Because of my religious and philosophical nature, it has been my customary habit, throughout my life, to serve others, in concert with a search for God in several religions. None of it was grand and no one will be writing books about me, but I have done my best to be of service to my fellow humans, within my limited range of abilities.
HOWEVER, my health and financial conditions have worsened over time, and a few years ago, I reached the point where I myself need some serious help which is not being provided by the agencies whose job it is to provide that, nor did I ever have much family, and the few I had were not loving people. My needs overtook my desire to be of service to others.
I am grateful to have a couple friends who behave like loving family members, but they already do much more than anyone could expect of them, and I owe it to them not to drain their resources by increasing my needs due to efforts I make on the behalf of others. It would not be fair to these generous people who have adopted me.
I am no longer able to help every neighbor that has a need, and it has become obvious that I may never again be in such a position to do whatever favors I was able to do previously. I don't believe that situation is unique, since many seniors are in the same position.
In fact, since every step brings with it considerable pain and instability, despite pain medication, and since I have had several falls as a result, I had to start being very careful with all my activities, and have endeavored to explain this to the people who come to me for favors during the last couple of years.
Unfortunately, when I tell them I can no longer assist, I have been surprised by the anger I have received in response. They refuse to understand I am not able to do these things any longer. It is puzzling to me, but I never have understood human psychology.
In addition, I have a prayer schedule that is inevitably disturbed when I have someone calling me frequently to come and assist them. Up until this time, I have chosen to look upon these calls as calls from Jesus himself, but I doubt Jesus would ask me to hurt myself so someone else who has more resources than I do could benefit.
When I first tell them "no," some of these people have tried to pressure me, but when I stand my ground, they realize it is pointless and just stop speaking to me. The friendship is over. Evidently it is and always was, for them, an entirely utilitarian relationship. To be clear, I was the one that was to be of use to them, otherwise they literally had "no use for" me.
Sometimes a person will pretend to be a friend until they get their hands on a large piece of furniture or something else of value, and they stop speaking to me, as soon as they get the big thing they had their eye on before they started to make overtures of friendship.
Because I am on the autistic spectrum, though very high functioning, I tend to be very trusting of others' intentions and motives, and I am still trying to learn how to protect myself and differentiate between a true offer of friendship and something else. It has been a difficult but educational 18 years at this apartment complex where I live.
A close neighbor, who is senior and has a serious neurological syndrome, has started pressuring me to give her personal services. When this neighbor's friend had to move out of state to stay with her relatives because of her own health concerns, the neighbor turned to me and suddenly began to treat me as if I was responsible to then take up the duties of her friend who had left town.
I don't think she realizes how jarring and sudden the change was for me. I have been unable to get her to understand that I am not able to take on these responsibilities, nor was I asked if I was willing. She goes mute when I tell her, as if she has not heard me. When I try to get her to engage, she goes silent.
Because of my Asperger's, it often takes me some time to "catch on" to what is happening with other people. Soon after my neighbor's friend moved out, before I understood the nature of the situation, my neighbor asked me to hold onto a set of her house keys for her. I thought it was a sign of trust and an insurance for rare emergencies between 2 friendly neighbors. But when I reciprocated and attempted to give her a set of my own "emergency" keys, she refused to take them! This threw me off, and it would be several months before I comprehended the full situation.
Up until that point, I had told her many times, "I am not going to be able to help you on a regular basis, since I am disabled myself, but when I make something yummy for dinner that I think you will enjoy, or some soft dessert you can eat, and I am well enough to bring it to you, I will offer, otherwise you can't ask, because I am generally not able."
In the early days, I DID often call her when I made a soft dessert or a meal that I thought she might like. She does not have any teeth and her dentures cause her pain. Because of the bare gums, she is sensitive to any amount of spice at all, and I would make an effort to leave out the spice when cooking so that I would add it to my own portion after making her a plate and bringing it to her. But I cook less and less these days, as I am usually not able to do all the standing necessary.
Still, I tried to maintain a "normal" friendship with the woman. When there was a holiday or a birthday, I would gift her with one of my craft items that I have spent many hours making these things especially for her - sometimes a lace shawl I had made with thread the color of a Monet painting she loved, other times a piece of silver and gemstone jewelry I made. I ignored the imbalance in the relationship. I don't know why. It probably has to do with my Asperger's and my uncertainty in divining the meanings behind the actions of other people. I also resolved, some time ago, to think well of others.
