Back “Home” again

As my initial post on this site says the primary purpose of it is a sort of diary but mostly just in case any of my kids or grandkids ever want to know about me. My daughter, Heather, hasn’t spoken to me in twenty six years, which breaks my heart. My son, Chris, hasn’t connected with me in more than ten years, despite my attempts to reconnect with him back when I lived in London, Ontario. As for my grandkids I met my son’s oldest daughter, Danielle, when she was just a baby and we did reconnect when I was in BC. We chatted quite a bit until I assume her Dad put a stop to that. I’ve never connected with his daughter, Merissa. I did connect with his other daughter, Mackenzie, back when she was fourteen. Again we chatted back and forth and we were even going to meet when she came to Mexico, but she cut me off when she came to Puerto Villarta and stopped chatting with me just a suddenly. The saddest part of this whole thing is that I have no idea what I did to deserve this. Not a soul has ever explained why they won’t talk to me. No one was ever stronger about family than me and my kids know that. Sadly they not only cut me out of their lives but did the same for my entire side of the family. It hurt their grandparents, my Mum and Dad, terribly. My brother and sister and my kid’s cousins never heard from them again. No clue why.

Being forced back to Canada, something I figured would never happen after moving to Mexico, started back when I was living in Riberas del Pilar, just east of where I was originally in Ajijic. First I lost one of my pensions because I had been out of the country for more than six months and this was about a third of my measly pension income. Then trying to get my critical diabetic meds turned into a disaster when my friend sent insulin instead of my dry meds. It took months to get to me because she mailed them instead of sending them courier as I had asked and, of course, it was garbage after not being refrigerated for months. I called the pharmacy back in Belleville to explain what happened but they refused to renew my medications without a doctor. I started researching getting my meds in Mexico but that proved impossible because of the costs. I did go through a very lengthy process with their version of public medicine and managed to get a one month supply of insulin. 

Then my landlord from hell who had given me nothing but grief since the day I moved in suddenly demanded two thousand pesos more a month and wanted it now! The fact that according to our lease he had to give me thirty days notice, plus he could only increase the rent annually by five percent meant nothing to him. The studio apartment was a nightmare with either no water, no electricity, or no internet and infestations of ants and, so much worse, cockroaches! Those little buggers are hard to kill! I was terrified chasing them around the apartment. 

It was at this point that I was ready to just give up. I researched whether an overdose of insulin would kill me. It wouldn’t. Back when I was unceremoniously dumped by my fiancée by text message I was just going to swim out in the lake far enough that I couldn’t make it back, but I was too much of a coward to do that. After crying my eyes out for days I managed to pull myself together and try to go on, but here I was in a desperate mess with no idea what to do. Just when I was thinking about getting the sleeping pills and just laying down on my bed and going peacefully a guy messaged me on Facebook offering me a free apartment for a month in Chelem in the Yucatan, about two thousand miles away. Desperate to just get out from under all this stress it seemed like a better option than going back to Canada. It wasn’t. 

Getting rid of all my stuff was yet another nightmare. My new friend, Anny, in Guadalajara offered to sell my things for me, which would have been great if my criminal Uber driver, Salvador, hadn’t stolen half my things in the move to Anny’s place. Then my equally thieving dentist offered to buy my big screen, very expensive monitor and printer, but then refused to pay me, coming up with new fictitious bills he said I owed him. It took months to get my printer back from him but somehow he managed to destroy it. When my friend, Arnie, eventually managed to get it back for me it wasn’t working and he couldn’t get a dime for it. Another four hundred dollars gone. My four hundred dollar LG monitor was ripped off by the dentist, along with the executive two hundred and fifty dollar executive chair I gave him. I never calculated how much Salvador stole from me but it was at least my expensive desk, a coffee make that I had promised to Anny, and countless other things that the guys he hired stole. Add the cost to fly to Merida and that “free” month’s rent cost me a fortune. The entire move was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. 

Not only did I lose a fortune moving to Chelem I also hated it. Something that the owner forgot to tell me when he offered me the one month free rent was that the place was sold as of the end of November so I would have to move out. The US purchaser was going to be charging nine hundred dollars US so I couldn’t possibly stay. Not only that but after living for the better part of two years in the most perfect climate in the world I was now living in an oven. It was unbearably hot and humid. Mid thirties and higher every single day. The place I lived was on the beach, which might sound nice, but it wasn’t because the wind never stopped howling. It could have blown me off the balcony. When I managed to catch the little crowded van that was transit to Progreso to shop I nearly fainted walking down the main street. Just brutal! One day when I was trying to get my glasses fixed I did actually faint. The shop owner called for help and the EMT folks got me to the hospital where they gave me insulin. At the time I didn’t realize that the public hospital that they took me to was miles from the downtown where I needed to catch the van back home. 

After not being able to find an affordable place to live, trying in vain to survive without one of my pensions, and running out my meds, particularly my insulin, I knew that I had to give up and go back to Canada, which broke my heart. I contacted everybody from the consulate to the Embassy trying to get help with the flights back to Canada, but that was just another disaster. I was trying to figure out whether to go back to the Okanagan or to Belleville. Although the flights back to Kelowna were cheaper, I think because the connection was out of Puerto Vallarta, I couldn’t get answers from the CMHA in Kelowna as to whether they had the type of housing they had in Belleville. I was also under the belief that rents were cheaper in Belleville, which was totally wrong. Rents are insane, especially in a place as horrible as Belleville. I had been checking out flights every day and at one point found flights to Toronto that were as cheap as I’d seen. When you are checking these discount airfare sites nine times out of ten when you go to book them they are sold out. When I found these flights and expected to get the same “sold out” to my surprise the flights were actually booked. It was too late to change my mind and cancel them because there were no refunds. There went half my pension money to pay for the flights. 

