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Someone just told me that help is in fact someplace else. Well, here is what I now think about this "someplace else".

Everyone I turn to for help with my situation of being a disabled, widowed, cancer patient in need of assistance in making needed repairs to my home to make it livable always refers me to "someplace else" for this needed help. I have now been searching for this "someplace else" for going on three years. It seems to be everywhere I look but nowhere to be found. Can any of you please tell me where this someplace else is? And if you happen to be this "someplace else" please know I have been desperately looking to find you for almost three years now. Do you suppose you could drop me an email and let me know your whereabouts? I am so weary form everything I have gone through trying to locate you that I am too weary to keep looking much longer. So if you could, please tell me where you are? You seem to be everywhere without being anywhere. How do you manage to do that? Please tell me how to contact you. I really could use your help if you really do exist at all. Or is it you are just this place known to us as "non-profit" that does not exist outside of the mass media and headlines and public relations spotlight? If you do really exist I would think you would make it easier for me to locate you. Everyone I ask about you tells me to contact someone else who is someplace else. When I contact that someone else at someplace else they tell me to contact someone else at someplace else and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes. Are you hiding from me? Why don't you want me to find you in my situation of being a disabled, widowed, cancer patient who desperately needs assistance with a few house repairs? I am writing you this letter on my site because I have no idea what your address really is? I hope you come across this letter I have written to you because I sure could use your help. That is if you really exist at all. I don't even know what to call you. What is your name anyway? I sure would like to know.

As for Habitat for Humanity? My husband donated to them several times while he was alive so they were one of the first organizations I contacted for help. They are not interested in helping me with my repair needs. I do not understand this but this is the reality. We all assume that all of this help is available just for the asking but when you are the one with advanced stage cancer and you have gone down the list and cannot find anyone willing to help other people who do not know your situation sometimes are under the wrong impression that you just have not tried hard enough to get the help you need. That you just need to search a little harder and someone will be glad to help you out. Well, perhaps in time that will be true. Up until today it has not been the case in this situation. The newspapers told me I could purchase advertising space. The TV stations referred me to other organizations, one of them being Habitat for Humanity. My church thinks the government should help. The government wonders why my church does not want to help? United Way referred me to Salvation Army. Salvation Army told me that I needed to be a substance abuser to get help from them. And on and on and on it goes. Help is out there it just has to come from someone else, someplace else. I have been seeking the needed help for almost three years now and I am always referred to this someplace else. This has made for an extremely painful lesson in the reality of what a disabled person needs to go through to locate any actual help to survive their situation. People seem to go out of their way to have you donate to their cause but then disappear when your desperate hour of need leaves you surviving on the edge of a great abyss. The myth and reality are, sadly, worlds apart.

Help will come someday from somewhere. When that day arrives I hope I am still well enough to do what the source of help requires of me to obtain this help. After three years I am running out of people to contact not to mention the physical and emotional toll of doing this all alone. But I know help will come form somewhere, sometime. Yes I am weary and seriously ill and alone. We all know help is out there somewhere. If I were not seriously ill and alone perhaps people would want to help out then. I don't know. My husband and I have always been on the giving help side of the fence. This being seriously ill, alone and in desperate need of help is a real education in the reality of what people in need must go through to find the needed help. I had no idea that help would be all around me without being really available at all. I am still in somewhat a state of shock at the reality of the situation.

Please someplace tell me something if you will? If I had money to contribute to your cause would you still be this hard for me to find?

Patricia, Stockton, California

Someone wrote to me wanting to understand "Someplace Else?" Here is what I shared with them.

From: jspr007(@)peoplepc(.)com
To: (deleted)
Subject: Re: The UOP free home
Date: May 10, 2007 5:03 AM
Hi (deleted),

Are you telling me that you saw my website -
and have questions about something you read on my site?

As for the "Someplace Else?" page of my website? This page of my website just explains what my experience as a disabled cancer patient has been in seeking needed help with a few home repairs along with surviving some of the other challenges this situation has presented. I have been learning over the past four years of being a disabled person in need, since the death of my husband, what a nightmare it truly is to find yourself disabled, ill, alone and in need of a bit of help to survive it all. Everyone is so quick to request donations for their causes but when you find yourself in need of a bit of help those same people are nowhere to be found. It is just that the myth of there being so much help available when your time of desperate need comes along is just that, a myth. We as a society are not fully aware of the harsh reality of what it means to be left alone, ill and in need. Our society basically wants nothing to do with you when they consider you less than a non-disabled person would be. I just felt it was important to get the word out to the world of what the reality of life as a disabled person is. Everyone at first, after the death of my husband, kept telling me that help for my difficult situation was just a phone call away. A phone call away to where? I followed up on every referral given to me the first couple of years only to learn that I would always be referred to another person at another place. After a few years of being constantly referred to this "Someplace Else?" I began to see a pattern emerge. The people referring me to the someone else at someplace else? They fully believed that they were in fact referring me to an actual source of needed help. I felt the world needed to understand that this simply was not the reality and the myth of the "Someplace Else?" needed to be understood if it was ever to be corrected.

I am now trying to focus on beginning a home-based business that will allow me to remain in my home and independent. I now realize that any needed help with home repairs or any of the other challenges I face will arrive when it arrives and not one moment before. On those days that I am not ill in bed or just too ill to see the light at the end of the tunnel I usually am able to see a bit of the humor all of these life challenges presents. I guess the hardest life lesson these past four years has been that needed help is not always "Someplace Else?" as the title of that page on my website explains.

Patricia