In late September, I speculated on the “odds” of four of my friends making a major life change in the next 24 hours. So far, all bets have been off. Chuck turned out to be a shameless manipulative liar with the total complicity of his partner Vicky. My friend Melissa’s relationship with the truth was equally tenuous, although more complicated.
Which brings us to Trish.
[I’ve been calling her Sally, but she told me to use her real name.]
In Street Cred #5, there’s a photo of Trish standing on a street corner. I blurred the image, although probably some people could tell who it was by the location and her posture. When I asked how she felt when she saw the picture, she laughed, “Dude...I got it hanging in our tent!”
I love Trish. Everybody loves Trish. Well maybe not everybody. After all, unless you’re afflicted with aspirations and/or pretensions of unconditional love, you might not care all that much about (let alone love) a woman who looks tragically forlorn, half-heartedly holding a cardboard sign. Especially when you notice she’s missing a couple of front teeth—often the sign of addiction and/or poverty. The fact that she’s had ten kids (all of whom are placed with relatives) would seem not to make her particularly more lovable.
Let’s face it, on the surface, Trish tends to trigger all the familiar tropes, judgements, and biases about homelessness.
So you got to wonder why some people who have vowed never to give any money to anyone on the street again, still give money to Trish. Or why there are coffee shops and restaurants that simply can’t afford to keep giving food to every hungry person who walks through the door, still give food to Trish.
Why? Because behind that outer scrim of darkness she’s such a bright light…
One day we were at the Co-op. I was drinking coffee and she was eating ice cream—her drug of choice these days. With one notable exception,* Trish has been successfully on methadone treatment for over a year.1
As she drew in a little sketchbook I’d gotten her, we talked about life at the sober house up north where she had just moved. Then, a little boy came over, put down a bottle of juice, and walked back to the table where his mother was sitting facing the other way.
Trish explained, “Whenever he sees me, he gives me something, maybe juice or a soup. I tell him not to, but he says he wants me to have it…that it’s important for him to do.” She told me that one cold morning he came up to her while he was on his way to the arcade and handed her the money his mom had given him to play pinball. He said that he’d rather she had it.
Maybe he loves Trish more than anybody.
* I didn’t learn about the exception I just mentioned until a few weeks later, when I saw her standing outside the Co-op. It was cold so I suggested we go inside to get coffee (and ice cream). She told me she wasn’t allowed inside there any more…at least for a while. This surprised me because, as indicated, even places that don’t welcome anyone welcomed Trish. Well, she confessed, she had overdosed in the Co-op bathroom. What??? She told me that when her parents had visited recently with her two youngest kids, she’d learned one of them had serious cancer. That was the final straw: being away from all her kids; people bad mouthing her on the street; struggling to stay on methadone; the fact, that she, too, had cancer. She’d had enough. She impulsively bought way too many bags of fentanyl and tried to OD.
I not only love Trish. I trust her. Why do I trust her even though, while she often tells me the truth, I know it’s usually not the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Partly because she calls me “dude,” and “bro” and she gives me a delighted grin when I make fun of her.
But the main reason I love Trish is that she has such a big heart. When you see her face light up when she talks about her kids, and how she calls them whenever she can, and how they’re doing at school, and how they just want her to get better, and what she’s doing to try to live with or closer to them…you can tell, for all the trials and tribulations she (and they) have gone through, they were born in love.
When we left off in What are Odds? #2, Trish had allegedly moved to that sober living house, but had begun to show back up in town way too often because she needed to/wanted to:
Get her methadone dosing transferred;
Get clothes she had left down here;
Get her mail from the Drop-In Center ‘cause they aren’t so great at forwarding mail for people with no fixed address to a new unfixed addresses;
Go to Economic Services because her Snap Card [food stamps] wasn’t working;
Give a presentation on homelessness at Youth Services;
Talk to her lawyer in person for some reason and/or go to court for the same or other some reason;
Go to the final meeting of a photography class she’d started down here;
Go to a NA group meeting here because she really liked and trusted her sponsor;
Talk to friends and see some familiar faces. (Those days usually ended with her telling me that she never wanted to come back here again.)
