Thinking more about living in my car. It's not like backpacking, because there isn't a weight limit, up to a point.

12:38 PM 5/17/11

I was thinking more seriously about preparing to live in my car. It won't be forever. It would be long enough to achieve whatever goal I wanted to achieve with money.

I have slept out in my car before, and it was in the middle of wintertime in temperatures that were in the low teens, if I recall. I think it might have even been colder than that. There was a specific reason why I did this. It was when I lived at the other apartment before this one. That apartment had extremely severe mold coming out of the walls. As soon as the outside temperature dropped below a certain range, the mold would start putting out these extremely toxic, horrible fumes, and I felt like I was going to pass out and die. It took me a long time to figure out what was happening, but a couple of discoveries helped me piece it together - first, I had noticed a moldy smell for a long time, but I didn't realize it was making me sick. Second, I got lucky and happened to read someone commenting on a website, at random, that when the temperature goes below freezing, household mold will start putting out toxins worse than ever.

So in the middle of the night, I would lie in bed while the mold fumes surrounded me. When I opened the windows, and turned a fan on, believe it or not, it actually pulled MORE mold fumes out of the walls and out of the ceiling tiles, somehow. I tried to figure out the pathway of air circulation so that I could arrange the fans properly to prevent it from pulling out the moldy air, but no matter what I did, the mold fumes were nearly deadly at that point. I would collapse with weakness and almost black out, and I am not exaggerating. I felt like I would pass out and not wake up again. I thought for a while it was carbon monoxide, and I talked to the landlord about it, but he told me that nothing, anywhere, in or around my apartment or any other apartment could be producing carbon monoxide. If I stepped outside my apartment and went out in the fresh air, I quickly got better. This was only happening when it was extremely, severely, bitter cold.

So I bought a couple of sleeping bags, and I put one inside the other. I wore three pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, and several shirts and sweaters, along with gloves and a hat, and also, a coat, and probably a scarf too but I forget. Then I went down to the car. Then I got inside the double sleeping bags. I was so stuffed I couldn't even move. But I was warm. The only thing cold was my face, because I had to keep my nose exposed to breathe. But I surrounded most of my face with the sleeping bag and my hat.

I had to keep the car window open a tiny, tiny crack. I couldn't keep it all the way closed. So I was losing my warm air. But I had to. When I kept the window all the way closed, I would create too much carbon dioxide in the car, and it would cause me to start panicking and my heart would be pounding. After I observed this, I noticed that it also happens if I sleep with the bedroom door closed all the way, and I remembered, as a child, asking Mom to keep the door open a crack as she was walking out after kissing me goodnight, because if the door was open a crack, I wouldn't get scared at night. I still have to keep the door open a crack. If it's closed all the way, I will get too much carbon dioxide in the night, and wake up terrified. The terror quickly and instantly goes away if I open the door or the window a crack and let the fresh air in.

One of those nights, I recall hearing on the weather report that it had gone down near zero degrees (Fahrenheit!). So... I have slept outdoors in near-zero weather. I don't recall what exactly the lowest temperature actually was.

When I think of living in my car, the only thing that seems like it would be hard to deal with is the cold. I love heat. I would be able to tolerate summer heat in the car. But I am afraid of what it would be like to live in my car in the winter.

So I am reading about, and thinking about, the real details of what I might do if I live in the car, and, if I stay there in the winter at all, what I might do to deal with the cold.

This is something I've dreamed of doing for YEARS. I can't explain to anyone why it's so important to me that I *WANT* to live in my car. I just want to feel like I CAN. I want to live a while without paying rent, and I want the satisfaction of watching the money pile up and pile up, instead of getting wasted on rent. I have so many things that I've wanted to save money for. If I didn't pay rent, then I'd have to work a lot fewer hours, and I'd have more time for EVERYTHING. I became even more aware of this after reading the book Dad gave me years ago, 'Your Money Or Your Life,' which talks about how extreme frugality is a good way for ordinary people to cut back on their hours of work, even if they don't have jobs that earn a lot of money. The book guides you to quit working completely, however, its plan was based on buying the government's Treasury Bills and earning interest from them, and I no longer trust the government's investments... so I wouldn't follow that particular part of the plan. I would have to find some other way to earn money or earn interest. But even if you don't quit working entirely, you can still greatly cut back on your hours. Then, you'd have time to study, for instance, so that you can learn something and get a better paying job. For a chronically fatigued person who takes a long time to recover from hard work, taking time off work is a HUGE big deal.

