Oh my, am I still writing this series? Well, the show must go on, eh? Yes, 2003, my first full year off of welfare and living in social housing. When I went off of welfare, ironically my rent was reduced dramatically. I had been paying at around $325 a month, which was the housing allowance back then from a typical welfare cheque of $510. It has since gone up to $375 a month rent from a check of $610. Woo-HOO! Now, as I was pulling only a few occasional shifts in my new job I was paying the bare minimum for a working tenant in BC Housing: $125 whopping dollars a month. No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me just why a welfare recipient, having much less left over to survive on, is still expected to pay around three times as much for housing as the working poor, but that little rant will be for another blog post.
For a very punishing job in a homeless shelter I was pulling in more than eighteen bucks an hour, the highest wage I have still ever earned. The job was, as I said, punishing. I was working casual hours at a place that is notorious for mistreating both its workers and clients. In order to train me they had me working almost exclusively midnight shifts. I had a multiplicity of responsibilities: doing intake, seeing that clients were properly provided with all they needed, security, statistics, administering medications, among other things. Twice I and a coworker were held hostage by angry meth heads. Several times I was verbally abused by senior staff. Many times I almost quit, but I had no desire to return to being on welfare. Besides which, our still spanking shining new neo-liberal provincial government had made going or staying on welfare so tough that I already knew that my chances of being accepted again would be likely zero to nil. I had not been accepted for disability. An advocate took one look at me after my claim had been turned down and said "Get a job." So I did.
My bank account was growing, and even when I went nearly two months working no more than three shifts, my balance continued to increase.
I mentioned two posts ago that the building I now live in is run basically by an evangelical Christian missionary society and that the management really tried to run the place like a theocracy, including weekly Bible studies in the common room. The manager, whom I shall here call "Dull-Ass" was a particular, if dull, pain in the, er, ass. The worst kind of narrow minded, paranoid and judgemental Christian fundamentalist, he was a Bible belt stereotype come to life. We agreed on practically nothing, though we are both Christians and somehow I ended up attending his fundamentalist church.
It happened innocently enough. This happened to be one of those hip, urban and slightly edgy fundamentalist churches where they were always talking about the "City" and the arts, and the need for Christians to fully involve themselves in every aspect of secular life. Every aspect that isn't gay, lesbian or transgender, should I say, given how nastily homophobic these people were. Dull-Ass really liked my art and persuaded me to participate in an art show at fundy church. I didn't know then that he was a member there with a lot of status and clout, especially given the strong missionary presence that members of his church were trying to maintain in my social housing building. They really must have seen us as an easy mark. And we were, and still are, vulnerable. Like shooting fish in a barrel. I found it maddening and bailed after two years.
In the meantime I was faithfully seeing my psychiatrist every two weeks. I found him at times a little too up close and personal when he was asking me repeatedly about tedious details around my experiences of childhood sexual abuse. He also mentioned on occasion that I was attractive (!) Other than that he seemed pretty good about boundaries. During those first two years of therapy I was basically submissive and compliant, though I was growing increasingly restless. Eventually I took the reins of recovery from his hands and decided to chart my own course of recovery. Much to my surprise he proved to be very supportive of this.
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