Hi all.

I’m settled in at the assisted living center. Its definitely a huge step up. Eating has gotten a lot better and easier, and I feel better physically. I’ve been going out into the common area every day and talking with people. It was actually extremely difficult for me to do that the first few times. Hopefully it will continue to get easier.

There were a couple days I actually felt terrible. I think it’s mostly a measure of how far I was from other people. There were a few times I could feel noises all around me and I felt a kind of panic. I had to leave the building and look at the lights of town. I still have bad moments, but they aren’t as intense and don’t last as long.

I’m still working on getting internet, and I’m working on the virtual world I’ve built. I miss the internet a lot actually. I will need it to launch my little business and studio one way or another.

It’s better for me here, but there are a lot of people in pain here. Some of them just have nobody to talk to, and they aren’t able to cope well. I’ve been trying to talk with them. Quite a few of them are like me, people with no family left. The food is fine for me, but I wish they would improve the menu here. It’s not appropriate for the elderly.

This is actually the nicest place I’ve been in years, but I feel very strange. There are many things that I do to balance my mental condition every day. I channel my energy into useful ends. If I don’t, then all that energy becomes emotions I don’t need. There have been a few times that I couldn’t do it in this environment, but I will learn new ways.

I’m actually very relieved to have a schedule and a quiet place. I will need to do different things here to maintain myself, but it’s a much more consistent place, and it’s much safer. I’m fairly certain that a guy was dealing meth down the street. I think he actually approached me to sell me some, but he sort of stopped talking midway through the sentence. I just walked past him.

I had terrible dreams at the hotel. They are almost gone now, and I’m able to sleep more. I go outside at night and look at the desert. We are in a cluster of stores far away from Pueblo. I think I’ve been so tense for so long, that it is taking me weeks to relax.

I left my apartment for the hotel, because of what the footsteps over my head sounded like.

I went to sleep in the basement once, but I had wanted to be awake when my father came home. He came back drunk, and I heard two footsteps, and then a louder noise. It was my brothers head bouncing off the wall. That’s what I was dreaming of. When I heard the footsteps over my head, I kept expecting to hear that third noise. It sounded wet.

I couldn’t remember that for many years. I remembered the screaming when I went upstairs, but not how it started. I’m not sure my memory is correct. My brother died when was younger then I am now, and he’s the only person I could have asked who would have given an honest answer. He is buried in Portland. I’ve never seen the grave.

The nightmares don’t feel the same anymore. People occasionally talk about being different people then when they were young, but I doubt they changed as much as I have. Sometimes even the colors I see are different. The world is a strange place to me now.