They'll probably remove the cameras when I leave.
Then the people who have watched me in this apartment all year and who have vindictively withheld the information that the voyeurism isn't a false accusation will know who their hero is; the "hero" whose lies have made me homeless for the third time, frayed all of my support systems to the breaking point, damaged my reputation with the police, the judicial system, housing agencies, and health care providers, prevented me from having a social life, and damaged my college semester, the entirety of which I spent futilely fighting the eviction. That "hero"'s lies are forcing me into the hellish, stressful, degrading, life-threatening situation that homelessness is, as if 4 years of it weren't enough.
I knew there was nothing I could do. Even before I signed the lease last year, I dreaded that everything that has happened would happen, and I have helplessly lived through it all, as if forced to play a part in a script written by sadists. Nobody in the cast of characters has deviated from the script; from the villains to their collaborators, to the villainous observers whose victim-blaming has established my being abused as a fact of life for 7 years, to the police, to the lawyers for the property management, to the lawyers who are supposed to help poor people and who seem to spend most of their time blaming poor people for their problems and whose favorite sentence seems to be "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do," to everyone whose actual job it is to prevent homelessness, to counselors and other people who are supposed to provide support. There have been very few exceptions to the blanket assumption, among all of people whom I have asked for help in the Boston area, that there are no cameras in the apartment and that paranoia from me has cost me my housing. Even the people who haven't condescended to me and who have provided some support can't stop what's happening to me; the total failure of the police to investigate the issue was the death sentence for my tenancy, and that was no surprise, either.
Copyright L. Kochman, May 12, 2017 @ 8:42 p.m.
