So, wrapped up business trip to NYC on Friday, hung out with sister over weekend and on bus back to PA now. Ordinarily I would drive but I scratched my cornea recently, having trouble getting replacement contact lenses, blah blah blah. Driving around town with my Ms. Magoo glasses OK, interstate no go. At the stop in Easton while having a smoke, I befriend a woman named Christina. She’s trying to figure out why station is not open, I agree. She has a little dog, a cockapoo named Moon or somesuch, very cute. Christina says she’s looking to move to Easton to be near the water, continue teaching art. She has zero plans, reservations or organization. I’m thinking homeless or eccentric off meds. She has a nice phone. She is very smart and loony, not grubby. When I asked her specific information like her age, she got evasive. I put her on a ten minute timeout and she honored it. For whatever reason, maybe the cute dog, maybe the massive NYPD and FDNY presence I noted on Friday evening in anticipation of the unrest surrounding the release of the police beating tape, maybe you see how fortunate you are in relief, I convince her to get back on the bus and come out to our town and we will come up with a plan from there. It was pretty frightening how easy that was to do. We are putting her up at a local hotel for at least tonight. I felt like I needed her to be safe for one night, there’s a bus going back to NYC every afternoon. What else should I be considering to help/figure out how to help? No idea too outlandish. If it turns out she got a couple of good night’s rest and that’s it, that’s fine too.
Tough situation to know what the best /right thing to do is. Best of luck to you, as you figure it out. I had a neighbor discussing another neighbor I also knew once say: I gave her my pinkie, and she took my whole arm. I've gotten myself sucked into uncomfortable situations helping lots folks I didn't know very well. Some ended well, and some I had to push away and distance myself from. Make sure you take care of yourself, first and foremost, @Yzasserina, and don't allow yourself to get sucked into something that takes too much of you.
Friend of mine let a down and out sleep in his station wagon, next morning he was gone along with some tools.
She is a total stranger. Unless she specifically asks for more help, in terms of public resources, which I can help with in terms of navigating, I am out two nights at the Hampton Inn and a bus ticket back to NYC. In the interim, she admitted she is homeless.
You lost me at nice phone and no plan. After getting in a motorcycle accident and getting an incomplete spinal cord injury, I have no sympathy for people like that. That's the life she chose. She has her health and I would gladly change positions with her.
ALL kinds of warning flags going off on this one about bringing home strays, feeding them, etc. Back when she was cool, BabyMomma and I went to Mexico for a getaway in 2007. We got back to BWI...it was cold...we stopped at Safeway for milk and stuff on the way home. We were by Arundel Mills Mall. In their infiinite wisdom, the powers that be here have created shuttle buses so people from Baltimore can come to this Mall to shop or shop lift as they feel is convenient. On this day, some VERY old man had got on the bus to come down from Balmer...(is my guess), and "Joe" got confused and lost in the process. When we got to the Safeway, our paths crossed. It was 11pm, and as far as I could tell, he'd been wandering around the mall looking for the bus to take him back for no less than six hours. Nothing about him being there alone at 11pm made any sense. I got our groceries and gathered him in the car with us and took him to the closest Maryland State Police Barracks, which didn't want to take him, either. I bascically told them, "It's your fucking job...do it!" and left. I wouldn't let him freeze to death...but boundaries were maintained.
She has the kind where there are episodes where “they” are drilling in her head. She wants to go back to NYC tomorrow so she got a safe place to sleep tonight. Fine with me.
Yep. Not once did I turn my back on her for the five minutes I was in the hotel room with her, she is tiny, maybe five feet tall. The rest of the time there were other passengers on the bus and Fred drove us to the hotel. Her dog is a good judge of character. So my armchair diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenic. She is an artist, showed me some of her work, skilled, fine motor skills and she wrote a children’s book about a ballerina with the correct French ballet terminology, which included the name of her little dog, Silver Moon, which is the name of a tutu. She is coherent and rational most times, has money to take herself to Denny’s next to the hotel, etc., and then you get the oddball remark about how “they” are drilling in her brain. I wasn’t going to leave her in Easton on a Sunday morning, there is zero available there. Back to NYC she goes. Probably best place for her. Maybe she does actually have an apartment in Flushing, Queens.
I worry about people like her. Appear functional but likely can't hold a job. The world is a bad place and all the more so for women that can't reason out what is really needed to live such as LD. I met a middle age guy that was LD whose mother had recently died and he was homeless. I tried to get him government help but he disappeared. I wonder if the poor dope froze to death by the side of the road somewhere.
Yep based on my hour Google degree, severe stress or trauma can be a trigger for a dissociative behavior. Whatever happened to Christina, I’ll never know. I just know she and her little dog are sleeping safe tonight.
So to close out this chapter… Christina and I agreed yesterday evening to meet up today to get her back on the bus to NYC… Get to hotel, she is gone, which I halfway predicted… room spotless, dog food that Fred purchased, food bowls, bottles of Fiji left behind. Unproductive conversation with hotel management IRT which direction did she go. Watch the videos. The two staff personnel have good judgment, their supervisor does not. Color me shocked. Go to Denny’s. Staff there for the duration, didn’t see her. Briefly trawl up and down the 80 interchange. Nope. Go to bus ticket station, a convenience store here in town, and it turns out Christina and her dog (it turns out she is a golden labradoodle puppy, everyone remembers her) took the 7:55 am bus to points asunder. Fair winds and following seas, Christina and Silver Moon.
Good on ya for trying, we had a schizo working for us. Dude got in a legit shootout on a Monday at 630 am, that's when we stopped trying to help.
