We all have dreams. Big ones, like becoming a successful business entrepreneur, making a cool million a year, or maybe simply owning your own home. Medium-sized ones, like having a devoted relationship with a trusted mate. And, then there are the pint-sized dreams: getting through the day without needing a drink. Wait! Wait! That last little dream to one person could be a BIG dream to one whose very life depends on it.
Dreams are like that. They’re subjective buggers, ephemeral as the current state of the newspaper business and often illusive as, well, a dream.
What if you were one of the over 700,000-member-strong U.S. homeless[1] population and your dream was to have your life back, where no one bothered you anymore, probed into your personal, private corners or insisted you take a bucket load of medications or you couldn’t see your children?
What if one magical day, out of the great blue, you found yourself holding a U.S. Treasury check for 23 thousand smackeroos for the first time in I don’t know how long and it was just enough for a 50% down payment on 20 acres out in the middle of nowhere, where no one would or could bother you ever, ever again?
What if an eager, hungry real estate agent didn’t seem to notice that you were wearing multi-layers of filthy clothes or didn’t quite catch that you had been “camping” out in the wilderness for seven months in one of the most brutal winters in Central Oregon? What if that same oblivious real estate agent didn’t think it was important or significant that the prospective female buyer didn’t own a vehicle, while knowing full well that the 20-acre parcel was seven miles away from the nearest convenience market, which may or may not be open year-round? Year- round services were another 14 miles. That’s on foot, by the way. Try that 20-mile hike in the middle of a two- day January blizzard.
Here’s a few more “what ifs.” What if a new friend of that homeless woman found out the 20- acre fantasy she wanted to buy was zoned “Recreational,” meaning she could never build anything permanent on it? No house. No well. No septic system. But hey, the new friend thought, a good, old-fashioned yurt — a tent-like dwelling — could work. They’re somewhat temporary. Just ask the Mongolians. They’ve been lugging them around the Central Asian steppes quite successfully for at least 3,000 years. Perhaps my homeless friend was a Mongolian in a past life.
Oh, yeah, and one more thing. The new friend discovered there’s no water on or near the property either. The closest water is seven miles away. Not level miles, mind you, but miles of up and down and up and down the cliffs towering above Lake Billy Chinook.
Nice piece of ground, yeah; beautiful surroundings, check; remote, check; affordable, check; survivable — well, that’s where the dream begins to unravel.
What would you do if you were that new friend and you quickly discovered this tenacious, surprisingly competent homeless woman also suffers from decades of diagnosed severe mental illness, what she calls a bipolar disorder? This woman who has survived on her instincts and resilience tells me she hasn’t taken her prescribed psychotropic medications for years, and that she doesn’t need them. “There’s nothin’ wrong with me,” she told me as she launched into another loud, indecipherable diatribe on “those that did wrong to me.”
Nearly 25% of the homeless population in the U.S. suffers from some form of severe mental illness.[2] Most of the afflicted do not take daily medications unless hospitalized. While in the manic phase of severe bipolar disorder, the last thing one wants to do is end the euphoria.
So, what would you do?
Well, I — the new friend — gave up trying to persuade my homeless companion that she might want to consider another piece of property nearer a community where she could get help, food or water if she needed it, thought it prudent to have a frank discussion with the real estate agent. I contacted the agent the day after I drove the homeless woman out to see her new utopian property. I was thankfully accompanied by a 19-year-old young man who was along to lend an able-bodied hand with the trailer full of furniture I was towing behind my truck — including her recent purchases: a dining room table, six chairs, a metal 4-door filing cabinet, several used barely functional window screens, two large metal buckets, a gallon of kerosene, and six 100# bags of grout — not ready-mix concrete — grout.
I told the selling agent it was crazy.
It was the only word I could think of at the time.
The agent responded by saying “I tried to talk her out of it, but she really wants that land. I didn’t notice anything strange about her.” Really? You didn’t notice her repetitive, rapid speech or unpredictable mood swings or racing thoughts from one second to the other? It’s what scripture calls a “spinning web of attention”?
I repeat: there isn’t any available water for miles. What did the homeless woman think she was going to do with the grout without water? In what structure did she envision putting a dining set and a filing cabinet? How was she going to survive, forcryingoutloud???
The last four miles leading to the recreational property is akin to any rural one-lane dirt road, if you don’t mind driving no more than two or three miles an hour while avoiding ruts a foot deep and protruding, immovable boulders that require deft slalom maneuvers. And, that’s in the summer.
When we finally arrived at what she thought was her dream property (frankly, I’m not certain we were on the right property) I got out of the car, tears in my eyes and bluntly told her “I feel like I’ve brought you out here to die.” With a wave of her thin fingers she said, “It’ll all work out. Don’t worry about it,” and determinedly started unloading her new “stuff” from the back of the trailer. That riposte, incidentally, is a textbook maneuver (albeit unconsciously) for one in the midst of a manic episode.
According to a good friend in the real estate biz I consulted on the matter, my new homeless buddy has the right to buy whatever she wants as long as she is responsible for herself, meaning the state hasn’t taken that right away. Unfortunately there’s no mental-health police. And, obviously the ethics and moral clause in most contracts doesn’t apply here either.
This is her dream, the only thing she has left to leave to her children and prove that she can do this on her own. Providing for one’s children is a definitive act. This is her way, perhaps, of making up for past mistakes she thinks she may have made.
So, I ask again, what would you do? The conundrum for me is how much does one get involved when watching a fellow human being making decisions that are irrational and could, potentially lead to her death. My outrage was not — IS not — with my delusional, homeless friend with a Quixotian dream; that I confine to the real estate agent, the seller and the escrow personnel who select oblivion over compassion, and perform their jobs in a bubble of professionalism, even when confronted by the stark incoherence of my friend.
My mind also ricochets off the possibility that from a greater perspective, my unsettled friend does know what she is doing. Her job is to keep the dream alive and well within her idiosyncratic imagination. Who am I to rain on her unusual Pride Parade? Who knows? My histrionic friend may turn out to be far more “in the spiritual groove” than I am.
Dreaming, says iconoclast Jack Kerouac, ties all mankind together. I find myself captivated by the odd curve of my friend’s dream, and in a way I’m slightly envious of her obstinate refusal to let it go.
So, I hold open the door to the mysterious possibilities that everything will work out, just like she says.
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[1] http://www.endhomelessness.org/content/article/detail/3668
[2] http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/Mental_Illness.html
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