I’m trying to figure out the moment it all fell apart in my life. My current spiral started prior to the video, prior to the diagnosis. Prior—it was all before that—when I stopped. Stopped caring. Stopped talking. Stopped doing what I love to do. Stopped taking care of myself. Stopped walking the dogs. Stopped always having music on. Stopped watching documentaries. Stopped cleaning the house. Stopped cooking dinner. Stopped—living.
I know how it started. It all just kind of clicked in my head in 2022. I had spent the previous four years building back from living in my car. I had three jobs, paid all my bills myself. I did it. I had survived, and I was fucking proud of myself.
I found a new job doing flooring estimates—something I’ve done since I was a small child. I grew up in the business; I had done it forever. The job paid more than my three jobs combined, so I took it.
Unfortunately for me, my neurological issues have affected the visuospatial reasoning in my brain, and I could, as I put it, get lost in a room. There were four walls, but my generally meticulous scale hand sketches would have six walls.
Construction for me has always been the fallback. I’m good at it. I always have been. I know how things work; I know how colors will read. I walk into everyone’s home and immediately tell them how to remodel it. I can see things people can’t. Carpet seams drive me crazy. This wasn’t a life goal; this was my trade. When academia failed me, I would always—ALWAYS—have finishing construction.
Losing that? Losing your safety net? Jesus motherfucking Christ.
In this same time period, I had my neighbor Jacki. Now Jacki is the most annoying human I have ever met. Take every goddamn stereotype about a Jewish woman from Long Island, multiply it, then add a fucking Karen haircut dyed eggplant. That is Jacki.
One night, Jacki—who I consciously avoided because she would talk at me (note I said at, not to) and I didn’t like her—but I had to smoke on the patio, and she would always come talk to me. This night, she knocked on my door and asked if I could watch her dog. I didn’t want to; my dogs hated her dog. But I said, “Sure… but why?”
Jacki then told me she had an MRI that day, and they found something, and the doctor told her to immediately go to the ER. Now, I’m not a doctor, but that sounds bad. So I said, “Why don’t we leave the dog here, and I’ll take you to the hospital,” because that seemed like the thing to do for someone in that situation. So we went.
Stage IIIb ovarian cancer. She needed immediate surgery. I stayed through that. I came to the hospital every day. Took care of the dog. Got her home and to her appointments. Took her for radiation. Made her dinner every night—well, mostly takeout.
She kept telling me she wanted her mom. But her mom couldn’t come out because she couldn’t afford it. Well, okay, so I bought her mom a ticket and didn’t tell Jacki. Her mom came out just in time for chemo, but it was a couple of weeks away, so we were in a quiet period.
On a completely different subject—I met a guy. And it sounds like an Arrested Development joke, but he was an Italian maritime attorney. We met on a dating site, and our first meeting was at my house. He brought lunch and a bottle of wine and two wine glasses. We never got to the wine. We went into the bedroom. I didn’t have condoms, so he wanted to not have intercourse but to have me go down on him, and he wanted to play with me and a dildo. While he was using the dildo, he started hurting me. It was going too deep, and I kept telling him, and I asked him to stop, and he didn’t. I bled, and I had a bruised cervix—which is a feeling I know. As he was leaving, he looked at my ab exerciser thing and told me I should use it more often.
I went to check on Jacki and told her what happened, and she said he raped me and I needed to go to the hospital. (Why does that sound familiar?) I just ignored it. Moved on.
I texted {D} a week later because he was one of my safe people who wouldn’t hurt me, and I set up a time to see him. He came to my place, and strangely I offered him the wine the maritime attorney had left. Well, {D}, for a man who eats nothing but Mexican food, has a very sensitive stomach, and this was a very acidic red. That man looked at me with so much fear in his eyes when it hit his stomach he had to leave, and I gave him a list of everything he needed to buy at Walgreens, and I wasn’t sure he could drive. It was a scene.
Back to Jacki. Jacki was about to start chemo. And her mom decided just to leave—like right when the shitstorm was coming down. We had been in the eye of the storm when her mom was there, but shit was about to go bad, so she left.
Jacki told me she was leaving, and I was shocked because I had only bought a one-way ticket for her. So not only is she abandoning her daughter during chemo, but she lied about needing the fucking money to fly out.
When I say I was angry—wow. Just wow. Now, I know how I get. I will fucking yell, and I will say shit to make your ancestors cry, and Mrs. Greenberg was deserving of my full fucking force. But I asked Jacki first. I said I was going to kill that bitch and I wanted to scream at her, and I asked for permission. She granted me that permission. She might not have been fully aware of what that meant.
My sister calls me St. Katie. I am the kindest, most caring, sweet, giving person in the world, but when I go the fuck off, I will tell and I will destroy you emotionally because I can. I try not to do this, but it’s a personality flaw.
So I’m screaming and calling an 87-year-old woman a pathetic mother and telling her what a fucking cunt she is—because that’s just how I do things. Apparently, on Long Island, you’re not supposed to call an 87-year-old woman a cunt, even if she is acting like one. Whoops.
Jacki quit speaking to me. Her mom left. She went through chemo completely alone, almost died, and then moved. I haven’t heard from her since.
So am I the good guy or the bad guy in that story? The truth is: never get involved in family shit. It’s a no-win.
But after that, I stopped caring. I stopped doing. I stopped being me. I’ve hated my jobs—not that I can hold one down anymore. I have no purpose. I have no one I can trust that isn’t just going to abandon me. I’m angry. I’m bitter. I can’t even trust a therapist because they just leave, change practices, or stop taking your insurance. You can’t trust or love or care because it will just end up hurting you. It doesn’t matter how much you rebuild—it can all be torn down. And no one can ever betray you as much as your own body. That’s what got me here.
I really, truly believe I’ll never, ever be able to come back.
And the thing of it is, when you’re at the bottom, that’s when people go away. When you really need someone, that’s the moment they leave. No one wants a friend in need. I thought people were like me, but they’re not. I don’t know how to handle that. Who can just look away and not help? Everyone, apparently.
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