My neighbor began to call upon me more often to ask for personal services to her, acting as if she had not heard me each time I explained that walking in my own apartment, even to answer the door, brings with it a certain amount of pain with every step and that I have to ration out my steps in service to my own needs and cannot spend that ration on her needs because I do not have money to hire anyone to come care for me and my own growing needs, nor do I have a loving family that will step in.
She would just go mute and refuse to acknowledge me when I explained my limitations.
I understood, of course, that she was feeling panicked, as her own illness, after nearly 3 decades, had taken a frightening turn for the worst. I also began to see that her difficulty speaking in an understandable way had more to do with cognitive decline than problems with her dentures. The whole situation threw me off and I did not know what to do.
The thing is, in addition to personal financial resources, she has friends, a cousin, a sister who lives in this state, as well as other relatives who live elsewhere. I have none of that, but apparently I look like a convenient option because the relatives don't know what to do for her. I think they have been surprised by the fact that there are just no services for most poor people when they grow old and feeble.
At one point, my neighbor called me, in a panic, and said she was having an emergency, I asked her what was going on, and our call was dropped or she hung up. So I dragged myself over there to help her. She had forgotten to take her medication and was having trouble getting out of her chair. She wanted me to render personal services to her, including bringing her water and medication and re-arranging some article of clothing she was wearing. This is why she was so insistent that I have her keys. She expected to use me as a personal caregiver, yet, for me, every step and movement caused me pain.
Adjusting her clothing on her body caused my back to go into spasm, and my back was "out" for more than a week after that incident. It doesn't take much to throw my back out, since I have had chronic back problems for nearly 5 decades. In any case, however, the things that she was asking me to do are in the realm of what is expected of an in-home caregiver.
Two years ago, I was approved for an at-home caregiver through Medicaid, due to my own health issues, something that my neighbor is well aware of.
I tried to explain to her, again, about my health, and she again went mute, as if she had not heard me. She just would not respond. It was bizarre. So I told her that although I was not able to help her, I would try to help her get some services that would make her more independent.
During the next two or three weeks, I put in at least 40 hours making phone calls for her, making arrangements for her to have a medic-alert system and bracelet set up for her, as well as obtaining for her a free lock box to hold her house keys around the outside of her door knob for those times when she fell and needed the paramedics to come and lift her from the floor. Going back and forth to her apartment so she could be present for these phone calls cost me a lot in time, physical pain and suffering, but I was making what I thought was to be a last ditch effort to provide her with methods to independently get herself some help.
I also suggested a rolling cart to house her medications or a bag she could wear around her neck to hold them. But when it came right down to it, she did not want to use these methods. She wanted me to do it.
She did not like the bracelet. As soon as it arrived, she complained to me that she had worn it into the bath and broke it, she did not "like" it, would not use it and intended to send it back. She complained about the lock box, saying that "everyone in the apartment complex" knew the combination, which was not true. She said that a stranger came into her apartment using the keys from the lockbox (not true.) She claims that she has mice living in her bed and even giving birth there while she was in the bed!(a fantasy.) Clearly, she was having some cognitive issues, which REALLY complicated this situation for me.
I did not want to abandon my neighbor because she IS alone in her apartment, but ALL of the hours of work I did to help her do as much as possible for herself were rejected, and she continued to call me and say she was having an emergency, but it was usually because she had forgotten to take her medication and wanted me to come over and do various personal tasks for her.
Several years ago, I gave her the phone number of the agency that helps disabled seniors get onto Medicaid, but I had trouble getting her to follow through with it. At one point, she said she had been approved, but she did not sign up with the agency I told her to pick to administer the Medicaid funds, and the one she picked may refuse to pay any of the doctors that this woman uses.
I don't know why she chose the other insurance agency, but she will either have to pay her own doctor bills or will have to switch doctors - not an easy feat during Covid in a town that has lost a LOT of medical practitioners. I mention this because this is a perfect example of why her family needs to either step up and organize these things for her OR a guardian needs to be assigned to her to help smooth the way.
Getting services in place for disabled seniors takes a lot of work in the form of telephone calls, mainly. It is complicated if you are trying to assist someone who is a little paranoid, intensely independent of mind, or just not dialed into reality all the time.
In an attempt to offload some of these duties onto her relatives, and to be of service in the only way I am really able, I several times asked one of them to come have a chat with me about it and I would give them all the information, but it just never happened. The one relative to which all this has fallen appears to be overwhelmed with it all.
