"Life's a gas" - C. Andersen

There is a lot of venting about to happen here. You have been warned.
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What should i do???

Please read and let me know. I don't care who you are. I need help.

Just when you think things could'nt get any worse.....

....this Tuesday our gas got shut off. We got the little green slips in the mail letting us know. No joke. It was due to late payments and minimum payments. Cold showers and no stove. It's all about giggles and fun here at the Catholic Worker.
(It's very coooold in here right now.)

Thankfully it will be back on hopefully some time tomorrow. We have been charged a crazy amount of money that we can't really hope to pay (fully, that is)...we are required to pay the balance within 2 weeks or we will get sgut off again! So Don sent out a mass email basically begging everyone and anyone for help. We have recieved some generous emails from people who want to send money...and other kinds of help. How nice.

And as per usual, my name wasnt mentioned in the damn email. Which I think is the straw that is breaking the camels back. After a year of living in this house, living through the burn out of 2 co-workers, being the only one left in this house, having survived 9 months of insanity, kidnappings, crack users, shootings, theft, a lot of "grinning and bearing it", feeling virtually invisible on this block, putting my mental and many times physical health at risk, having to ask all residents in my house to leave and the subvsequent madness, and more recently living through undoubtedly the worst/hardest 2 months I think I have ever experienced which i won't get into cause if i do I might barf. ( i could generally go on for a long time here - but i'll spare all the details)...all this for the sake of the community....and then finally when things get so bad that a desperate plea for help has to be sent out...I'M NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE FUCKING EMAIL!!!!!!!!!!! Every time i think the worst is over...the pit just keeps on deepening.

I know by now many of you might be asking: why am i still here?
What has this community really given to me outside of some major melt-downs and feelings of complete isolation, and the real kicker: the total ravageing of my spiritual and creative life?

I guess i just wanted so badly to salvage something good out of a very wrong situation. I want to be able to do some of the things I've dreamt about doing here. I want something to show for all the work and tears and pain of this year...something good...something beautiful and life-giving. But I'm too tired to do anymore dreaming.

One of the hardest parts about all of this, is that after all of this I can't even say that I have made very many true and lasting friendships/relationshpis. ironically that is what a community is supposed to be about. I can think of 3 people, and for those I am very thankful...but I keep asking myself...has all this been worth it for that?

In Conclusion: I do really want to leave. Thats the truth. But i don't know where to go or what to do from here.
I'm afraid of the overwhelming bitterness that may ensue as a result of doing all this work and having to leave without doing anything I really wanted to do. I just feel so worn out and under valued and unappreciated.

I feel like an old piece of garbage that has been chewed up and will soon be spat out.
I FEEL USED.

what should i do? ? ? ?

how do i know if i should leave...or if i need to stick this out. if you have an opinion...please give it?

when Jesus drinks

so thankful for generous friends with comfortable apartments for me to lie down in.
Even ones that are half packed...or close to half.

yet again, writing this from Aprils apartment. have spent the afternoon watching TV here - doin' nothing. boxes and bags full of her stuff packed up. she'll be going to Costa Rica middle of October. looking around here it is becomeing painfully real.
...the fact that she really is leaving. hard thing. difficult thing when people you love, who have become part of the fabric of your life, go away. makes me sad.

sad today. tired. wondering if all this is going to be worth it. it doesnt feel like it right now. it feels a little more like slow dying. i'm loseing my faith in people . talking and talking and talking in circles and i don't even know if this is where i should be. feel as if i'm banging and banging my head against a brick wall - for what??

SO frustrated with people who like to talk talk talk out of thier asses about "the Beloved Community" ad about ideasls- preaching about the beauty of living in community yada yada yada, when the shit hits the fan the talkers scatter like ashes in the wind. when it comes down to the really really hard stuff, the ones who talk the loundest run the farthest away. and it makes me reeeaaaaally friggin MAD. it makes me want to rant and rave and swear. it makes me want to say:

"wow - you big bunch o' hypocrites - you are the kind that probably make Jesus want to drink gin staight outta the cat dish. He is quite a guy to love you in spite of you acting like big, stupid, pompous idiots. Maybe you'd best shut your trap about your high and mighty ideals from now on, unless your prepared to walk the talk. f*&%*ers."

yeah - I'm all about cutting through the crap right now. Believe me when i say - thats it's a big job - cause there seems to be a mountain of crap to cut through around here. big old stinky pile.

and on that happy note.....
peace,
-julia

The fall.

I have been such a bad blogger lately.

September is here...the air is cooler...it smells like new beginnings.
I wish I were about ot head back into school - buying books - sniffing thier new crisp pages - taking long strolls through an ivy covered campus and laying my head down on a red velevet covered chair in the red library with a book and a highlighter. The fall always makes me feel like starting something fresh...something new yet familiar. Makes me feel like travelling!!

Strange to be feeling all these things when my life situation is about the farthest thing from fresh and new. Instead of branching out into a new horizon, I have been given the most unpleasant job of dusting the cobwebs off an experiment gone bad, and a community of people coming un-hinged. Or just gone moldy or wonky. Actually it's quite a lot more complicated and serious than that, in a way. A lot of hard work to be done...and being done. Too much to explain. Am i being cryptic??

I did spend a beautiful 8 days of silence last month at Loyola House which is a Jesuit retreat and training centre in Guelph. (You may have heard of it by way of a big old Wal-Mart scandal that has been on-going. The monks lost of course. I saw the beginnings of it while I was there. A monstrosity!)
My 8 days there were a gift to me, and a reminder that God is ever and always present..even in the darkest and lonliest of circumstances.

Reading a 'laugh-out-loud' poignantly bizarre book by Christopher Moore entitled "Lamb - The gospel according to Biff, Christs childhood pal". It is truly one of the funniest and most facisinateing books I've read in a long time. Not for the theologically faint of heart - it may offend some....just a warning. It has many sweet little nuggets of truth hidden...one of my favorites that i had never heard is this one:

"The three jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation and humility.
Compassion leads to courage, moderation leads to generosity, and humility leads to leadership."

I'll leave you on that note.
I do love the fall.

peace,
-julia