of cowered and terrified as I had been.   No more would he steal my sense of safety and calm ever again.  I had worked hard to try and start to regain it ALL ON MY OWN and he would not be allowed anywhere near me or my life to do any further damage.    

I wrote something about this emerging defiance against his predatory monstrous  behaviors and I would like to share it with you now. It is an altered version of a well-known domestic violence statement - only changed to more precisely fit my circumstance caused by him: 

NO MORE…  

No more trying to reason with you

No more walking on eggshells just to keep the peace with you.

No more huddled in the corner apprehensive of you

No more fearing what mood you may show up in

No more money for you because you already stole from me

No more free legal work from me because you deserve the corrupt lawyer u have

NO more coming at me with your fists

No more of your pathological lying and claiming YOU are the victim

No more presuming the cops will ever come to help me because of you

No more threats against me from you

No more being on the receiving end of your abusive behaviors

No more feeling nauseous every day deep within my soul because of you

No more trusting you when you say you won’t do it again

No more excuses from you

No more of your covert mind games calculated to be cruel

No more taking advantage of my good nature

No more manipulation. No more intimidation.

No more bullying, lying or gaslighting me.

No more of your false narratives. 

No more of your vulgar accusations about me

No more forgiveness from me

No more broken promises from you.

No more yielding to your crocodile tears

No more of your unwarranted aggression against me

No more of your unpredictable rage against me

NO MORE suffering shock, fear, disbelief and emotional anguish that someone 

as monstrous as you actually exists in this life

No more night terrors

No more tortured thoughts

No more traumatic responses to your intentional infliction of emotional violence

No more of you harming me in what is supposed to be MY SAFE HOME

No more not defending myself when you physically attack me or slander me

NO MORE FROM YOU EVER AGAIN…

I share that with you, dear readers, because I need you to understand the damage that this man did to me in 2019 in the immediate aftermath of my father’s traumatic death. He was never a boyfriend or lover to me.  He was never even a friend.  He was but a lunatic landlord who I later learned had been fired from many jobs as a “property rental manager” because of ALL OF THIS same behavior towards other tenants and previous coworkers and employers of his.   You don’t know all of it- yet - but you can now see the fallout from the parts I have shared with you.  You will soon learn however, in future chapters, the whole truth. And nothing but the truth about this monstrous predator.  So help me God…

  And where did I go in the snow of Christmas Eve 2020 with still NO MONEY to my name after being unceremoniously tossed out of that unconscionable craptrap hospital? Where would you go? What would you do with not a dime to your name and a Winter storm suddenly whipping all around you causing the temperatures to abruptly drop 30* and be immediately frigid December? I ask this rhetorical question because I often wonder: what do people do when “the system designed to help and protect them” fails them at every level so catastrophically? What do other people do? 

As for me, I reasoned that I needed the ability to feel safe and lock my own doors but come and go as I needed/desired.  That meant a hotel with good door locks, tight security and a staff willing to work with me given my situation given that a) I am considered a victim of DV in IL because of that lunatic landlord out of state and some hotels don’t want that kind of trouble in their space and b) I had zero dollars to my name. And nearly everything was closed because it was 3pm on Christmas Eve 2020 during a Pandemic.  

I went to an area hotel after calling a dear old friend in Georgia and telling him what had happened to me.  I cannot convey to you how mortifying and humbling it is to have to ask people for help when you are just stuck.  And I was STUCK because I was left by the State of Illinois with no money (my pandemic unemployment of $17k STILL had not been processed!!) and I had just been dumped in the gutter by the hospital to die without them actually attending to ANY of my medical complaints I presented there for two weeks prior and without any good options.  But in that very humbling and horrifying circumstance, there is also opportunity to see people for who they truly are.  You know that old saying “You find out who your real friends are (and who are NOT your true friends) when your back is against the wall and your life hits the bricks” - well, it’s absolutely TRUE. 