The neighbor has gradually been calling me more and more frequently because she has become temporarily paralyzed in her chair or has fallen in her apartment. I kept telling her there was nothing I could do for her and instead of calling me, she needed to call 911 so they could lift her off the floor. This is why I had gone to such effort to get her a medic alert bracelet. But when she called, if it was 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon, I would call 911 for her and get them to come over.
It finally became apparent to me that she was calling on me so that I would organize every aspect of each rescue effort. In her mind, she would call me, and then I was supposed to handle all the aspects of the operation. I was to call 911 and her relatives, open the doors for the paramedics, and assist her at her apartment and keep her company, bring her water and medication, adjust her clothing, gather her papers, telephone, charger, and other personal effects she wanted to bring with her, pack things for the ride to the hospital, etc.
If this happened once a year, maybe I could manage it, but she has been falling almost every month, in addition to getting stuck in her chair and unable to reach her medications nearly every week, something that I believed could have been easily rectified but which she refused to cooperate with!
Eventually, I had to resolve to just start saying "no," and simply refusing to go over there AT ALL so that she would be forced to either use those things I had arranged for her independence, or one of her relatives would take her home or put her in a nursing home. She also has some savings and could pay for someone to come in and care for her for a little while but it looks like she did not want to use up her small nest egg. (No one does, but most seniors end up doing that when they become seriously ill.)
Even on my good days, when I was feeling better, I would restrain myself and refuse to go there because, on those few occasions when I HAD acquiesced and gone over there, she would immediately start calling me all the time again. As soon as I got near her, it was like Velcro. Once, she invited me to dinner, but when I got there, I had to prepare and serve it. It is an exhausting and painful round of unwanted duties.
After I started to say "no" to her, she apparently told her cousin that she was mad at me, which I was surprised to learn later on, since I had worn myself out doing all sorts of things for her while ignoring my own needs. It did not matter that I had told her dozens of times that I am not physically able to take care of her. She would interpret it as something else.
The phrase, "no good deed goes unpunished" rings a bell, doesn't it?
Several of her people asked me if they could call me whenever they can't rouse my neighbor on the phone so that I can "go over there and check on her." I told each of them definitely NO, and explained to them everything I have explained here. I reiterated it several times, but I could never get the full attention of anyone I tried to talk to. They routinely interrupted me, and one actually waved me away with a hand gesture that communicated dismissal. They would say they understood and refuse to let me finish a sentence.
After all this, one of her relatives called me yesterday, woke me from a much-needed nap, saying she hadn't been able to reach her for 24 hours and she wanted me to "go over there and check on her." Just a few weeks earlier, she had asked me if she could do this and I had told her definitely NO. I was flabbergasted.
How many times must I say the same thing before SOMEONE hears me?
It also makes me sad that none of these people seem to care in the slightest about how much all this has cost me in personal time, pain and exhaustion - while my own needs go unmet, although I have told them many times.
As most of you are aware, I am physically disabled; mobility challenged; in constant chronic pain; I have auto-immune conditions that are worsening over time; I have lost most of the vision in my left eye while the right eye that suffers from the same disease has to get injections in order to slow the progression of the disease so I don't go blind sooner than I have to; I suffer from PTSD resulting from childhood trauma and 3 close personal brushes with death, as well as other violence that scarred me and made it difficult for me to negotiate my way around life. Underneath it all is the slight case of Asperger's Syndrome, which contributes its own challenges.
Meanwhile, the two friends who have kindly helped me over the last couple years are already older than I am, with health and family challenges of their own, and I myself am trying to find ways to be more independent so that I do not stress these friendships. I am feeling really squeezed by all this and definitely NOT HEARD.
I suppose this woman's relatives are ALSO feeling very squeezed - but they are trying to offload their family duties onto someone who is not related and, though not as sick as their relative, has serious health issues of her own and fewer resources to handle them.
I am concerned about my OWN future care, so the last couple years have found me scrambling to try to sell some crafts and to finish a novel that I hope will make me enough money to hire people to care for me in my old age.
I am loathe to ask for favors so that I will not be perceived as too much of a burden by friends. It is only when I absolutely cannot do without something and I have done everything in my own power to satisfy my own needs, to no avail, that I will ask anyone else to step in.
Usually, I gratefully accept whatever is offered without my asking for it and live without whatever does not come naturally. I would never dream of trying to force anyone to supply my needs.
Truthfully: I am baffled by all of these experiences with this neighbor, but as I said earlier, she is not the only one.
