Madness.

WARNING:
This story may be shockingly unbelievable, and has to do with sensitive subject matter involving police, psychiatric facilities, shocking acts and irrational people...

Well. Things just continued to get worse where I was staying. She gave me 2 weeks to move out, till the end of the month. Then the next day, I came home to find the gates that gave me access to my room locked, and all hell broke loose. She wanted me gone that night, which she proceeded to tell me in about 15 insulting, demeaning text messages, and I told her she was going to have to wait till morning. (I'd had a really exhausting day, driving out to & putting some of my stuff BACK into my storage, getting my pain medication from the pharmacy, & picking up my mail, then turning around & coming back; plus it was 10pm; how was I supposed to find a place to stay at that hour, on such short notice, even if I didn't collapse from the strain?)

Yes. So I spent the night getting text messages where I was told I wasn't really sick, it was all in my head; that she wouldn't be enabling me anymore, that if I was sick, it was in the head, that I was crazy, a loser, a mooch, a leach, all kinds of craziness. I stopped responding, and they eventually stopped, and I got to make arrangements with a true friend, to get help moving my stuff out the next day.

I'd wanted to go to sleep early, but I got anxious, wondering if that crazed, nasty woman was going to bust in my door in the middle of the night & do who knows what to me or my things...(seeing as how the room is tiny and there is one foot between the door & the bed, at most, it's not like I could defend myself) and sleep wouldn't come easily.

I got woken up to her pounding on the door telling me to get out, and I began to oblige, packing all the things it had taken me TWO trips to my storage to bring back...she'd told me I could have a yard sale, previously...

She was yelling and pounding on the door while I tried to take my meds, keep my tachycardia from getting too out of control, and pack, and then she started removing all the things & food I'd had stored in the garage refrigerator or elsewhere and putting them outside the back gate, screaming at me the whole time, so finally, I started screaming back to leave me to pack in peace, I'd already let her know someone was coming to help me...finally I screamed a threat at her, something private that she didn't want told, that I'd tell it if she didn't leave me to pack in peace. She finally left.

She started texting me though. Then finally stopped, and later, told me she "didn't want to throw me out on the streets if I had no place to go" which I had to try hard not to smirk at, because obviously, she'd wanted to do that last night, so why not now? And that she would leave the doors unlocked so I could load my things and let the friend in to help. Then she got her kids (and the dog that liked me) together and left.

So I finally felt safe enough to get my car, bring it around back, and start loading my stuff, valuables, like my purse, my laptop, etc., first. Then I popped my trunk, and walked back in to get more things, and heard something at the gate. Relieved, I assumed it was the guy who was coming to help me move. I opened the door to find 4 policemen. I started, confused that she'd called them and left, and then relaxed, thinking she was silly and how much easier it would be if she came back and they were here, so she couldn't harass me any more. So I invited them in and asked them how I could help them, smiling.

That's when they told me that my Mom was very worried about me and was on her way over.

Which confused the heck out of me, because I couldn't understand quite what my Mother, who I purposely hadn't seen in over 6 months after she told me that I should search my conscience because there must be some reason I was sick, and ask for forgiveness or something insane and cruel and fanatically religious to that effect, had to do with anything. I had told the crazy woman that she was reminding me of my mother when she was mercilessly insulting me, and she had offered to call her and ask her to take me in...so my first thought was that she had called her, but then how did that explain the cops? Well, they kindly cleared that up for me shortly.

Apparently, my mother had called them because she and my brother were worried about me. They thought I was going to try and hurt myself. The words 5150 Psychiatric Hold popped into my head, and suddenly I became very wary of any and all conversation or volunteering of information with the 3-4 cops in the backyard with me, and when I ceased to cooperate, they put me in handcuffs! I talked them into waiting until my mother arrived to clear things up to escort me out front and put me in a car, and finally managed.

My mother acted all distressed to see me in handcuffs, but her feigned distress suddenly went away when they told her it was procedure, and if she wanted them to hold me, they had to.

When it became apparent my Mother was not going to be swayed, I must admit, I had some choice words for her. Man those handcuffs hurt my tiny, screwed-up wrists! And then my shoulders started to cramp. Thanks for that, Mother. I had some choice words for the cop, once I realized he wouldn't be persuaded to stop and secure my car, with all my most valuable possessions in it sitting wide open.
However, he soon forgave me and we made friends as we waited for 3 hours in the waiting room of the Psychiatric Emergency Room at the lovely County Hospital, and I eventually got him to loosen the cuffs, and let me keep them in the front to ease the redness and swelling in my fingers, and so I could put my feet up on the chair next to me so my blood pressure didn't get too low. (Turns out, at that point it was quite high, and I had a fever.)

When my crazy mother and her pawn, my brother, decided to show her face, it had just dawned on me, that despite them saying that the crazy woman had nothing to do with it, neither of them had known where she lived...

And that's when I figured out that all this was my former friend's way of keeping her secrets safe. She must have gotten in touch with my brother, gotten my Mom's number, called and told her (like she'd been spewing at me) what a wonderful person she had been, trying to help me out, and how I was a crazy, ungrateful, loon, and everything else my mother could possibly want to hear to make her feel better about turning her back on a sick daughter who had busted her bum trying to make sure she had a nice place to live and money to live off of the past year. (She was extremely upset that when people asked me why my Mom didn't help me out once I became homeless, I told them the truth; that her moods had been erratic the past year, she'd been having fits of temper, probably due to her refusing to follow the treatment for her blood pressure, and that she had been being more and more cruel and verbally abusive more and more often, and that I'd had enough, after spending over a decade in therapy trying to learn how to get along with her or cope with her treatment of me, and been repeatedly told that I just needed to stay away from her, which I was doing well at until I got very sick and needed...someone.)

When I tearfully started explaining it to them, then asking them how they could believe her, knowing the woman and what she had put me through in the past as they did, how they could believe her over me, and do this rather than just offer to take me in, my brother flinched, and I was pretty sure he understood he'd been duped and used against me in a very nasty way...he later got in an argument with my mother and left.

Oh, there's more ridiculousness, but in the end, the cop put in a good word for me, after all, I'd ended up telling him how things had been and from my family's attitudes & reactions I think he saw that it was all true, and didn't buy my dear mother talking to me like an idiot telling me that I needed to be evaluated .As with past doctors, the Psychiatrist saw through her bs, heard me out, and the lack of my brother supporting my mother's story helped too, so she told me she was letting me go. There was no need for me to be on a 72-hour hold, or even stay a second longer than necessary. Of course, then my dear mother disappeared, once we got back to reality, where I'm physically sick and she's back in her own sick sad little world where she, and only she has the right to feel or be sick, and everything I've done for her is forgotten and buried...

I walked out, free, but with no purse, phone, money, or even a sweater for the cold wind that was blowing, feeling sick, and sore as the adrenaline wore off and all the awkward positions I'd had to endure began to make my muscles ache. I waited for a friend to come pick me up, and she did, just before I was about to sign into the regular ER and try to get a saline IV in hopes of stilling my raging, beta-blocker starved heart rate and the overwhelming feeling of malaise and weakness. And I still had to go get my stuff back. Escorted by the cops, as the crazy former friend (who never deserved the title) hung up when my true friend called about picking up my things. She opened the door with a look of surprise on her face. Oops. They don't keep sane people in the Psychiatric Ward on 5150 holds, sorry.

*(At least not in this case, lucky for me, but here is the story of Sophia Mirza, who died in the UK of M.E./CFS several years ago, and was put on a Psychiatric Hold by her doctors. At least in my case, I only have my MOTHER to fear.)