As you may have seen from Sunday, I am using the book “All are Free to Write” by Sheila Allee to help me to feel inspired and to write. The second prompt was about discussing trauma that you have gone through. I made a list of 5 traumatic experiences from my life or general trauma areas that have occurred within the scope of my life. I have also stated that I am going to be very honest during this week and these posts. This means that these posts may come together on the same day depending on how I am feeling writing about the trauma or they may come later on in the day depending how I am feeling.
I have struggled with this being the next area to write about this week. It is taking more time to write these then it did last week. I will also be doing an update for the physical abuse section as well because more information came to me that I remembered after the fact. I think this section came at the right time though. I am doing a lot of healing and even attended a very important retreat focused on well-being this week from my work, so it feel very organic for where I am in life right now.
I also realized I needed to reorder slightly the list. Due to this, the verbal abuse section came earlier and homelessness is coming now. The third trauma area I am going to discuss is:
Homelessness
When I graduated from high school, I started to realize that if I stayed in the environment with my grandma that was so toxic I was probably not going to be alive for long. I was seeing all the flaws finally. I can recall one time she said to me that I would never leave her, but I told her that she was going to be surprised one day when I left and never spoke to her again. This actually ended up happening. I left. I recall the hatred that always seemed to come from her, especially after she learned I was gay. She would tell me things like I was going to hell regularly. I did not mention this yesterday in the verbal abuse, as it fit here best. You had to know that the verbal abuse was occurring though. It was so often by the end that I could not see myself any more being a happy human being. I was being told how awful I was daily by the end. I don’t know that my dad even knew that this was occurring or who in the family knew. It was though. It was horrible to be told that a part of yourself that you did not decide was such a bad thing that someone you had taken much of your life to love hated you now. She let it be clear that she hated me as well. She made it known that God hated me as well. I could not live in this any more. My final moment of this was her telling my friends that they should not like me when I wanted to go to the “Sweetheart Dance”. It was too much. She told them they should not be my friends, it was horrible. I already had dealt with so much from her and this was just too much.
I started planning how I could leave. I regret the way I did this, but I did not see another way. I did not have any employable skills I felt at this time and my mentality from living with her was that I was indeed worthless, so I took her state quarters. She collected those quarters that were made for each state over years. I took them to the local grocery store and turned them into coin star to escape. My sister, biological one, helped me to get away. She was told that I had a place to go and on a Wednesday, I left. She drove me to Richmond, IN to where there was a Greyhound. When I got to the store with the Greyhound, they were closed, but I got lucky. The cashier opened back up when she saw me. She did ask that I was not escaping the law, which I was honest about what was happening and who I was escaping. She sold me a ticket out to California. I went to Marysville, CA where a lesbian couple lived. I recall though waiting in the car with my sister and by this point she had my niece. I recall the pain of leaving my niece because I had helped raise her up to that point. I recall her face to this day and her holding my hand, my niece did. It was as if she was saying to me that she knew it would be okay and that she loved me. It helped me to make what was a hard decision for my life. I am not sure I could have pushed through this if she had not been there.
I knew the lesbian couple from online. You see, I had started to realize things were wrong because of being online. I was playing games online that were like you were in Survivor or Big Brother (the TV shows) with other people online. One of the lesbian couple people played these with me. They told me that I could live with them for awhile. I lived with them for 6 months. I was still in fight or flight mode from the issues living with grandma. There were issues living with them as well, but I appreciate them too much at this point to put their part of this into this story. I respect certain privacy and this feels like one of those areas I am allowed to keep close to myself. One day, I realized I needed to leave and took a bus to San Francisco. I recall staying overnight in a bus stop that first night because I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the area. I was a bit lost internally at this point. I recall being woken up by a bus driver that thought I wanted to ride, so I took the bus because I had a few dollars. I rode until I could figure out where I was going. I recall walking around and just so confused on where I was at in life and how I got to where I was. I just knew that things had to change for me to live again. I eventually realized that San Francisco would be the best place for me to go because of people that had told me about the place.
When I arrived in San Francisco from a greyhound bus, I did not know anything. I only knew of one person, but I wasn’t comfortable yet with them either. All I had was an address for a local shelter, Larkin Street Youth Services. It turned out I had the youth address. I was able to find that shelter that day, but it took a bit of time. I walked around looking because I had no clue where I was and all I had on me was some clothes and a few food stamps. When I got to the youth shelter, I walked in and the person stopped me. He was rude at first, I asked if I could go in long enough to get an address. He was very adamant that I could not. Then he realized I did not know anything about this city and just got off the bus. He helped me find the place. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have made it over to the Lark Inn. This was the name of the young adult shelter. I survived because he recognized a troubled soul and helped me survive.
