The question is am I fighting and scratching my way out of the vortex and into the light or am I just letting myself be sucked down into the tunnel with no way out? Am I a warrior? Have I surrendered? I don't know. And sometimes it just depends on the day.

I'm trying to figure out how I got here - what I did wrong? $10,000 in rent arrears, $60 in cash, $200 left in overdraft and two $25 gift certificates to Dean & Deluca's.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal

Can I blame it all on depression? Is this my quote unquote journey? How could I take two years off without getting any kind of job? Why didn't I listen to those telling me to get some kind of job instead of those who told me to work on my depression and anxiety?

Why can't I get a fucking job? Any kind??? It's amazing how fast pride can go. But I like my apartment. I love my old furniture. I love my cats. And I am very close to losing them all. It's all just so hard to get my head around this.

So: Medicaid, food stamps and trying for cash assistance and rent arrears assistance. The sadness and degradation of asking for help. Working throught the maza that is the bureaucracy of assistance. "We're here to help. Call me Mrs _____". Is it an subconscious attempt of a civil servant to remind the supplicant that we are just that? Or is it that they know how fast you can fall from success to failure and this is a way to re-affirm their success?

This whole experience is soul-sucking. An interesting discovery - finally believing that I have a soul because I can feel it dying.

Even a month ago, I believed that I could pull out of this. Now I just try to improve my website, apply for jobs, work my way through lessons. And while I keep moving, that's all it is. I'm moving. But I no longer believe that my destiny is in my control. If I get a job and manage to hang on or if I get evicted and wind up on the streets -- what happens, happens. I should be panicking -- and sometimes I do -- but more and more I'm just numbing out.

Some see the journey to death as a river. I have come to believe that mine will be a tunnel.

A brave man once requested me
to answer questions that are key
is it to be or not to be
and I replied 'oh why ask me?'