Homeless

I was homeless. I’d fallen to the bottom and I didn't even notice I'd hit the ground.

I'd given up everything- my jobs, my stability, my logic… What's worse, I didn't even realize it had happened.

It was a single story house with a full basement. I'd moved in with some “friends” and my girlfriend at the time (even though she’d advised against it). It seemed like such a solid plan.

I quit both full time jobs where I had little freedom for socialization or other “recreational” activities so I could bathe in the money I'd be making and new freedom I'd be enjoying, tax free.

The best part, I could get high off my own product as much as I pleased. I made money from other people's addictions while also feeding my own.

What could I possibly have left to lose? My “best friend” was going to help me make it happen.

We’d sell it together and he would make sure the profit we turned would benefit us both.

I belonged here. And I fell in love with it. Smoking it, selling it, watching as the black snail trail followed along behind the Oxy. It was more than just a high, it was relaxing, numbing - in all the best ways; best of all, I couldn't hear her anymore. I'm not even sure if I could hear him anymore. If I had, I might've heard their pleas and cautions as to what I was becoming.

But I was becoming me. Right? No one looked at me differently here. At least I didn't think they did.

This was “family”. They'd never let me down. I just knew it. But I also knew, I'd been lying to myself.

They didn't know my secret. At least not at first. I'd kept it to myself living in a house with my girlfriend and 5 other humans. And they bought it. What's more I was treated like more of a “man” than I had been previously. I was just over 2 years into my transition and I wanted to feel everything that made me feel real.

Words, expressions, touches of affection and camaraderie were being handed to me in ways I'd never dreamed.

What I'd gotten myself involved in quickly turned from excitement to devastation.

A few months after I'd moved in I began to notice that the money I was expecting to come in wasn't.

The only explanation I got from my roommates was that product was moving slow or they had needed it to get caught up on rent, etc. And like a child, I believed them, but reluctantly.

Before long I'd run thru all of my savings trying to make up for my losses. But they were accumulating more rapidly than I could manage.

I started to think something was wrong. The voices in my head were telling me I was right. But I was too stubborn to believe them, or care.

Then one day I walked into the house and it had been trashed. Some things, like laptops, tv, etc., were carefully laid on their faces as if not to break them.

But why wouldn't they take them? These were worth more than just the drugs in my safe.

The more I looked around the more it became clear, my roommates had staged a break in.

It wouldn't be long before I'd find out they were using me. And the money I was promised and hustled for was gone.

I had nothing. Just the clothes on my back and a house that unbeknownst to me was about to have it's residents evicted. My roommate hadn't paid the rent in months. I had nowhere to go.

I'd ruined relationships over drugs. And I'd found myself surrounded by humans whose only motivation was the next high and the next profit.

As the days progressed my girlfriend and I became squatters. The landlords who owned the house lived out of town and wouldn't be back for a few more months to reclean and rent the house. So we stayed.

There was no heat, hot water or electricity. We - my gf and I - found ourselves eating cold cans of beans and making fires in the fireplace out of anything we could find to burn. It was winter and the nights sent their cold air straight to our bones.

The only part of the house that had heat was the living room, in front of the fireplace. It was shared with another human whose highs lasted days and paranoia, hours.

He'd wake us up to warn of alien invasion or holding a knife telling us we had to leave in fear of “those” who were coming after us.

I'd never experienced anything like it. I was scared. Worried. But most of all, angry. At myself. At us. Me and the ones in my head. How could I have let myself get to this? Is this really the acceptance I'm looking for? At what price? It was too much. If I hadn't had my girlfriend with me, I may not have made it to tell this story.

I was lost by myself. I needed the ones in my head but I was too resentful of the constant battle in my brain. I couldn't swallow my pride long enough to realize the path I was on would lead me back to Tacoma.

Back to the place I'd grown up. And even then, I'd still feel the sting, the cold and the darkness of being homeless.