So this is my new years diary.
This year I resolve to go home. Whether it's with SSDI or not - I'm going home after the court date has resolved the issue. I have had enough of this, I have seen my parents after a 20 year gap and spent a year and counting with them - I want to go home.
As long as I am here, I am continuing my taekwondo, more disc golf and using the gym membership my parents got for me. I have gained 100lbs since I've been here, in a combination of medication, more food (in general) and less exercise. I'm still scared to go walking outside in the neighbourhood, I don't think that will change. (It's not a safety issue with the area, it's a paranoia issue with me) I'm on weight watchers and it helps some, but not enough to really make me feel like myself - and it's damn hard to fit in a small boat when you're a fatass.
Finish out my boat. There are things that need to be done, but with even the low level of maintenance treatment I've received here I feel I will be able to head back and get on with them. It may take me a while, but I have maintained my liveaboard status during the time here so I have a place to go home to and a working car.
With Oregon expanding Medicaid (unlike Louisiana) I expect I can get better treatment back home, as well as have the comfort and reassurance of my own home environment. I've also found that sometimes family can be relied on to help, and if I need something I'm not afraid to ask them anymore. But there is only so much recovery that can be made in an environment that is not your own and filled with its own kinds of crazy. And 9000 cats.
I have designed myself a tiny house. With SSDI, I will buy land and build on it as I work and live on the boat - as it's a shipping container house it will be pretty damn inexpensive -it comes in at 380sqft including a utility storage room. I plan to go as green as possible - solar panels, low height, bird safe wind generation, wood cooking stove, rooftop water collection (legal in Oregon) and a gas or diesel powered back up generator as well. And a nice patio, a brick dairy bread/pizza oven, a meat grill and a sukkah frame. Eventually I would like my own mikvah on the premises as well.
Without it - it will take longer, but it's still possible in the long term with Medicaid treatment for my mental illness and the possibility of being able to work in the future as a result. I love living on my boat, but I want a place on land as well for when I get older and I think that a tiny house is the right option for me.
I want to continue my plans for my sailing trip. I think that having a land base to come back to is important, particularly as I will be 45 this year - I'm not getting any younger - and that it's important to connect back to land after a long time at sea. But sailing around the world has been a dream of mine since I was a child, and I will work steadily toward it.
I'm going to live a stronger Jewish life when I get home. One thing I've found here is that I miss yiddishkeit, it's not just an outgrowth of my mental illness - I find value in the connection and the culture and the rhythm of living Jewishly. So I'm going back to my kosher kitchen and my rituals and my sefers and driving to Portland for shabbos by people. Because without it I feel less like me.
I have officially given up on the necessity of romantic attachments. Not that I'm against them, or opposed to ever having them again - but that I don't need a partner to be happy in my own right or to live the life I want to live. I spent a decade living for the possibility of finally being with someone and it shattered my life. Never again.