8:30 a.m. When I woke up, I looked on Google to find out the temperature was between 15° and 20° all night. I definitely felt the cold. There were freezing rains last night until about 8:00 p.m. I was able to stay warm in my sleeping bag with the comforters on top of me.
9:00 a.m. I began to get up and get ready to get out of the camp. I have to use the bathroom and it’s a number two. I want to hold it until I get to a place with a bathroom but that’s just not possible. My baby wipes are frozen. I walk out to the bathroom spot that I created and I have to go number two and wait to wipe until I get to a bathroom. On the way out of the woods I noticed some huge dog or animal footprints near my camp!
9:45 a.m. I get to my vehicle and I have to clean all the snow off with the scraper. I drove out to Michael’s camp down the road to check and see if he’s there. I see what looks like hospital gurney tire marks leading up to the entrance of the woods where Michael’s camp is. When I walk up to Michael’s camp he is not there. It seems that he was in my tent and ate up all the sweets that I had in there. My tent is bigger and Michael says it’s cold. I can see that he moved back into a smaller tent and put a sleeping bag to cover the door that was broken on his tent. I wonder if somehow an ambulance came and took him to the hospital. I know he had enough stuff to keep him warm, but he’s much skinnier than me and he’s not healthy especially with the alcohol consumption.
10:30 a.m. I walked over to the library to work on a few things. I plan on asking around at the Lifebridge lunch to see if anybody has seen Cryin Mike.
12:00 p.m. I walked over to Lifebridge to get my meal. They’re doing take out trays. I asked a few people if they’ve seen Michael around and they say that they haven’t. After I eat I walk around and look to see if I can find Michael and I don’t see him anywhere. I take a quick walk through Tent City near Wendy’s as well. I walked back up to check Michael’s camp again too.
1:30 p.m. I go back to the library to finish up a bunch of work that I’ve been meaning to get to. I cannot stress how much effort has to go into recording, editing, and writing these blogs. I’m always thinking and moving around. I get ahead of myself and then I get backlogged on work.
4:00 p.m. I had been talking with my girlfriend on the phone. We seemed to be on good terms. Tomorrow I am going to Dedham to the Norfolk Superior Court to support Karen Read at her court date. I decided to drive to my girlfriend’s apartment and spend the night with her. We were not together when I started this project and then she reached out to me to play pickleball and we have grown closer together than we’ve ever grown before. This was unexpected, but it is also a breath of fresh air. So now, not only do I have to juggle this project with all my other life responsibilities, she has become a huge focal point in my life. I have to make sure that I can be there for her. She needs my help just as much as anybody else, and I care about her so she is just as important in my life.
HINDSIGHT: 10/24/2024
I always worried about Cryin Mike. For a man who had been chronically homeless off and on for many years he was very poorly adapted to survival outside. He also struggled to understand other people’s intentions. He was a very kind hearted soul, who also had deep hatred and resentment towards those who had hurt him. I can understand his sentiment, because although Michael was a flawed person, I had never seen him give another person a reason to mistreat him. Even when he was drunk, he seemed fine, although he could get angry and belligerent, it was always self talk. Not directed at those around him. I can understand where less understanding people in his presence might mistake this aggressive self talk as directed at them. I think this is the problem, a lot of people in the throws of mental illness, trauma, and addiction can act out in disturbing ways, but they are just at war with themselves, and not a threat to others.
Reading my feelings about my girlfriend at this time makes me want to gag. I can’t be sure exactly where my head was at. I would go back and forth in my mind on whether I loved her and wanted to work through her screaming red flags, or if I just cared for her and enjoyed what she provided me. Having her was an easy way to escape my self imposed vagrancy for civilized comfort and primal pleasure. Judge me if you may, I am only human after all.