Angelic Pathways (19 page)

And that point brings me full circle. When I had the stroke in 2004, the doctors were baffled and informed me that they couldn’t find the cause. Sure, I was a big gal—though much smaller than I am now. Since the stroke, I’ve gained quite a bit of weight from doing nothing but sitting in a single room for seven years and eating cold ravioli out of a can. But back then, I was a vegetarian. I went to the gym three times a week. Yet I was frustrated, because I had been diabetic since the age of twenty-two, and here I was nearly thirty and still trying to get off the medications used to treat the condition.

In early 2003, I had gone to speak with my doctor at the time to get referrals to a nutritionist and nephrologist. But instead of giving me the referrals I requested, my doctor had insisted that I take a third medication, a new medication that had shown remarkable results with his patients. With a sigh, I had accepted the prescription, grateful that I had insurance because otherwise it would have cost me over two hundred dollars a month.

Eighteen months later, I was in the hospital, paralyzed by a stroke that no doctor could find a cause for.

One late night in 2005, I had come down out of my upstairs prison to take out the trash. The lady of the house was a night owl and was watching television. Just as I was about to make the painful trek back up the flight of stairs to my room, I overheard a commercial.

“Have you or a loved one recently suffered a stroke or heart attack? Were you or a loved one taking _____,” the same medication that my doctor had prescribed for me back in 2003. Yes, in fact, I was still taking it!

“You could be eligible to join a class action suit …,” the commercial continued.

The next day, I was on the phone.

By October 2010, the suit had been settled, but I was one of about two hundred other cases that the pharmaceutical company had rejected. This knowledge was what contributed to the deep depression that had caused me to threaten Uriel. I saw no way out of my plight. I had no money, no assets, no family, and no friends who could help.

I had come to the conclusion that I was going to die in that room, but damn it, it would be by my own hands and on my own terms.

After Jesus had shown me the good that had come out of my being there—being in a safe shelter and having time to commit to writing while exploring my spirituality—I calmed down a bit. But what really veered me off the road of self-destruction that night was the person, or being, that had accompanied Jesus during our talk. I’d seen this being before, and for the longest time, I thought he was a new archangel being introduced to me. But as he and I talked over the course of 2010, I came to realize that his energies were nothing like an archangel’s. That, and he had an aura that I had seen around other beings that had been visiting me ever since 2008.

I simply called this being “Bo.” It was the first name that popped into my head, and to this day, he has yet to correct me on it. After our discussion and review of those difficult years, Jesus left me in Bo’s capable hands, and that’s when 2011 really started rocking.

Immediately, we got to work.

With my computer working in safe mode, I opened up Notepad and took down Bo’s dictation word for word. His first order was to begin cleaning and start throwing out anything I didn’t need, want, or hadn’t used in the last seven years. After that, I was to begin packing. He revealed to me that I would be moving very soon, but I would have to do so quickly and silently. I was to tell no one of my plans, and I was to keep the details of the move, as well as my future whereabouts, to myself. The latter part frightened me. After all, why did the whole thing sound like some covert, black-ops strategy? Why would I have to be so secretive about it?

Well, as I mentioned earlier in the book, we cannot escape the laws of causality. And as I would soon find out, the tipping of one domino would eventually leave me no choice other than to follow Bo’s chilling instructions.

Still disgruntled and skeptical at the time, I gave him the same response I usually gave the archangels: “If you say so. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

It would take about two months, not two weeks as promised, for the incompetent electronics company to repair my computer. But while it was down, service returned to my BlackBerry and I began making calls to every housing and apartment complex within a hundred-mile radius.

Unfortunately, as I had encountered over the previous seven years, there was nowhere to go. The economy in Michigan had sunk faster than the
Titanic
, and entire families were vying for more economical housing as foreclosures spread across the state faster than a flu epidemic.

But then the first hot day of the year came in early April. My room hit 90 degrees. At that point, I was moved into action. I ordered boxes from U-Haul and began packing. I didn’t have anywhere to go and no money to travel, but I refused to endure another year of hell in that room. If I had to put my things in storage and wander the country for a while, I knew I had to mentally and emotionally prepare myself to cope with it.

Before that, however, I thought I’d try an organization for disabled people just one more time. I had called them before over the years only to be forwarded to other centers or charities that didn’t have the capacity to help or had guidelines that I didn’t qualify for.

This time, I finally got through to a caseworker. I told her about my situation. I told her about my health conditions and the risks of living another summer in a 103-degree bedroom without air or proper ventilation, in addition to no access to the kitchen or laundry.

The worker seemed angry at the homeowners, but I insisted that they weren’t at fault. They were letting me live there and leaving me to do my own thing without taking rent money. Though I had paid them quite a bit in the past, they had refused to accept more funds from me. It was something I couldn’t understand, really. I just assumed it was out of generosity and maybe they really did care to an extent.

That’s when my newfound caseworker angrily chimed in, “No, Chantel. If they take your money, that makes you a tenant and makes them official landlords who would be responsible for providing safe and adequate shelter.” I could hear the rage and indignation in her voice. But more than that, I could hear her passion. “Think about it. If a fire breaks out, you have to get down those stairs and out the door …”

My heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t thought of it before in those terms. At the bottom of the stairs was the front entrance with a security door that could only be opened with a key that I didn’t have quick access to. Although I knew where the keys usually hung in the kitchen, even after seven years I always struggled to remember which key unlocked the front door. I did have a key to the garage door, but if a fire broke out in the kitchen, that pathway would be blocked. And as cluttered as the house was, it would take less than four minutes before it filled with dense, black smoke only to hit flashpoint seconds later. Moving at the speed of a three-legged turtle, it would take me five times that long to get down the stairs, much less out the door, for which I first would have to scramble to find a key.

