Memorial Day weekend starts today. Unofficial start of summer here in the US. The schools have let out for the summer here in the city. After several days of cool and rainy weather it’s starting to feel like early summer. And I am loving it.

Traditionally summers have been my toughest time of year. August is typically my worst month for mental health problems. Maybe this year will be different. This is going to be my first summer since 2021 I am effectively living by myself. In summer 2022 I had an awful roommate who was hard of hearing, watched his tv at full volume and always watched reality tv and Doomsday Preppers. He was often sit in his wheelchair in the middle of the room and always refused to move his chair out of the way whenever I had to use the bathroom. He finally got moved in September after he yelled at and kicked a nurse. Wasn’t sorry to see him leave. After he left, I did four months of physical therapy, got far more mentally stable, and lost a bunch of weight.

In February 2023 I got well enough to make the move from rural Nebraska to suburban Oklahoma City. I lived with my parents until something permanent came open. Originally, I was hoping to find something by the end of summer 2023. Turns out I didn’t find anything permanent until summer 2025. Two and a half years of little privacy and watching my parents age and decline messed with my head. It got bad enough that for several months I left my room only to use the bathroom, clean up, and make my own dinner. It was just too painful watching my parents decline. That, and the house wasn’t wheelchair accessible. Even the front door and sidewalk was too narrow for my wheelchair. In some ways, it wasn’t much better than being in jail.

Eventually the hard times ended. My hard times ended when I moved to a facility in the downtown area. I moved here on Labor Day weekend in 2025. I have been doing well and making improvements in the last nine months I have lived here.

Medication wise, I’m down to only one blood pressure medication per day. I take only two psych meds a day instead of the three I was on when I first moved here. And one of the two medications I am currently on is only half the dose I was a taking when I first moved here. Most of my arthritis is gone as long as I take Tylenol and ibophrophen once a day.

I’m on good enough terms with the aides and nurses now that they don’t bother me much and generally leave me alone unless I really need help. I can stand up but still can’t walk from the bed to the front door. I have lost over 100 pounds in the last eight months and lost over 170 pounds since March 2020. I have a new goal of eventually being below 200 pounds. Probably take another few years. But I have developed better habits, have a stable living arrangement for the first time since late 2021, and am not worried about irritable neighbors trying to get me evicted. I thrive in circumstances where I have enough money to eat healthy meals and am not worried about getting kicked out of my home on a landlord’s whim and neighbors’ lies. The cost of rent has gotten inhumane in most places in the US in the last several years.

In other news, my blog is starting to get some real attention. I think it helps that I have been writing an average of once or twice a week for the past 14 years. A few dollars a day worth of advertising really helps. No different than any business. No one is going to visit if they don’t know I’m out here.

I haven’t done this well for this long ever. It’s cool to finally have some privacy and autonomy that people actually respect. I enjoy living where people aren’t going to go through my personal things or look over my shoulder when I’m writing, reading, or doing computer simulation games.

It’s good to have neighbors who aren’t always spying on me or whispering behind my back whenever I run errands. I never had that until I moved to my current home. It’s good that it’s actually quiet here at night most nights. I don’t have to listen to neighbors blasting their tv or arguing with each other most nights.

It’s nice to live in a complex where the cops aren’t showing up every day to break up domestic disputes or investigate thefts or assaults. Goodness knows I never had that in 16 years of living in low-income housing even in a small town. The last three to four years were the worst. The pandemic made it unbearable to even leave my apartment. Thankful I’m no longer in that toxic hellhole mess. Only time I had privacy as a kid was when I went to the backyard. And sometimes the neighborhood kids would watch me as I paced and made up stories. It was like, ‘God, why can’t these people get a life.’

Thankfully my life is no longer like that. I am never voluntarily going back to that kind of life. I don’t care if I am loved by my neighbor. I just want him to leave me the hell alone. At least I get that here in the city. And I love it. My goodness I love it. First in my life I can truly be free to be myself without blowback and repercussions. Where was this the first 45 years of my life? Now I would love to make it another 45 years if I can live the way I currently go.