Being Homeless.....

I first became homeless at the age of nineteen, a very naïve, very sheltered suburban girl. The first few nights I slept in my Dodge Neon. I first turned to friends, who were all living at home with their families, some still in high school. One of them let me crash at her place that weekend, but come Monday, I had to go. I bounced from friend to Neon quite a bit at first, but I managed to keep my job. I would clean up in public restrooms and park in garages to sleep during the day, and then stay up all night, since most free garages are closed at night.

Eventually, I stayed for some months in a guest house about an hour away from the city in the absolute middle of rural nowhere with a friend and her mom. The house was once stunning but was in terrible disrepair and we had to boil all our water, as it came from a well. When my car accident occurred, I lost my job, and my car, and my place to stay for a few months. My “friend” had treated me like a servant and a taxi the entire time I was there so I didn’t much care. My family agreed to repair my car if I voluntarily checked myself into a drug rehabilitation facility they would pay for. The problem was, I wasn’t a drug addict. But I agreed, I was desperate, and they locked me away for two months. I kept telling the counselors and doctors I wasn’t a drug addict and so they kept me longer. Finally I faked it to make it out. I was raped in the facility, and I was raped again when I got out, except this time, I was back at home. I found out I was pregnant, and not sure which rapist was the father, I chose to have an abortion. My family left photos of dead babies all over my room. They took me to confession. They made me talk to priests and my uncle about keeping the baby or adoption. I declined.

I attempted suicide after the abortion. On the day they let me out of the hospital, I went straight from the mental ward to a couch at a friend’s house. Her father was a severely alcoholic man and made daily unwelcomed sexual advances towards me but it was less scary than my parents’ house. She was 14. I was 20. I went there to sleep while her dad was at work and to shower. We left before he got too drunk and nuts. We’d go to raves and afterparties and all night clubs. At this point, I started doing a LOT of drugs. Still wouldn’t say I was an addict.

When I needed money, I stole. I’d go find cash receipts from the trash at local stores and steal what was on the receipts. I stuffed everything from laundry detergent to frozen turkeys in my pants and then returned them for cash. My party friends said, maybe you could go to such-and-such store and steal this Adidas jumpsuit for me or this Versace cardigan and I’ll pay you a percentage of the cost. So I became a full fledged thief. And then I got arrested. That was the end of that. I also cleaned out the bank account of my friend’s rapey dad. I ended up paying him back and he didn’t press charges.

I sold drugs for a while. I remember waking up one day after a week long cocaine binge on a floor that was littered with cat feces next to some veritable stranger named Toothless Tony. I spent a couple years sharing a bunk bed with a gay friend who was 15 at the time. He lived with his grandparents and his Uncle Bob. I’d come home late at night and he’d be waiting in the dark, coked up out of his mind, asking me to snuggle.

I sold drugs, I stole, I manipulated men. I never begged. I’m not proud of it, but it happened. I was a child, thrust into the street, barely clinging to hope, ready to die.

I met a handsome drug trafficker. We fell in love, I moved in with him. I cleaned up my act, got a job, went to school, and he went to have sex with hookers. Then he went to prison. And I had a baby.

At nine months old, my son, and myself, a young wife and mother, found ourselves homeless again. My MIL didn’t want us, so she called my grandmother, who said she didn’t want us either, but she begrudgingly would let us stay in the unfinished basement, because of the baby.

And stay there we did, for many years. I got two undergraduate degrees, a debilitating case of agoraphobia, and a lot more abuse.

I was homeless again two other times. I lived in my ex husband’s garage, a motel, and then I found a nice CCNA with NPD to live with. He ripped out my soul and told me to go back to grandma’s basement or maybe I could stay in his dirt floored storm cellar with the mice, listen to him have sex upstairs with his new girlfriend.

Back to grandma’s to be crucified some more. Got to stay upstairs this time, but I didn’t get a closet, and the rent is paid in proverbial pounds of flesh.

Somehow through all of this, I have single-handedly raised this amazing varsity football player with a heart of gold who loves his mother and has attended the same top echelon school since kindergarten. He’s well-adjusted and smart and happy and never once had a father. He’s the reason I’m alive. He’s the one thing I did right, my redemption, my pride and joy.

Now grandma is dying, and we do our best to be there for her the same way she was there for us. Once again in a position where the rug can ripped out at any time.

Rip your heart out rug. I’m ready.                      -Laura Hamm