Living With Schizophrenia

I remember when I was in California. I had met this man named Rick in a bar. He was in a wheelchair. He had had no legs. He found out I was without a place to stay and offered to let me stay at his place. I was paranoid, but figured a helpless man like him could not hurt me, so I took him up on the offer.

He liked to smoke marijuana, and at the time, so did I. So we smoked a lot of ganga. We talked about a lot of stuff, none of which I remember now. My home base (where I kept my stuff) was in Willow Creek. I had a little corner of the woods just off the road. It was a little ways off the trail, behind some bushes. Hayfork, where Rick lived was about 30 miles away. I had followed my friend, Freedom, down there to listen to him play. He didn't seem to care that I was homeless, so I went to the bar in big downtown Hayfork and met Rick.

There were a bunch of dogs on the property. They belonged to the neighbor.

I left because he hit on me. I had only been there a couple of days. I don't know if he knew there was something wrong with me or not.

About a year later, I decided I missed him and his capsule for Sputnik. He owned a capsule, which sat out in his front yard.

So, I went to his place. He had crashed his special van, so he was basically trapped in the house. He offered to let me stay again, and I took him up on it. I remember that he wanted me to sell his rocket capsule on the internet. He also told me that I could take one of the dogs with me when I left. He was tired of them running around.

He hit on me a couple more times, and I got really paranoid, so I left again, with a dog in tow. It seemed to me that the dog was just trying to irritate me. We'd walk places and my coffee would spill out of my cup because he would freak out every time a car went by. I only had two hands and found this extremely frustrating. We hung out for awhile in an abandoned garage. I had gotten some food for him from an extremely nice man, who had seen us outside of the store in town. This was hard to carry as it was a big bag, and I dropped it a few times and had to find an alternate container for it since it burst open.

Finally, feeling trapped with the big bag of food, and extremely pissed off at myself and the dog, I cut him loose and threw my empty coffee cup at him. He ran off. I have no idea what happened to him after that.

That was the second dog I tried to have while homeless. The first was Blue (I named him Blue before I found out about Blue's Clues) a neglected and abused animal I tried to rescue from my acquaintance Randy's farm. I had thought Randy was a decent sort, till I saw him try to kick one of their cats. I let him off the leash a couple of times, and the second time, he kept eluding me, and would not let me put him on a leash. The animal control people caught him in downtown Fairhaven, WA and took him away. He had mange, and was not a likely prospect for adoption.... I couldn't afford to set him free from the shelter. So, it's unknown to me what happened to Blue.

The third dog I tried to adopt was a stray pit bull I found in Watts. I named him Fat Albert. He had gotten nudged by a car. He had a huge swelling in his side, and I was a little afraid of him. He was too strong for the makeshift collar I made for him, and he eventually escaped and ran off.

I miss my dogs now, and wish I hadn't been so afraid of vets, the dogs themselves and other authority figures. I don't own an animal now, and am not sure I trust myself with one. But, I vow to take better care of an animal if I ever do get another one.