Good things even in the apartment complex from hell.

Being told that I was not suitable to live at the apartment complex on Oak Ridge Avenue in Orlando had to be one of the low points in my life.  Here was place that welcomed murders, drug users/dealers, prostitutes and bank robbers and the owners of the complex were saying that I was not good enough to live there!  There is no way to overstate what that says about the amerikan system.

There were a couple of good things that happened during the year that I lived there.  First, I finally got a telephone for the first time in about seven years.  The reason that I got a phone at that point was not because I thought the harassing phone calls would stop, but rather I was able to afford a phone with a good built in answering system and a caller ID.  Since I could let the answering system screen all incoming calls, that meant my enemies could harass the answering machine all they wanted and I would also have a record of where the calls were coming from.

The second positive thing that occurred while I was living in the apartment complex from hell was that I found out that I could win things.  During the one year at that location I won mostly small items like a free dinner at some restaurant or a small gift certificate at some department store.  While that doesn't seem like much to most, to me it meant I could buy some much need clothes(which by the way, The Crazies were still removing items from my apartment) or that I could go out and have a meal at a decent restaurant.  These were big improvements in my life and eventually my winning things would lead to even bigger improvements in my life style.

Of course, I still faced constant harassment in my daily life which was mostly based on the conditioning that I had been subjected to by The Crazies.  While that type of harassment was more subtle than direct confrontation, sometimes the events were very clearly more hostile.  On a couple of occasions when I would be walking through the apartment complex parking lot streets to get to the main street, I would see a car coming in my direction.  As the car got closer, it would accelerate and head directly towards me!  I would have to quickly get off of the street to avoid being hit.  Of course, I didn't know who the driver was, but it was apparent that they knew who I was.

It is hard to explain to people, but when you are a political prisoner and an enemy of The Crazies, people just know who you are - you don't have to tell them.  I expected to have enemies.  Worshiping the fascist state is the predominant religion in amerika.  And I represented an attack on their god for those who worshiped the state.  What really surprised me was that occasionally I would be somewhere and a complete stranger would come up to me and extend their hand to me.  I would shake their hand and then say "Do I know you?"

"No"  would be the answer and they would continue, "But everyone knows who you are and I just wanted to shake your hand."

Those positive occasions helped me to truly understand one of the slogans of Amnesty International which is "You are never alone."