Where I Have Been.

Okay so last time was kind of... intense. I truly didnt think that people would even care to read it, let alone absorb it and be impacted. A few people reached out to say that they felt something from it, and it reminded me that I wanted to tell the whole story.

So yeah.. last time, mom passing, intense... If you dont know me IRL, you probably wonder where I am these days... I should tell you all that I am much safer, and much happier. Looking back on this past year has shown me that growth truly is a strange and wondrous journey.

It all started in the dark winter months following my mothers passing. I was becoming more and more withdrawn from the world. My boyfriend at the time was being sent back to jail (a story for another day.), and I was back to a life of staying home every weekend and dreaming about what it would be like to go out at night. Making memories, ones that would blank out everything that happened that Fall.

The funeral was quick and painless, just like she would have wanted, so luckily her wishes were being respected, but it didnt make it any less hard like I had hoped. It was easier to just count the seconds and minutes rather than the memories and moments we were leaving with her in the cemetery.

I started my new job and went everyday because I knew that she would be proud to watch me grow up a push more, and make my own money. I aced all my training and was doing quite well for a new representative.

I continued to improve at work, make healthier decisions and eventually started to go out a bit more often, see friends, keep in touch with family. The people who knew about my grief often commented on how I was handling it all so well, and I would feel prideful when people acknowledged my well-roundedness, and Id silently thank her for that every single time.

I had a boyfriend, a good job, an apartment with my best friend, all in spite of one of lifes greatest losses. I was doing pretty damn good until winter blanketed us all and we had to just keep on going. The first ever Christmas Id have without my mom, the first spring that we wouldnt get to take random road trips out of town just to get away from everything that was holding us there. It was a year full of firsts and I was already 24. Growth really is a wild journey.

Thats the operative term here folks.

I had.a good job and everything a normal person would need and want.

I had.

***

What causes human beings to lose all hope? It has to be something deeper than just loss and tragedy. Its a sickening mixture of the two... Its like the loss is the main factor in the creation of tragedy that is your new life.

As we approach another March, I cant help but think to mid-March last year; falling in and out with bad vices, and good friends and the bad vices we partook in together. After close to 3 years in a not-so-favourable living condition, I woke up and walked out the front door of that apartment with my purse, packed for work and the clothes on my back and never went back ever again. I wanted to kill the parts of me that had brought me to where I was, and in the process, I would kill off any and all connections that no longer served me.

I couch surfed, "fell asleep" at hookups houses so I could stay warm, stayed in hotels when I could afford it and rented rooms from slumlords in exchange for a bag of crushed up tylenol. The people who knew how I was living were deadly worried about me almost always, and made no habit of hiding it. They thought I was a lost cause when I said that I had never felt more free, but they dont understand the feeling of reclaiming ones own life; or they assume one can only reclaim their life by moving up the totem pole. I tend to let those people be; they dont understand that I must grow roots before I can fruitfully bloom. The ashes under my fingernails can age me like the rings on a tree trunk, but theyll always see the dirt and never the glory of working from the ground up.

I was dirty, I was hungry, I was dependent on substances.

But goddammit was I free.

Until I met Paulie.

He was an almost 50 year old man that was also homeless, and had a hankering for the same stuff I did, and he had what I assumed was most dealers' respect.

I was misguided.

They knew he would give them any money he owed out.

That is not respect.

He approached me one day as I was sitting by myself on the Boardwalk, shivering and shrugging deeper in my coat as the sun broke.

I was honestly astounded by the amount of other homeless people who were also parading through the mostly empty, supposedly quarantined streets. Staying indoors is supposed to be legal mandate.

I guess the rules only really applied to those who had a home.

Otherwise, you can go and stay outside all day and die. It was like every second I was becoming more aware of not only the governments views towards the homeless, but also the city itself.

Thats where you're all wrong. You pass your judgements, but what you fail to remember is that I was once one of you.

I went walking the nature trails on Saturday afternoon, I ate ice cream cake on my friends' birthdays. I had friends that I didnt meet from sleeping in abandoned houses.

I had it all. And I lost it.

And you can very well be thrown here too, where I am.

In fact, may God forgive me for saying this, but I hope you are.

Maybe then you wouldn't turn up your noses, and maybe stop and smell the roses. Its not like you had much else to do today anyways.

***

I once considered Paulie the first and only man I would ever truly love, and the singular person left on earth that still cared whether or not I had eaten anything that day. There were issues we both had to work out, but he ended up loving me too. That was what made me believe this was my forever, because for once I had my feelings returned.

Just not publicly, and if anyone asked, I was an escort and he was my muscle when John's got aggresive.

How beautiful one must feel to be loved in the light.

Every night for almost a full 9 months after the incident, all I thought about was that first night in the abandoned house he showed me that I could sleep in if it ever got too cold. He tried a good 12 or so times to have sex with me and I simply could not co-operate, and told him I was nervous because it had been so long since the last time I even went on a coffee date.

He tried one last time and with a sigh of defeat and frustration, he flopped over, his back facing me as he started to fall asleep, and I felt so... alone. I had finally met a man I found I could forge a connection with and already there was developing distance, because of the one thing that I could not give him. I had thought I found my little piece of normalcy in a world that had long since lost it.

And now he was leaving too.

I felt the tears burn an acid trail down my cheek as I looked out the window at the starless night spread out before me, stars broken, but still glistening with The Light.

"Whats wrong?" he asked, breaking the silence like dawn breaks up the dusk, again and again.

"Does it matter?" I replied, trying not to let my voice crack.

"Whatever, talk to me when you're done flailing, 'kay?" and he rolled back over, unconscious again within minutes.

I felt the sting of his words, but before I could let my entire heart and body tear open and wail until I gave myself a headache I wouldn't be able to sleep off, I made myself a promise to never let a man see me cry over something he said in anger to me ever again.

Evil men will collect the tears of women they've hurt like trophies. I refused to give him the satisfaction.

So I hope that when he tore a machete through our bedroom door, threw me into a doorframe, almost choked me unconscious, and kicked me back out onto the streets in nothing but a pair of leggings (no bra)... that he didn't feel the slightest bit satisfied.

Growth is a strange and wondrous journey... and journey, I shall.

~To Be Continued~