How did she get back and forth? Medicaid rides, she said.2 Often, when I saw her outside the Co-op, she’d tell me she was “waiting for my Medicaid ride.”
But even a rube like myself suspected that someone living in a sober-living house two hours away couldn’t leave or get rides that easily or often. I knew something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what was right.
Trish usually didn’t ask for money. She just wanted me to buy her some ice cream with whipped cream (and assorted other nutritionally-deprived snacks) since she had to provide her own food at the sober house. But she talked enthusiastically about living there and how her caseworker was helping her look for a job.3
I finally I texted her saying I needed some proof if I was going to keep helping her…preferably something like a picture of her next to the sober house where she was allegedly staying. I didn’t hear anything so I kept writing her the same text daily.
[I’ve abbreviated the following for brevity and clarity. Especially clarity. The twists and turns in Trish’s life are so circuitous I’ve told her she should be writing novels instead of texts to me.]
Me: Don’t tell me you’re lying too. You keep on saying you're different from the others. Where ARE you? The longer you go without answering, the more I think you're using me...and dope. All I want is the truth.
Trish: No I haven't relapsed yet at all. Okay truth is I got thrown out of the program because I showed up late too many times…I did not want someone else being disappointed in me so I was waiting to tell you…I didn't want to get judged or yelled at so I was waiting. I'm sorry. There you go…that's everything you asked me to tell you so if you're going to start judging me yelling at me and cutting me off just do it now please I already feel like it worthless piece of s*** that's why I didn't tell you I didn't want you disappointed in me cuz I have no one else.
Me: All I ever wanted was the truth. This sounds like the truth. i don't judge whatever that is. It's when people lie to me I'm disappointed.
Trish: I'm sorry that I didn't tell you sooner I was worried you would be disappointed in me.
Me: Well I hope you believe me re truth…I figured more than a week ago maybe longer that you had probably been thrown out of the program. That's OK it must've been tough to suddenly find yourself up there in the middle of nowhere. Now tell me the truth…Do you have cancer?
Melissa and Vicky have both told me they have cancer and I’m virtually positive they don’t. I’m pretty sure Trish does—ovarian that hasn’t spread yet…But yes, she knows she needs regular treatment and a hysterectomy, both of which she keeps finding reasons to delay.
Trish: 100% I definitely do.
Me: Have you been able to start treatment anywhere?
Trish: My last treatments were when I went to Baystate.
Now she was going to return to the hospital for treatment and wanted some money for food and stuff. I gave her some but then she realized she needed more.
Trish: Okay so my new methadone clinic I will be starting at tomorrow morning instead of it being $15 a day for dosing it's only $7. Tomorrow is my first day of dosing so: $7 and then $7 for Saturday and $7 for Sunday, and then on Monday they will start dosing me for free. So can you please help me with $21 so I can pay for three days of my methadone and then I'm good to go from Monday on. I just don't want to go outside and hold a sign because it's a big trigger for me and I don't want to be around everyone right now because they're all using drugs and I do not want to relapse.
After that, we had a few more spreadsheet-defying back and forths about how she’d spent the money I’d given her and what she needed more for. On the last one she wrote:
Trish: I'm betting that you are yelling at me right now and probably going to tell me to go f*** myself but I really need you.
Me: Will you stop f-ing acting like such a f-ing victim about how mad I'm going to be? Just ask for what you want and I'll say yes or no but STOP saying you're a piece of sh-t. and STOP saying I'm gonna tell you to F--- yourself. Grow up! Ask for what you want and what you need and take whatever happens. Enough! Now, what do you need?
Trish: Ok. I need $25 more for food because they still haven’t sent me a new Snap Card. And I really really need a cheap phone so I can stay in touch with my kids. Thank you for answering I love you.
The last I knew, Trish had moved into a shelter near the hospital where she has a really good caseworker who is helping with logistics while she receives the treatment she’s put off too long.
What are the odds?
People using opioids notoriously have big-time sugar cravings but so do those using methadone to treat their addiction.
Vermonters who qualify can get Medicaid rides to doctor appointments, the pharmacy, treatment centers, and certain other essential trips.
She had just started working as a LPN down here when she got really sick and her cancer was discovered. So she was trying to get re-certified.