Tonight, there is a different supervisor than there was last night. I just asked her if she had time to talk. She said "Is this about what happened with staff last night, or is it about something that just happened?"
I could tell that she was not going to allow me to talk to her about what happened last night. I could have said "The abusive guest from last night has continued to abuse me this afternoon." I didn't, though. It took me more than an hour, this afternoon, to decide if I would even try to talk to her about what happened last night. I didn't even want to try to have the conversation because, although I wouldn't call her vicious like some of the staff, she is often very difficult to talk to, makes snap judgements, and is not someone that I feel I can rely on to consistently deal with things fairly. I don't think that she would agree with this description of her. There is nothing that someone who thinks of herself as being fair dislikes as much as being characterized as unfair.
More than anything else, though, I just can't take any more. I am not interested in asking for another conversation in which I am told that I am wrong or that I am hypersensitive, and to be treated like I am wasting the time of the person whom I am asking for help. I am not even interested in the possibility of a conversation like that.
This morning, I talked to the person who was the overnight supervisor last night. She rubbed her nose at me several times during the conversation, even though I started the conversation by telling her that every day, all day, and every waking moment, I wish that I were never born. I have never said anything like that to a staffperson at any of the shelters; nor, apparently, would it have mattered if I had. Near the end of the conversation, she did say that she would write a note in the log that I should not be placed in the same dorm cubicle as the guest from last night. I thanked her.
Whatever was written in the staff log this morning has not stopped that guest, or others, from harassing me. The guests who harass me are not the majority of the homeless guests. There are usually 2 or 3 at a time, every week, who persistently harass me every day. These are included in the 10, 12, or 20 who harass me every day with a cough, a sneeze, or other, similar harassment, people who might not be obsessed with bullying me but who know that, when they feel like it, they'll be able to cough when they walk past me, or rub their noses when they see me, without getting in trouble.
By the time that one guest has stopped harassing me, either because she has lost interest in it or has been so blatantly vicious that staff have felt they had to do something, it has usually been a few weeks since I first started to report the harassment to staff. New people are always starting to be guests at the shelter; I think that every new person who enters the building is quickly set upon by a group of shelter gossipers eager to tell whoever it is whatever bad thing the conglomerate has led them to believe. I'm sure that twisted and untruthful versions of things that have happened at the shelter, chiefly stories of conflicts initiated by guests who antagonized me, are added to those conglomerate stories. It is not unusual for someone who is not hostile when she first gets to the shelter, and who even seems to like talking to me, to stop talking to me a day later, and to begin harassing me within days of her arrival at the Pine Street Inn.
There is nothing about a supervisor or other staff person's refusal even to talk to a homeless guest about the guest being abused at the shelter that is unfamiliar to anyone who has ever stayed at a shelter for more than a week.
The Guest With The Medically Miraculous, Selectively Uncontrollable Cough also called me crazy this afternoon. She did it the way that she had called me crazy when she was harassing me during her first weeks at the Pine Street Inn, by saying it when I was around and so that nobody could mistake her target, but not saying it to me. This time, she said it when I was walking past her to get into the shelter from the garden. She had walked into the garden, seen me and immediately started coughing. I decided to leave the garden so that I wouldn't be around her. I had to walk past her to get into the building. When I was walking past her, she said "They're not the only crazy ones."
If I had said anything to her about it at all, she would have said "I wasn't talking to you. Why don't you mind your own business?" She would have said that to try to start a fight. The "I wasn't talking to you when I called you something inflammatory; mind your own business" ploy is the lead-in to many an argument among homeless women at every shelter. I would say it's a time-honored method except that there's nothing honorable about it.
Abusers calling their targets crazy to cover up, excuse or deny the abuse happens everywhere and all the time, at every level of society and in every situation, personal or professional. It happens more to women than to men, and it's something that adults are doing more to children and teenagers every day.
The nominally polite version of "You are crazy and everything's your fault" is "I think you misunderstood what I said." If you then say that the person is saying that his or her mistake or bad behavior is your fault, you will hear "I'm not saying it's your fault." Then you'll hear something to the effect of how it's not your fault either because you can't be expected to have gotten whatever his or her mistake or bad behavior was right since nobody expects the mentally ill to know right from wrong, or because the person who is telling you all of this had expectations of you that were too high for you in the lamentable condition that you don't realize that you're in. Frequently, you'll hear both.
Most homeless bullies just say "That b---- is crazy," though.
Copyright L. Kochman, September 21, 2014 @ 5:03 p.m./additions @ 6:18 p.m./edited September 22, 2014 @ 5:52 a.m.
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