Furthermore, because I had never rented before, I didn’t know the laws. I thought the homeowners were just trying their best to be tolerant and charitable. Then again, they knew of my health conditions and knew that extreme heat was a serious health hazard.

“I’m calling Adult Protective Services [APS] so they can get you out,” my caseworker huffed, and I could hear her rattling papers.

“No!” I screamed. “You’ll only make things worse. In seven years, I’ve only had one friend visit me inside this house. I didn’t even get physical therapy because I couldn’t help the feeling that somehow it’d be an imposition.” I was shaking so badly, I could barely hold the phone. “If you send APS, these people will kick me out and I have nowhere to go!”

But there was nothing I could do. In my caseworker’s eyes, I was in imminent, life-threatening danger, and by law, she was required to report it.

After we hung up, I was so sick with worry, I couldn’t keep any food down. I didn’t sleep. I stayed up for twenty-four hours waiting for the death knell that would be a visit from APS.

The agent arrived around ten am, and instantly I knew my life was about to end when the man of the house came up to angrily bang on my door and demand I come downstairs. I had wanted to talk to the agent in private and clarify the situation for her. In no way was I trying to implicate the owners of the house.

The agent questioned me as the man of the house sat there, angry, red-faced, and with bulging eyes that looked as if they were about to pop out of his bulbous head at any moment. As a cold, intolerant, and reticent person, he rarely had a kind word to share with me, but that day he was chattier than a teenager during lunch period, leaving me no room to respond to any questions the agent was asking me. Finally, after a moment of listening to his answers, she turned and abruptly interrupted him.

“I’m talking to
Chantel
. Do you mind, sir?”

That only made him hotter, but his wife called him out of the room, and it was then that I broke down into silent sobs.

“You have to help me, please. But first, let me explain everything,” I mouthed silently, knowing that our conversation could be easily heard in the next room of the small home. “Come upstairs,” I whispered. I wanted her to see and feel what I had to endure.

“He won’t allow it,” she whispered back as she gestured to the other room with a quick tilt of her head. Sick over the whole confrontation, I sat down. I’m unable to stand for long periods of time, and the heat along with a sleepless night had worn me down to nothing.

“Chantel,” she patted me on the shoulder, “I can see you’re a bright and intelligent woman. Given that you have your full faculties, there is nothing I can do for you.”

“Then why did you even come here?”

“Because I was informed that you were in some type of danger.”

“I am,” I silently mouthed back at her. “If you’d just come upstairs …”

“Chantel, do you believe in God?”

The question caught me off guard. This woman was a government employee, not a nun! What did that question have to do with anything we were talking about?

Nevertheless, I answered, “With all my heart and soul.”

“Then pray He delivers you from this. It’s rather simple,” she chuckled and turned for the door.

I couldn’t hide my anger and disdain for her flippant attitude and said, “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t walk you out.” I gestured at my body with a graceful flourish of my hand. “As you can plainly see, my mobility is quite limited.” As I look back on that moment, I realize how arrogant and pompous my actions were.

“I understand,” she said with a shrug and then pointed at me with a smile. “Keep praying.” With that, she stepped out the door still chuckling. She was laughing at me. Laughing!

Never before had I felt such rage flow through me. I knew what she was thinking, but she was dead wrong. I was a productive citizen. I paid taxes. I gave to charities. I had a college education and two published books under my belt. Damn her, I was not the worthless wretch that she thought I was.

I couldn’t hold the emotions in any longer. I had been holding them in for seven agonizing years. As I slowly made it back up the stairs to that hellish oven, I bellowed so loud, I think the entire neighborhood heard me. I’d had enough of being treated like trash.

Now more than ever, I was determined to get out.

But now, it was a matter of getting out before I was kicked out. No doubt the homeowners were thinking I had called APS on them, and that was not the case. All in all, the situation was one big clusterfuck, and I knew the clock was ticking.

I called my caseworker and told her what had transpired. I was right—her calling APS had only made matters worse. She then promised she’d help me get out, but I knew she was simply placating me.

Sure enough, she forwarded to me the same numbers that everyone else had in the past.

The truth is, there is little to no help out there. I felt it then and I still feel that if you’re poor, you’re unheard and unseen, which makes me wonder why all these organizations even exist. (That’s a rhetorical question, really. Of course, I believe most of these organizations, but certainly not all, exist to pad their own pockets.) I mean, why did my caseworker even have a job if she was so ineffectual at serving the very people her organization claimed to serve?

At the end of the day, I encourage anyone stricken with similar circumstances that befell me to fight. Don’t give up. I didn’t give up. I refused to be unheard and unseen, and that determination—fueled by burning indignation—is what moved me into action.

At that point, I knew I had to muster up strength I didn’t feel I had. After a day of packing, I searched for housing. The places where I could afford the rent were either full or in areas far too dangerous for a single, disabled female to live.

As boxes began to stack up in the upstairs hallway, and I was loading the curb every week with ten thirty-gallon bags of junk I no longer wanted, the man of the house approached me one morning at six o’clock as I dragged bags out the door.

“So when are you moving?”

“I don’t know,” I said dryly.

“That’s not the answer I want to hear.”