He Did It Himself

https://www.abctales.com/story/ice-rivers/diy-new-mental-health-issue-re...

My dear friend has lost his balance. He falls down continuously. He's lost control of his dream which was pretty much impossible to begin with yet we all enabled it.

He has been working on his house now for the past 40 years. He retired and decided that he would become self-sufficient. He bought a dilapidated Victorian house on 8 acres of land. He raised his own food. He built a hoop house. He became a beekeeper. He grew his own weed. He put in a pond. He's a carpenter. He's a mechanic. He's an electrician. He worked all day every day while keeping a good buzz on. The only time he stopped working was when somebody came over to his palace which became a time for a party.

He never married. He got help from random handymen and farmers who became interested in his dream. He put up a magnificent porch around his palace. The porch took about five years to complete. Meanwhile the rest of the house continued to disintegrate.

He sold his corn and his honey at a stand near his house and at some local open markets. He was always upbeat and committed to his dream of self-sufficiency. 

Those dreams are distant now. To pursue his dream, he needed to be in tip top shape mentally, physically, spritually and emotionally. The house and the property overwhelmed him when he lost his sense of balance. The loss of balance oozed beyond the physical. The property was way too much for him in his weakened state. Everybody encouraged him to sell. He would hear nothing of it. This was his dream. This was his life.

Eventually, everybody stopped visiting. Everyone still loved my friend but his surroundings had passed the hoarder stage into the surreal. The outside was beginning to move into the inside. It's not good when snakes are living in the house.

I don't know how he survived the last few winters. He began leaving the house for a weekend or two and staying with friends which encouraged more of the outside to move inside. No one could convince my friend that the house and the dream were killing him.

Finally, last winter, the pipes exploded. My dear friend could no longer live in his house. We tried tough love. Nobody would enable anymore. We tried to get him food and other public help which he refused. One day, he fell again this time near the street. He couldn't get up. Someone found him before he froze in the snow.

Meanwhile he was not paying his bills. Now there were squirrels and raccons and God knows what else living in his house. He decided to move to a sleazebag motel. He took a couple of his cats with him. The owners of the motel threw him out. They took him to a public assisted residence, against his will.

Every time I call home, I ask about him and the news is never good. Even as I type this, I'm hesitant to get my next report. The property itself is probably worth a mill. The next owner will immediately tear down the house or spend another mill rehabilitating it. A person of welalth would be able to realize my friends dream in six months instead of forty years.

He's not gonna sell.

He couldn't stand to see his property in the hands of another. Meanwhile the value of his palace is decreasing. Nobody has been able to correctly diagnose his illness since he lost his balance. It might have been the time that his tractor fell on him when he was struggling to preserve his pond.

My friend was the kindest, gentlest of men. Always willing to help out. I love the guy as do we all. We just don't know what to do. I even dreamt of him last night

When I look back at pictures of his palace, I can see now that what we all thought was a dream was in fact a deadly nightmare. Be careful with dreams, they can turn savage.