Embracing Stability

As of a few days ago, I hit the one month mark at the shelter. Combine this with close to two solid months of work, and you have the recipe for stability, at least relatively speaking in my case. While there is an impending move in a couple of months, at which time my three months of shelter-dom will have expired, I have come to realize that this is what stability feels like. At first it felt incredibly predictable and terribly monotonous, but after some thinking, it seems this is what normal people do on the daily. For someone whose only stability has been instability for quite some time, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t require some getting used to. Part of me feels like I should be awaiting the next step, the next move, the next big thing, but the part of me that craves normalcy and a return to a certain level of functioning realizes the necessity of said stability.

I read somewhere that once incarcerated, especially at a young age, inmates will mimic the incarcerated lifestyle to which they had become accustomed on the outside as well. It struck me that there is most likely a corollary with my circumstance as well. After being “locked down” in any number of institutions across three states, there comes with a tendency for flight and preparation for it. For whatever reason many of my manic episodes have seen me purge close to all of my possessions at any given time, inclusive of, but not limited to clothes, jewelry, electronics (e.g., phones, video games, DVD’s etc.), furniture, and personal affects either by giving them away, many times to perfect strangers, or by simply tossing them in the trash. While the point of this entry isn’t to psychologize this particular behavior, because it does seem so out there, I’ll just say the purging helped me find a measure of control during periods when I had little control over anything else, with my mental stability being atop that list. However, as it relates to my flightiness, this ongoing process of destroying and rebuilding ad nauseum made picking up and moving at a whim all the easier.

Since I am resolved to establish myself, I am doing all that I can to keep things stable because there are certain things that I do wish I still had, despite my preference towards minimalism. Starting over again and again can be burdensome in its own right, to the point where the excitement of newness has yielded to the tedium of stability. Though it feels like groundhog’s day, and will until I move out of the shelter, this period is giving me a chance to 1) save money 2) embrace the camaraderie of those around me and 3) enjoy the sense of pride that comes with doing things without having to lean on family and friends for assisted living situations.

My everyday routine looks something like this.

1)      Get up at 6:30 AM

2)      Leave the shelter by 7:45 AM at the latest (usually earlier as I get antsy or annoyed with the cramped congestion of the morning)

3)      Take the bus to the library and chill there until it’s time to go to work

4)      Return to the shelter in the PM, and prepare to do it all again

In between there is a lot of waiting and walking. The former has given me patience as I am often forced to wait for places to open, buses to come, and shifts to start. The latter is my newfound preferred mode of exercise, one that is cheap, peaceful, and a metaphor for life. Outside of work, I probably walk a couple of miles per day, and though it’s slow (relatively speaking, despite my typically speedy gait) with one foot in front of the other, eventually I reach my destination.  That’s how I have come to see my goals in general; they are coming to fruition, gradually materializing upon the horizon of hope and happiness.