Now I was booked out, flying from Merida to Mexico City to Cancun to Toronto. Worst flights ever. I was going to be in the air or sitting around airports for twenty-four hours. Even the lady at check-in at Merida commented that I had terrible flights, asking if I couldn’t have done better? In a bit of a last minute panic I ended up donating most of the stuff I had bought to live. The lady I gave it all to said she could sell some of it, like my brand new coffee maker, but she never gave me a dime. She did setup a driver to take me to the airport for 600 pesos. The owner of the house had picked me up at the airport when I first came but he made no offer to take me back to the airport.

Naturally the first flight out of Merida was delayed hours. I wasn’t too worried because my layover in Mexico City was something like ten hours. Despite the fact that I was connecting on the same airline all the way to Toronto I still had to get my luggage in Mexico City and check it in again for the flight to Cancun. That meant I was hauling my luggage around for hours at the airport. I might mention that there is nowhere to sit or spend time at the airport Everything was closed overnight and the Krispy Kreme donut place showed that it opened at three o’clock in the morning. I remember seeing all kinds of people lying on the floor and at the telephone booths. I couldn’t believe that they had nowhere to even sit. Eventually I saw them getting ready to open the donut shop and I asked the guy when they would be ready. He was nice enough to let me get a coffee and donuts before they were actually open. The donuts, delicious as they were, proved to be a big mistake. 

It was something like six in the morning for my flight to Cancun. Again I had a very long layover before my final flight to Toronto which was scheduled to arrive around midnight in Toronto. I had already booked and paid for the bus to Belleville but it wasn’t leaving the airport until six-thirty in the morning, so yet another long layover. Then disaster struck. I was sort of half sleeping on a bench, not realizing that I was actually going into a diabetic coma. A very nice airport staff lady shook me and asked me if I was okay? I guess my mumbled response raised concern and the next thing I knew was that I was being wheelchaired to their emergency clinic. The doctor there spoke good English and gave me insulin and brought my sky-high sugar levels down. They wheeled me back through security again and back to my bench. I still wasn’t feeling great and I hadn’t slept in quite a while so I guess I doxed off again. Next thing I knew another airport official was shaking me telling me that I was about to miss my flight. As she wheeled me down to the gate I heard my name being called over the PA system. They got me on the plane and stuck me in the first seat where I believe the flight attendants normally sit. 

After finally getting to Toronto more than twenty-four hours after first leaving Mexico I went through challenges with customs but they let me in. First trip after getting my luggage was, of course, Timmies for coffee, something I had missed for two years. It was delicious. Then it was a matter of finding somewhere to sit and wait the hours until the bus for Belleville arrived. When it finally arrived and I showed the driver my prepaid ticket he said that I was only allowed one piece of luggage, but finally agreed to load my two pieces. When I first booked the bus I assumed that it would be stopping at the bus depot downtown. Wrong! It stopped at a truck stop off the 401, miles from downtown Belleville. Staff at the store told me that it was a twenty dollar cab ride to downtown. I didn’t have twenty dollars. In desperation I called my friend, Doral and she agreed to pick me up. She said her and her friend were on their way to a dance at the Legion so invited me to come along, which i did. I still can’t believe that after two days of horrible travel and little sleep, if any, I was able to dance, but I did. 

The place I had to live just a few days ago, before I left Mexico, now wasn’t available so Doral called the Ontario Works emergency housing number. They arranged for a taxi to pick me up and take me to a motel in Trenton for the night. It wasn’t great but at least I got to finally have a much needed shower and sleep in a bed. In the morning I learned that OW took me to Trenton but they wouldn’t take me back. I talked to the owner of the motel about staying but he was really disagreeable and said he wanted eighty dollars a night. He did say that people in another room were going back to Belleville and they would only charge me ten dollars. Thus started a couple of very crazy days with them. After we stopped downtown to get me a winter coat the police followed us to a parking lot and said that if the van moved they would arrest us. It had something to do with the muffler. Somehow we ended up on the reserve and they dealt with finding us a place. Off we went to Napanee to the Comfort Inn and they even paid for food for us. The next day we were supposed to get the van fixed but that wasn’t happening. They went to the band office again to see about housing, but when they came back they said that I was out of luck because I wasn’t native. I broke down crying. I couldn’t take anymore. Then they arranged for me to stay the night at their daughter’s place on the reserve. The apartment was disgusting but it was all I could do at least for the night. Then the police showed up because the landlord had seen me go in and I wasn’t allowed to stay there. A very nice police officer called emergency housing again and then drove me to the Comfort Inn in Belleville. It was my first decent night. 

The next morning two staff from the CMHA picked me up and I did their intake interview. Their only condition was that first I went to the hospital. When I got there my sugars were out of control and I spent the next five days being picked and prodded every hour until my sugars stabilized. Then they took me to a disgusting room at 12 Murney where I had stayed years earlier at 10 Murney. The room had no closet, a broken dresser and a horrible single bed. I wondered how I was going to survive but at least I had a roof over my head and it was better than what I had been going through since i got back to Canada. I was only there a few days when they told me that I was moving to Dunbar, the senior’s residence, because some guy living there couldn’t handle the stairs. Well, home again, sort of.               

   

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