Free?

I feel like fucking Cinderella in her step-mother’s home.  Who gives a shit about cleaning.   This stupid company and motherfucking Uncle Sam do because “we want to keep the residents safe and dirty isn’t safe”.   Bastards.   They can come and make a surprise visit anytime they want and do a mandatory inspection for our safety.   It’s bullshit.   If I had my own home, nobody would bother me.   Assholes.   They need a clear pathway in case there’s a fucking fire.  Forget that there ain’t never been no motherfucking fire in the fifty years this shithole has been open.  No, no, and let’s not forget about the mandatory fucking fire drills which are at 3 o’clock in the goddamn morning.   For “the residents’ safety.  A fire could go off at any time.”   Then why doesn’t the fucking fire alarm ever go off at noon or one pm?   Why are the fucking fire drills always at 3 o’clock in the goddamn morning?   

     Anyway, we all go out in our ‘jami, underwear, robes, or whatever we can find and go to our designated spot.  They don’t have random shooting drills, they don’t have flood drills, they don’t have drills for what the fuck to do if a train derails, since we hear the train every night.   No, but fire drills.   Can’t miss those.   Idiots.  

     I go back to sleep and wake up to Spanish radio.   I don’t know Spanish, but I’m working on it.   Do apps in my fucking phone for language, being a psychic, sobriety, Spanish, and keeping my mind sharp.   Work out like crazy ‘til the usual fucking knock comes at my damn door.  “Meds.   Time for meds.”   They don’t call one of us at a time, but have us wait around the table do other fucking residents can hear our private medical information.  Great idea.  

    Go back, finish the workout/studying, etc.   Shower, practice the acoustic guitar, drum pad, and signing. Going to breakfast, fried eggs, bad coffee, waffles, and we’re all paying for this shit and nobody likes it.   Morons.  

     I go home after eating this garbage, wash up.   Then, I go to the place where the meeting is.  Everyone’s talking so I practice the piano.   I’m getting better.   Go through my schedule to see what I’m doing:  improv class, music and computer lab, where I enter the fucking Publisher’s Clearance House, HGTV  $10,000 give away and any other way I can get the fuck outta here.   Stalkers to my right and left.   No independence.  Then, clean my room, eat another government meal, go back, just get through each fucking day, and then I can sleep, unless there’s another goddamn fire alarm. 

     Then, I get through dinner, wash up, the fucking usual.  Then, the idiots knock on my door.  Usual time, usual bullshit.  Meds and meal orders, right after watching the news.   Put a t-shirt on and unlock the door, but there’s a stranger with well groomed blond hair and a gray suit on.   Gotta be a salesman, right?  Then he asks if I am what my name is and I ask who’s asking.  

     “This is So-And-So from the Publisher’s Clearance House.”  

    I think about it.   Could be, but probably an immature practical joke from one of my disabled neighbors.   That means there have to be hidden cameras, but they’re not hidden.   They’re behind this man.   There’s also two thin white women behind him in dresses, just like the fucking e-mails.  

    So I ask if this is for real and they all smile and say, “Yes.   It’s for real”. 

     I smile.  All this time I’d been praying, God had been listening.  The first thing I’m going to do is get another neuro-psychiatric test and, if I pass it, I’m free.  I can have the American dream.   I can live in Chicago, or in a suburb of Chicago, I might even get the attorney to get my email privileges back.  I can get married, have friends, have kids, not be threatened anymore.  

     I can travel anywhere in the world I want.  I can go to Walmart when I run out of toilet paper, I’m free.   I can have friends.   I can date anyone I want.  I can live with anyone I want.   I can consensually fuck anyone, anywhere.   I can go to AANR events and look at everyone.   I can travel to England with K.  

     But, there’s going to need to be responsibilities.   I’m going to have to pay taxes again, budget, make car payments, insurance payments, health insurance payments.  There’ll be scam artists everywhere trying to get this money for no reason.   Sob stories.  

      Fuck it.   I’ll just hire a secretary to answer my calls and say “fuck off” all day.   No, he doesn’t want to give a donation, buy a timeshare, he just wants to be left alone.   Peace, quiet, freedom.   Maybe get a massage, buy albums I want, go dancing with women in translucent dresses.  

      But, how will I know you’s interested in me as a friend or a lover and who’s just after my money?   What if my close relatives try to scam me?   What if one of the fakes turn out to be real or vice versa.  

     Calm.   Talk to an accountant with a CPA, a licensed lawyer, and two other people.   Fuck.   Who are the other two people I’m supposed to talk to?   Maybe move somewhere remote.  

      Maybe I could go to big concerts like DMV, Pearl Jam, etc.   Maybe I could write books on how to never give up.   Right, just what the world needs, another goddamn self-help book.  

     So, the people hand me a lot of forms to sign.   Remember what they always said in the old cartoons?   “Always read the fine print”.   One thing said they could use the videos in ads.   Hell, no.   One was about taxes.   I signed that.   A lot of other bullshit but I read every word and only signed what I wanted to.   I’m leaving, though.   I’m suing, packing, and leaving.  

     I can now help churches who are 5013c, help anonymous organizations, go to improv, get a degree in something I can actually fucking do.  

       But, then what?   I get the family, what if the bitch divorces me.  Have to have her sign a prenuptial agreement.   Then, she’ll be trapped and won’t run away.   But, I don’t want her to feel trapped.   What do I want?   That’s the $64,000 question and I don’t know that I know the answer.   What do I want to do now that I’m free?   So, I guess that’s why they have shrinks.   I guess.