That's not the only reason I want to live in my car. I remember something my brother said to me years and years ago. I don't remember why he said this. Apparently, I had talked to him about how I was interested in making everything from scratch. I was wishing that I could make every single tool I used, and get every single piece of food that I ate, from somewhere outdoors, by myself. That idea has fascinated me since I was a child - total self-reliance. My brother, or maybe it was my father, had commented to me that he saw me as a person who 'wanted to go out and live in the woods,' or something like that, 'and never come back to civilization.' I agreed that this was almost true, although I'm not sure about never coming back at all.

I would have wanted to be in the boy scouts if I had known how good they were. I didn't know much about them until I was an adult. I've looked at some of their scout manuals. I actually admire the boy scouts a lot. I wasn't as interested in the girl scouts. I always had this feeling that they were 'easier' than the boy scouts, and that I would miss out on learning things I needed to know because it was 'dumbed down' for girls. In reality they are probably very good also - I've never really seen what they do.

When I think of living in the car, there is this 'feeling' where I anticipate that I am about to get attacked by the murderers. I was thinking and planning about this the other day, and I think that the reason I was able to do it was because I was still having reactions to the clothing that had the antidepressant residue on it. Usually I get attacked very severely if I try to think about or plan anything at all, but they were letting me do it that day.

But if I weren't being attacked, I would feel sure that this is something I want to do. I've read about it, and I know that real people are doing it, for the same reasons that I want to. They do it to save huge amounts of money on rent, and also, for the challenge of camping out and proving to themselves that they can.

I was thinking about something. Living in your car is different from backpacking because you don't have to worry about weight limits or space limits (up to a point). I don't have to worry that it will be difficult to walk miles and miles while carrying several sleeping bags and coats and heavy clothing and all that. I can get as much stuff as I can fit in the car. I won't be carrying it anywhere. I was thinking I might get some kind of infrared insulation if I end up sleeping there in the wintertime (I still don't feel sure if I'm really going to do this, and if so, for how long). I just googled that, and it looks like there might not be any such thing as 'infrared insulation.' There are lots of results but they're not actually about a type of insulation. Oh well, whatever it's called.

I really hope that I can go through with this for real, and succeed. I know mostly what I need to do. I would need to get a mailing address. If I recall, you can't just get a post office box unless you have a physical address to give them. I would just advertise for someone to let me use their address. I don't want to just ask Peter to let me do it - he would - and he and Tammy would also invite me to come live in their house with them, if they knew that I had chosen to live in my car. I haven't been talking to Peter much and I am trying to disconnect from him, and it's very painful because he still calls me on the phone sometimes. But if they knew that I was living in my car, their response would be, 'Oh my gosh! Nobody would ever want to do that on purpose! She must be really desperate! I didn't know how much trouble she was in!' So they would offer to help.

I need to have control of my own environment. Peter's house is too toxic for me. Not only does he use lots and lots of prescription drugs, and Tammy does too, but also, their ventilation is full of dust or mold or something, I don't know what. And they have all of their televisions, and lights, turned on 24 hours a day. Peter is awake all night because his drugs have given him day-night reversal, but he won't listen to me if I tell him that's what's causing it, and he doesn't believe that it's something unnatural and bad - he talks about it like it's a great strength to be proud of. He watches TV constantly. He is physically sick and can't move around a lot and do energetic things, so I understand, but I can't bear to hear televisions running 24 hours a day. I go insane when I visit him even for short periods of time.

Not only that, but they have those horrible, horrible, mercury-filled, energy saving compact fluorescent bulbs, which cause eye damage, and my eyes become blurry after spending a short time under those horrible evil bulbs that are now required by the stupid, foolish, ignorant, evil government. I'd like to smash a whole bunch of those mercury-filled bulbs at the houses of the people who made the laws that declared incandescent bulbs to be illegal, and then, after forcing them to live in their mercury-filled houses, I'd shine those lights in their eyes for hours and hours. It even sunburns the skin, especially if you are using a drug like St. John's Wort which causes photosensitivity - you actually get a sunburn from sitting under compact fluorescent light bulbs! It happens to me. They put out ultraviolet radiation.

So I can't live there. And I wouldn't ask them to let me pick up my mail there. I'd find someone else to let me use their mailing address. I know a lot of things I would do.