When I got to the Lark Inn, I was told that they do not have a bed for that night and they explained to me what the process was. I would need to check-in every single day at a specific time of the day to get a bed. They explained to me about another program that would help find a bed for the night. I went to the place that this worker told me to go to. The front desk person allowed me to sit down on a cot until the van came to take me to a specific shelter for the night. They did yell at me because I stated to someone that they could sit down next to me and the front desk had to tell me that I was not permitted to do this, but I did not know this. I still was operating in another world at this point. The world that I had to survive and be nice to everyone. I was still very much naive in many ways. When the van arrived, it took me to a church. I did not know where this church was in terms of the shelter, but I was told I would have to leave by 8 AM so I knew I would be able to make it to the shelter before the time I was told that I needed to check-in. I recall when I woke up the next day to the shelter, that they served us coffee and a danish. I got close to someone’s bag and they started to scream at me, but some other shelter participant screamed at the guy. I remember him screaming at him, “You can tell this child is scared out of his mind, leave him the hell alone or I will bust ya ass.” I was thankful for him in the moment. I never met him again, but I was thankful for him as well. I was thankful that he told this person to back off me because I did not have that voice yet. I wouldn’t develop a voice for myself until more recently.
I got lucky, I walked around that shelter for hours upon hours. Waiting for the check-in time. When it got time, I got lucky and there was a bed that had become available. I got in and spent time in the Lark Inn, where I spent time with some other awesome homeless individuals that I felt supported by. I have a soft spot for those individuals in my heart. I always will because they are people that lived through the same thing at the same time I did. There were good days and bad days in that shelter. I will share more personal stories of the shelter at another time. I would spend the next 6 years roughly in and out of different programs that were similar to the Lark Inn. I spent a lot of time trying to be housing secure in an insecure place. I would travel to Los Angeles and stayed there for 6 months in another shelter. Life would be this constant back and forth of trying to survive. Trying to make sure I knew where I could get food. I did not believe I had any real skills and I didn’t actually. No one built me up enough to have them, so when I was at Lark Inn they helped to develop me. That is where I actually first got some non-profit skills. They had a non-profit track that put me at a few San Francisco non-profits that helped me to develop who I wanted to be myself. I wanted to help others and that has stuck with me. I still have that strong desire to help others.
During six years, a lot happened. In order to survive, I did sex work. This is prostitution. Yes, I did this to survive. I would find individuals that were male that were willing to pay me. I did this for almost a year of my life. It helped me to survive and helped me to have food on the table. It didn’t change me that drastically as a person, I was still someone that wanted to help others. It just created that sometimes you have to do things in order to be alive as a mentality that I had. The bigger issue was the food issue. I sometimes had to find places that would feed the homeless. Luckily, San Francisco has numerous soup kitchens. Sometimes it would mean going to the other time of the city because that is where the hot meal would be that day. I also learned to utilize places like a local youth rec center that was in the Castro district (the gay area of San Francisco). The person that ran this shelter would make food for all of us all the time. I did not go as often as I could have because of fear, but I appreciated every single time I did and that I would get hot food. I also utilized at one point a place that was near the Haight district. This place became where I would go the most often and felt like its own weird family. I loved that place and a part of my heart will always be with those people.
When you have been homeless, your heart goes out to people you knew. There are a lot of people I don’t know any more. I don’t see them any more and I do not know if they are even alive now, but there is this little room in my heart for each of them. I send them every single day love and light. I wish them love, if they are still here on this planet and I hope they got to a better place in their life. Sleeping under the stars sounds romantic, but when you have lived through it you better understand that it isn’t when it isn’t a choice you made. When you were in a way forced to do it, it becomes a horrible situation. Sleeping in a bus stop isn’t a way to exist. I don’t hold resentment towards my grandmother that much for the decision I had to make in terms of becoming homeless, but I do know that if she had been a better person that this would not have had to occur. I would have been able to have a family, like other people, but I did not get that opportunity.
HOW I FEEL AFTER: This was easier to write about. I think this is because I remember these feelings so much. The homelessness was so long ago, but I “got better” from it. Thinking of all my traumas though has caused a bit of an internal sadness that I discussed yesterday at the end of that post. There is a deep sadness for who I could have been. Who I should have been. Then I realize I wouldn’t have been this person that wants to help other people. I wouldn’t have been a person that loves openly and wants other people to live their best life, but still it is sad. I need to mourn this part of my life.
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