And as it turns out: it was a moment filled with grace.  This person did not ask, admonish, interrogate or in any way blame me for my own present circumstance.  He simply sent me life-saving funds via CashApp which gave me the immediate ability to get somewhere safe.  So many people always say “I won’t give the unhoused cash because they might do drugs with the money…”  HEAR ME ON THIS: That is not YOUR moral judgment to make.  Opting to help someone in need is an act of love and charity and helping them blesses the both of you.  If they opt to then mispend that charitable act of kindness from you - that’s on them - not you.  And this person I knew in Georgia absolutely knows me well enough to know that I would only spend the money to try and stay alive.   If you remember nothing else that I say from this Memoir remember this: Give the unhoused person a fighting chance and trust them with your cash donation.  So many of the homeless actually work and live in overpriced motels their slave-wages job do not begin to fully fund; or they live in their car and need the cash for showers at a truck stop or a meal to warm their heart or their empty-for-days stomach or they need the cash for hygiene items.  You likely have literally NO IDEA how much CASH IN HAND can literally save an unhoused person’s life.  It did mine when Riley from Georgia gave it to me - no questions asked - on Christmas Eve 2020 and CASH to our unhoused neighbors saves countless other lives too.  If you have some moral mental mandate on HOW you want to help an unhoused person - without ever asking them what would most help them in the moment - just don’t help them at all.  Leave your virtue signaling and your moral gatekeeping in your own internal pride and arrogance bag where it belongs, please.  

I do fully realize how fortunate I am to know this person (Riley) and to have been able to call on him in this dire hour of my life; because the reality is the large majority of people in my potentially fatal circumstance as I was in on Christmas Eve 2020 simply do not have the option of calling an old friend and asking for help.  As a result, the many others who were me at one point, in my exact same circumstance but without a Lifeline to use,  just die further down the road in the gutter after the cops come because the hospital that dumped them there wants them out of their line of sight and off their entirely lacking moral conscience.    People die every day in America because of the very “hospital patient dumping” that happened to me.  Why is this OK with any of us? 

In my mind, this Georgia friend has ALWAYS been misnamed.  Even when I knew him in Georgia, I always thought he was misnamed.  In my heart, his name has always been “Riley” which means “valiant” and is so fitting and descriptive of who he is as a person.  

So, Riley sent me enough money to secure a hotel through the New Year so that I could buy some time to figure out a path forward. Again -  I was flying blind in the gutter of homelessness and no one was coming to help me.  I would have to figure it all out on my own - AGAIN.  Would the services and resources be better or worse for someone in my circumstance in Springfield, IL? I was about to find out.    

When I think about the Pandemic Year that was 2020 of my life, I sometimes marvel at all that happened to me in such a short span of time (time that actually FEELS LIKE a lifetime) because of everything that happened.  

Think about it: how many people do you imagine bear first-hand witness as an innocent bystander to our broken homeless system, our broken and lethal Medicaid nursing home system, how insidious human trafficking is among the desperate in America and how it often is occurring in places in your own neighborhood that you would never suspect, and our broken and frighteningly inept mental healthcare system - ALL IN THE SAME YEAR.  Most Americans <might> interact with just 1 of these systems in their entire lifetime.  But I had a front-row seat to them all - consecutively - and in the same calendar year.  That is some POWERFUL TESTIMONY that person has to share - if they only live to tell their truth.     

And miraculously I survived it all to live to tell you about it now with this Memoir….

But for now I must plead with you America: PLEASE CARE that this happened to me.  Please be OUTRAGED - as outraged as I am.  Please vow to STAND WITH ME IN SOLIDARITY and work together until every broken part of America is FIXED and we finally, at long last, have a FULLY FUNCTIONAL State of Illinois and America that works for ALL people - and not just the top 50% of the affluent.  Because if my tragedy after tragedy - ALL OF WHICH SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO ANY AMERICAN - does not stir you to activism and advocacy on these issues - then I have surely failed in my endeavor of even sharing with you this very real, living nightmare I had to live - hoping your American Outrage will override standard American apathy in the face of grave suffering.    

You’ve made it through Pandemic Year One in 2020 with me, dear readers. Hold onto your haircuts because SPOILER ALERT: 2021 took an even more bizarre and potentially fatal turn for me so…Up Next: Pandemic Year 2021 and 21 MORE things you won’t believe can all happen to 1 person in the span of just 1 calendar year. But they did. Come along with me and see, won’t you?

UP NEXT: CHAPTER 4 ~ 

PANDEMIC WINTER 2021 HEALTHCARE, HOUSING & HECKLED IN MY OWN HEART