I’ll get right to the point. I get the feeling I don’t belong where I’m living. I think it is too tough. I live just blocks away from downtown in a large California city. I hate (really, really hate) to admit it but this place scares me. The people scare me. I’m 56 years old. I don’t know what it is, I’ve lived in this general area before in group homes in the past and I’ve NEVER felt this way before. Never.
In fact 37 years ago when I was a very naive 19 years old and I had just gotten diagnosed and I was living in Soteria House which is literally a ten minute walk from here. I was there for a year and I didn’t feel this way. The problem here is not entirely my age though that might be a factor.
And from 1990-95 I lived about a ten minute drive from here in a board & care home on one of the most drug-infested streets in a city off a million people. When lived there I was going to 5 or 6 AA meetings a week which meant walking down the street by myself at night, and either catching a bus or walking 5-10 blocks to meetings and then walking back home at 9:30 or 10:00 pm. I can only recall two or three"incidents" in 5 years.
What is your opinions? Any suggestions or helpful insights. Like I said, I have never felt like this anywhere. Period. And its weird because the people here are not really not frightening most of the time and I have managed to scare a few people who have scared me but most of the time the people here are friendly and I am almost friends with a guy here. I lend him money but hopefully he doesn’t just like me for that reason only. No I sincerely think he is legitimately friendly but who knows anymore. This is really bothering me. I’m torn between my pride telling me that I can hack it here and hold my own and just getting the strong feeling that this place is out of my league.
Any questions? Any answers? I would hate to have to move, in fact, scared or not, i may be stuck here but I want to feel safe and comfortable.
Anyone see the “fresh fish” scene in The Shawshank Redemption? Its the scene where its the first night in the prison for a kind of soft, naive new inmate and everybody deliberately trys to scare him to make him “break” and lose control.The guy keeps crying out, 'I’m not supposed to be here, this is a mistake" Finally he breaks out and starts crying and wailing until the mean guard comes and takes him out of his cell and starts beating him to make him shut up but he beats him so bad that he kills him. Crying never occurred to me but I just can’t figure out the problem here or what my next move is or what I should do.
What’s even weirder is that before I moved in here two months ago I lived just up the street in another group home for 1 1/2 years that is owned by the women who owns this place. The people intimidated me there but I wasn’t scared to live there.