Bingo. Got it in one. (Please don't take the rest of what I say as particularly directed at you; if anything, it's less directed toward you.)
People don't want to talk to the down-and-out. They want to categorize them to make them feel good about themselves. If they are to the right, they have a self-aggrandizing moral story about sin or hard work or substance abuse. If they are to the left, they have a self-aggrandizing story about mental illness or homelessness. If they are not in the US, they tell themselves it never happens here (which is false; there are plenty of statistics, but you haven't heard of them). In all cases it is the process of pouring down a layer of insulation between oneself and Those People.™ Whether contempt of sympathy or "not in my country," the thing is distance.
It's possible that the distance is because people know that it could happen to them, at any time, without warning. Rather than stopping this, people adopt elaborate mechanisms not to see. Of course, fora like this one is a place you can go go avoid the hoi polloi. Bus Stop Lady™ isn't going to show up here.
However, I am. Some people know me, and I think honestly that they only thing you can find wrong with me is that I am on the obnoxious and hostile side. (My obnoxiousness is why I'm writing this. I am quite aware this is an act of arrogance.) I freely admit that not only that I am, but I am more so than I used to be. A long time ago, I used to get depressed, and drugs helped, but not any more (I don't get depressed, and drugs don't work). Really, though, my only problem is an income.
Really, three weeks working, at anywhere near the kind of income that is appropriate, and my life would be fine. Three weeks. Not everything would get fixed—most of my possessions would still be gone, never to return—but at least my pseudo-friends are gone, too.
Without that, I literally face death, not in years or months but unknown in possible days.
So, let's see, all I need is a job, right? So every night with the computer I do have, I send out several resumes a night, and some other people do that for me. But then, I have to think of things. I have six remaining teeth up front on the bottom, and eight on the top. What am I going to do in an interview, not smile? I belch and fart. This is possibly related to the stent I got between my pancreas and stomach to fix a problem that was killing me by slow starvation. Is it? I don't know. I cannot afford a medical appointment. That comes after the three weeks.
I get plenty of interest for people who want to hire me. A few miles away. It might as well be the moon. There is just no way I couldn't even live for three weeks. No car, either. It was repossessed within $2000 of being paid off. Rent a car? No money. No credit card anyway. Nothing I can do. Easier job within walking distance? Who the hell is going to pay me at a menial position with my history? "You wouldn't be happy doing this." Well, not being able to afford a candy bar let along gasoline is really making me cream my jeans right now! (Which, I have to say, are hand-me downs, because used jeans are $7 at Goodwill which is far beyond my budget.)
You have to risk money to make money. You have to have money to make it. Well, a couple of months ago, I got a promise of a position from a headhunter in San Francisco. Nice; I could have survived. Nay, thrived, at $52 and hour. So I went. Turned out to be that headhunters have gotten a lot less professional. Some can tell me it's my fault, even though I had been dealing with headhunters for more than a decade and never been treated unprofessionally. But, yeah, it was stupid of me.
Still, when I was there, I came across a guy who was pushing a cart along the street. So I talked to him and stopped him. He got a bit tight in his body language when he started to think I was a "helper," but then I just talked to him. I learned some fascinating things. I won't tell you them, though. They'd just make you unhappy. Think of him as a Whatever It Is.™ Doesn't really matter, as long as he's in a little box, and you can make a safe little story.
So anyway, I've been sponging off remaining friends. It's amazing how few one finds out one has. It hasn't worked. I have one more left. When I was a kid, I had an ear infection. They were down to one last antibiotic. They were scared to try it, because if it didn't work, I'd die. Same thing with this one last move. I blew all possible cash reserves on following up on a fake job opportunity. There are no more. There won't be any more.
How did I get into this position? Who cares? Literally. Your world has to make sense. It has to be a fair and just world. So whatever it is, whatever I say must be wrong, .
You do not want to understand this, either, but being in the position of constantly facing the possibility of oblivion has an effect. Either one succumbs to depression, which I have decided not to, or one becomes amused. Ultimately, does it matter if I exist? I got this way by sacrificing for someone with health problems, whom I wanted to support and get better. So I did. My resources went to her. And now, whether or not she is getting better, she has decided that everything I did to help her, all the money, all the times I wiped her ass with the bead pan, all of that was because I have a Huge Ego and think that the whole world revolves around me. So I'm gone, and at least half the people who were helping me out during that time are gone, too, and good riddance.
That was stupid of me, of course. Sacrificing always is. It does nobody any good. I'll prove it. Let's say there was someone who thought that being good to someone, sacrificing for them, is good. Say Person C thinks that Person A is good for sacrificing for Person B. Well, the sacrifice has to stop eventually. Person A either runs out or dies. If Person A runs out, then by the same token, Person C will decide Person A has become bad for not doing the good thing any more. Or else Person A is dead. QED.
Look, I know people don't care. That's the point. The fact that I know you don't care, though, has to affect my thinking. Should I survive? Should I triumph again? Should I die? Should I wind up in a bus stop? The point is that, from your shared culture with others, it does not make the slightest bit of difference, provided that you be able to insulate yourself from and therefore not think about me.
That kind of knowledge, that by popular consent, one does not matter, hardens the mind in certain ways. Some wind up polishing plexiglas with newspaper. Some wind up writing the things I write, taking the bigger, more meta-approach. Since it does not really matter, then I accept that my life doesn't matter.
A little wistful slice-of life about Bus Stop Lady who is not even human enough to warrant a name. A little tongue-clicking, a little tsk-tsk in between sips of a Cosmopolitan with Grey Goose. Well, I might die, and if I do, a lot of people will have happier lives for not having to think about me. But I might not, in which case I hope to irritate a few and raise their blood pressures, thus shortening their life spans. Pretty much all I can do at this point.
