Just wanted to share in my frustration (comments on this are welcome)

Dear brothers & sisters

I just wanted to share some of my frustrations about things, as always, you are welcome to give me your opinion on the subject.

It is so unbearable and stressful sometime living in the building where I am now in Laval QC.

Sometime I feel like giving up what I started here and go back to Calgary even if this would mean that I would have to spend time on the street there.

Thinking about this, it wouldn’t be so bad, at least I have some friends there I call my brothers & sisters and I could talk to when I feel down.

I also have friends working in the community I could get in touch with if I needed someone to lift my spirit up.

But and there is always a but isn’t it? I did make a commitment to see that our coalition gets going in Laval because it is something that is needed here, I have made this commitment to some people who are supporting this and are working with me on issues of poverty in this city and I can’t go back on my word.

I do miss this kind of moral support here because the only way I can get in touch with these people here is through e-mailing them, once in a while I have a chance to meet up with some of them on a personal basis and it doe’s feel good to let it all out because they don’t mind listening to me.

I have to put up with the crap going on in the building and I don’t really have anyone to turn to besides that.

Going into a shelter in Laval is not an option because there isn’t anything like this in this city, go figure why?

I have never been a big fan of the shelters but sometimes they are a solution to escape situations like where I am staying.

I mean who in their right mind would want to pay $500.00 for rent when you only get $816.00 per months to live in a place where you don’t have any peace and are basically forced to endure the crap from people you don’t even know.

If I had a choice (I could go to a shelter in Mtl but it would defeat the purpose of why I came to Laval), I mean by this, if I could find some place I could afford where I am, I would take it in a hurry.

It’s very frustrating sometime when you have to listen to a neighbor living next door music at practically all hours of the day, I mean, I am not a rap fan, I’m more of a rock fan, so I figure I shouldn’t have to be forced to hear rap if I don’t want to.

If I wanted to I suppose, I could crank up my music to piss them off as well, but it would just cause me problems with the people I am staying with.

There’s also this crap of running up and down the stairs and slamming doors sometime till 4AM whenever this neighbor wants to go visit with his friends upstairs, my room is next to these stairs and I hear this all the time.

This person sometime will sit with his buddy’s in the same stairs and start talking loud not giving any shit about anyone else around.

The so-called caretaker is not any better, he is what I call a heavy drug addict, he is stoned on pot 24/7 and this neighbor downstairs is one of his drug buddies. He has a wife who comes back from work late at night most of the time drunk.

They live up in the apartment above us, most of the time I can’t get to bed till about 3 or 4 AM that’s when they decide to stop fighting with each other and throwing stuff around.

They have two kids who have to be up early in the morning to get ready to go to school and sometime they are too tired because of all the crap around the house that they don’t want to get up let alone going to school, it’s like they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.

Sometime, the wife will start yelling at them as early as 6AM and so I get waken up early in the day.

The owner of the building is just as insane I believe, he takes this shit and do nothing about it, the cops came about five times since I came there because of these people and they don’t do much besides giving them warnings to calm things down and the only time they came it was because someone in the building got tired of the crap, it wasn’t the owner or the caretaker (one would think that this would be their job to do not the tenants).

I am just confused about all this, should I just keep taking this and hope that things will change eventually or just pack up and leave all this insanity behind? This is the question I am asking myself sometime.

In one hand, I don’t want to leave and not finish what I started here for our brothers and sisters, on the other hand I feel that if I take much more of this shit I will loose my cool and do something I might regret along the way.

So I guess I got to do something before things go out of hand in my life don’t I?

In solidarity

Daniel