Pretty sure my back is to the wall here...
With the holidays behind us at last, I'm pretty sure the management at the apartment complex where I've lived (in the same unit even) for 8 years is about to start pressing me for an answer to a very important question: who will be moving, when will it happen, and what's the destination?
I cannot stay. I am allergic to the downstairs neighbor, who cannot be compelled to respect the lethal threat she has become. All she would have to do is use unscented dryer sheets, and she has flat refused to consider it despite repeated requests from 2 different managers over the years. I'd already been here at least 3 years before she moved in, and as of the week before Christmas there are no complaints in my 8-year tenant file! She also flat refuses to consider (and again cannot be compelled) swapping units with the other downstairs tenant in this 4-plex building. Her dryer vent is directly below the only entrance/exit to my unit, and my MD is entirely convinced that my now-potentially-fatal allergic response to artificial scent agents has been drastically worsened just in the year he's known me and he is 100% sure she is the cause because I get doused in a toxic plume from her dryer vent at least once a week. And I cannot be given any more allergy meds, as I already take Claritin-D AND Flonase just to be able to leave my home. They are no longer enough.
I cannot speak to my partner of 12 years about moving. He has severe anger management issues that I've only had to see about 3 times in those 12 years, but being forced out of our home to save my life has become a serious rage trigger. He does NOT want to move and he does NOT want to live here alone and I don't know who is going to have to tell him he can have one of those things and no other options exist. I can tell him that his feeling of being punished for something he did not do is completely valid, and that's about it.
I cannot speak to my other partner, less than 3 weeks from our 7th anniversary (it's all open, both of them know the situation and are okay with it) because he just says "everything will be okay." He cannot offer a single fact to back that up and gets very surly when I point out that platitudes are NOT all that reassuring. I cannot move in with him because SSI requires by federal law that I pay half the rent and utilities anywhere I live with another person, and his health requirements put his power/heat bill way out of my range. He only gets about $100 more a month on a different disability program than I get on SSI.
I cannot speak to my mother about this. My father just left her for the second time in their lives to go back to a woman who nearly killed him and who is still living in HIS house with her daughter, despite having remarried after my father moved out (to her daughter's dad, so she could collect his Social Security after he died in 11-14) AND despite a court decree that a major term of her divorce from my father was that the house was to be SOLD back in October. She says she's waiting for her wheelchair-bound, amputee daughter (threw herself off an overpass and lived) to be cleared to go live in Mexico. My mother firmly believes that my anxiety-associated panic attacks, and the anxiety that fuels them, are due entirely to my "incurably negative attitude". Apparently she managed to miss the entirety of the 15 years I spent burning as much negativity out of my heart and mind as I could, and she is the ONLY person I know who doesn't see the changes. Essentially, since I will NEVER accept my former stepmother (the one with the amputee daughter) as family again. I waited, and kept my mouth shut for the sake of peace in the family, since 1977 to be shut of that horrible woman and I will not have her in my life again.
I've looked at the housing options in my area. There are almost no studio or 1-bedroom apartments, houses, cabins, trailers, etc. Those that are open are either "community coin-op laundry", which is a lethal threat now because of the stink-pretty additives almost everyone uses, or they have NO w/d access, or the rent alone (not counting utilities, and nothing I found online included utilities) is more than SSI gives me a month to live on. The few I could potentially afford that would not expose me to allergens constantly would leave me about $75 a month after rent and electricity/heat, and that is not enough in this area for a phone OR for internet access. I have been unable to drive since 2007 due to having had 8 full-on, can't move can't think can't breathe panic attacks while behind the wheel of a moving car, 3 of them back when I lived in Seattle 11 years ago. I will lose 2 partners, 2 pets, all access to medical and psychiatric care, and all contact with family and friends.
Is it just me or do I have a pretty good reason to panic right now?
