In regard to your post about not wanting to live in the group home and wanting to live alone. As people said, group homes are way better than living on the streets. I don’t know if you would survive the streets. Living alone is no picnic either.
Living alone means you have to make rent every month. If you don’t have a job that is difficult. Living alone means you have to take care of your own needs. That includes grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up. And a big part of having your own place means you have to keep it clean. That means keeping the kitchen clean including doing dishes, vacuuming, scrubbing the bathroom regularly, dusting periodically, keeping it picked up and neat. It means managing your own money and paying bills on time. Maybe you can get someone to help you-maybe not.
It means buying clothes, making and keeping appointments, it means being in charge of your own medication and handling whatever business comes up. I’ll tell you what I learned from living alone and knowing other people with mental illness who have lived alone. One of the biggest problems you would have is isolating. I know from experience how easy it is to stay in your own nice, warm apartment and how hard it is to put out effort and go out. That’s the big trap of living independently. It’s just too easy to get in a pattern of just holing up in your apartment and not seeing or talking to anyone. Especially, if you’re mentally ill and not a mature adult.
I tell you, when I was 18-19 I lived on my own with my sister. I did OK in some areas but I lost my friends and ended up isolating. I managed to clean and cook and be employed but I had no friends and that is a difficult position to be in.
And speaking of not liking where you live, hell, when I was 21 I was in the hospital for 8 months. After that I moved into a strict, highly structured group home. I didn’t really like it butI stayed there a year because I was dependent on other people. I was not happy there but I’m grateful that it taught me to manage my own money and take care of myself. After the group home I moved into semi independent living. It was houses where they stuck in three or four mentally ill people and you took care of yourself but we had a counselor on call who we could go to with out problems. I didn’t particularly like living like that, after all, we didn’t get to pick the house we were put in and we didn’t get to pick who we lived with. But I lived in those houses for four years.
Sometimes when you’re an adult you just have to do stuff you don’t want to do. In my twenties I did all kinds of things that I didn’t want to do, because it was best for me at the time. And I learned some things. Eventually, I lived by myself and rented rooms in other peoples houses. I ran into hard times in 2015 and ended up in another group home after living in my own for 20 years. Now I’m 61 and am back in supported housing. I don’t like it here but it’s better than the streets and I hope to live by myself. I take care of myself. @Crystal-Cotton I just wanted to give you some things to think about. Living on your own is hard, it’s easier being in a group home. Just live in the group home until you’re strong enough and mature enough and independent enough to finally make the choice to live on your own, it’s good for you. You got the rest of your life ahead of you to get ready to live on your own but so doubt you could do it now. 18 is very young, it’s hard for any 18 year old to take care of themselves, Don’t be in such a hurry to live by yourself, you have plenty of time.