Manufactured Insecurity by Sullivan Esther

Author:Sullivan, Esther
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520295643
Publisher: University of California Press

We sit inside Luanne’s home where everything is boxed up and has been for over one month. Her computer, her mattress, and some kitchen and bathroom items have been left unpacked. She knows she needs to leave but still does not know when. Around her the park is partially empty, about 60 percent of the homes have been removed. Luanne’s park is very large; about 1,500 residents lived here when it was at full occupancy. So emptying the community has taken months. During these months Luanne has felt increasingly emotionally and physically unstable. As we talk, a mobile home moving truck drives by on its way to hook up to a home. The engine of the semi-truck is really loud. We need to stop talking as it goes by because we can’t hear each other over the noise. Luanne sounds exhausted as she says, “That is all I hear all day.”

Luanne: “Going through this whole thing from the start to here was like going through a death. You know? You had to go through all the emotions like someone dying—crying, non-acceptance. You just had to go through the whole thing to come to acceptance. This is what it is. It took me a long time to get here.”

Esther: “How were you feeling before?”

Luanne: “Oh I went to the doctor, I had such bad anxiety from it. I couldn’t face the day. I couldn’t think about what was coming up next—where we were gonna go.”

Esther: “Had you ever had problems with anxiety before that?”

Luanne: “Not to this extent, no. Not to be extent that—now I take a pill, every morning. It’s my chill pill.”

Luanne takes 5 mg of Lorazepam [prescribed for anxiety disorders].

Esther: “Had you ever been on antianxiety medication before?”

Luanne: “No. Now it stays with me. And there are a small percent of people in the world that once you start an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety you can never get off of it. I fall in that 1%.”

Esther: “How do you know that you fall in that 1%?”

Luanne: “Well, I’m a retired nurse and I told the doctor that I tried to wean myself off of it and that’s when I found out that I really couldn’t. I fell into that 1%.”

Luanne says that she does not want to take a higher dose because it makes her feel like a zombie all day. However, she says that before she was taking the anxiety drug she could not do anything: “I couldn’t get out of my pajamas all day, I was just—just dust me as you are going by, okay? That’s how hard it was. It’s hard but, you know, there’s a lot of other people in the park, there are a lot of them that are far worse off than I am. Their homes cannot be moved or they have no family. They will stay here till the end and then take something and never wake up, that’s what they’ve told me.”

Luanne talks about people she knows, people who have had heart attacks since the eviction process began.

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