When I think back over my experiences since I dropped into a lower socio-economic bracket, I see a trend:
LIVING IN LOW INCOME HOUSING:
As soon as I moved into my first lower-income apartment complex in this town, about 20 years ago, I was shocked by the number of neighbors who approached me like pan-handlers, within days of moving in. In fact, THE day I moved there, I was accosted at my car by a raggedy, jail-tattooed wretch. I was just parking my little car across from my new apartment, when his hairy and unwashed self appeared in my window. He was asking for something before I could roll up my window. Months later, he was shot in an alley and left to die there.
I had never been exposed to this kind of thing before, and I am definitely out of my element. Although I now live in another low-income apartment, I remain the target of resident thieves. Several residents have stolen from me, one of them conned me out of a practically unused, expensive piece of furniture (long story), another has some unknown grudge and is spreading destructive lies to anyone who will listen, another stole from me (and others) while I was paying her to clean my house.
I watched from my living room window, as one neighbor strolled into my garden on a dusky summer eve, picked up a plate I was using as a saucer for one of my potted plants, examined it, then walked away with it. Bold as brass. That person still lives here.
I bought a small angel sculpture and nestled it into a large potted rose bush. The "landscapers" came, and when they were gone, so was the statue. A generous friend gave me a very large and heavy angel statue that I placed in my garden, facing my main window. One night, I went to sleep at about 2:00 in the morning and it was still there. By the time I woke at 10:00, it had vanished.
One night, I heard a noise outside my secluded foyer, and by the time I was able to open the door to check it out, I saw a large white truck zooming away, with my (expensive) seated walker stashed in the back that I had forgotten to bring inside.
One new neighbor got angry when I reported their children for bullying me and blocking my access to my mailbox, so they sent me hate mail through the U.S. Post Office - mentioning this blog! The neighbor that spreads rumors about me to anyone who will listen, got hold of her. (She has tried to cause a lot of problems for me over the last 16 years by spreading lies. She used to be Christian, but I believe she gave it up during her divorce.)
Someone who used to work here, to whom I had ALSO been very kind, watches this blog and informs residents whenever I mention anything having to do with problems here. (I know who you are, and so do the police, by the way.)
A couple years ago, some young toughs moved into my building. One of their cars has emblazoned across their windshield the motto, "F - - K THE POPULATION," with the whole thing spelled out. One day, 4 of them came streaming out of their apartment to attack me and keep me prisoner in my car for 20 minutes because I had told their visitor that she could not park in front of my garage door and block me from using it.
Later one night, the big white truck stole the traffic cones that management had given me to prevent further encroachment. That was the second set of cones. The first had been stolen by another next door neighbor the night she moved out. I had seen them moving out, in the dead of night, and it was about 2 in the morning when I heard them dragging the cones, throwing them into the vehicle, and speeding away for the final time. I had been very generous to that neighbor, especially when her cat was dying, taking her to my favorite vet and advocating for a discount rate for her.
You see, it does not matter if you do favors for these people. If you are kind and generous, it just makes you a "sucker," and they push you and push you to give them more and more until you say "no," and then they steal whatever you won't give them willingly while spreading untrue rumors about you to others.
All my years of living in Los Angeles never prepared me for a small town that has so many poor people in it, they routinely steal from one another and have a very laissaz faire attitude toward criminality.
Due to these experiences and the many others I have not mentioned here, no one should be surprised that I am feeling conflicted about loving and serving my neighbors. I have come to the conclusion that The Lord would not want me to facilitate the sins that some of these people will do in response to my helping them.
I am on good terms with several people, but it is long past time to say "no" to others. I do not have the money to move or to pay an elevated rent, so I need to retreat into my apartment and be a little less available to everyone here. I will be polite. I long ago stopped putting things in the garden that my neighbors could steal, and I am not going to invest any more of myself than I have to out there. I will just have to endure their spite resolutely and offer this peculiar suffering to God as a sacrifice.
I will be returning my neighbor's keys to the apartment manager, since the neighbor is currently in a nursing home or a hospital (as a result of the most recent emergency) and her door requires a key to lock it from the outside. I can't just drop the keys inside the apartment and leave them there.
When one takes an airplane trip, they always tell you that, in case of emergency, put on your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others. I am stopping now to put on my own mask.
I will continue to pray for all concerned, and especially to ask for the assistance of Our Lady of Lourdes for healing. That is all I can do.
May we all be blessed.
Silver Rose
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