Home Is Where Your Stuff Is

When I was 15 years old my home was taken away by my sick mother. Nine months ago, 26 years later, my home was taken away from me by my own sickness. My mom's mental illness led her to burn our house down all those years ago. My still undiagnosed illness led to foreclosure, bankruptcy, car repossession and essentially homelessness. Homelessness, not in the traditional sense, but I can't think of a better word to describe what it feels like to load all your belongings into a moving truck and have no where but a storage shed to move them- everything I owned, except for a few things I moved into a basement room in a friend's house. Don't get me wrong, it was a VERY nice room, but I was there at the mercy of a then friend's generosity. Generosity that would be taken back a few months later.

I don't write this, or any other essay to elicit pity. I do it for healing, for understanding and to maybe comfort someone else who might read this and relate to my experience. Sometimes I feel like I have had experiences that no one else I know can understand. For a long time, I was the only person in my broad circle of friends who had ever lost a parent. For awhile I was the only person who had experienced a house fire. For a time, I was the only person I knew who was alive and had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma like me. I ran a shelter for abused women and their children for 14 years partly because I could relate to women who had been raped by someone they loved. If there is one thing that really rings true for me is that there is safety in numbers. I have often sought out people who have had a similar experience just to offer comfort on a topic I can really relate to.

Someday I hope to write about wonderful memories, of which I have many. Tales of my times in Singapore, Israel, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Switzerland, Haiti, the Bahamas . . . I want to share what I have learned from getting out of my home, my comfort zone, and exposing myself to different cultures and foods and religions. I want to talk about amazing moments with my family and friends and what I have learned from them. But right now is the time to write about the pain and the lessons that come from it. Please bear with me for a moment or two or ten.

A few months ago my uncle's house burned down. The home of his family- his wife and daughter and son- was gone. Electrical fire. Immediately I felt I needed to be there, to bear witness to their loss, to offer my support. I drove to LaPorte, I walked through their shell of a house and cried with them, saw their shocked faces, held them, breathed in the soot and smoke, cooked for them and then drove back to my basement room. I "cocooned myself" for days, not able to leave my room. I think I was grieving their loss and my loss of home and it paralyzed me for awhile.

Then, while they were planning a complete rebuild, buying new clothes, picking out new appliances and preparing for the long wait to return to their home, I was asked to leave my room. My friend decided she was not up for having a roommate. The day it happened I had thrown up so hard that I passed out in the bathroom and hit my head on the toilet. I drove myself to the Med Center because I needed IV medication to get the three days of vomiting to stop and when I got home she wanted to talk. I said I couldn't talk because I felt loopy from the medication and needed to go lie down. A few minutes later my cell phone pinged and it was a text from her asking to make a plan for me to leave. She was uncomfortable waiting any longer to have that conversation about me leaving a month later. I was so shocked and hurt and angry about her perceived insensitivity that all I could write back was that I would be gone the next day.

The next morning I packed what I could fit into my car, stopping only to throw up- in the bathroom, in the garage and in the yard. I drove to my sister's apartment and set up a pallet on the living room floor where I would stay for nearly two months. Thank God for her and her willingness to take me in, walk around me, leave me alone sometimes and give me grace and space to lick my latest wounds.

I'm now living with another friend. One that gives me no pause to trust, to love and to let in my heart. I'm grateful for that. We are hoping and planning to move into an apartment together as soon as her house sells. Only then, I think, will I feel like I really live in what I could call a home. A little safe space that is carved out of this big world for me . . . and my stuff.