Where Do I Lay My Head? One Woman's Struggle

As the number nine bus crosses the Hawthorne Bridge, my eyes scan the area carefully. Everywhere I go, I am looking. . . looking for clumps of bushes or abandoned buildings. My instinct is seeking out hiding places, in case I need one.

It has been ten years since being homeless, yet I still search. An older friend, who had come from Germany, once told me about her Jewish family running from the Nazi's and trying to get into safe territory. It is a special scar that homelessness leaves on us.

Never in my life did I imagine myself having no place to sleep. A lot of people consider the homeless the dregs of society. This is such an unfair assumption. Sometimes people run into trouble they never dreamed would enter and influence their lives.

For over twenty years I was a Hospice Home Health Aide and made eleven dollars an hour when my job ended. I had raised two children on my own, never asking for a cent from my well-to-do husband. He would have tried to take my children, and that would have been beyond enduring.

I had had an abusive childhood and am a survivor, so my life revolved around my kids. PTA President, Volunteer in the Public Schools, room mother. I didn't date so that I would not expose my children to someone who might not be good for them. But the children grew into their late teens and I could see that very soon I would be alone.

Through Parents Without Partners I met a nice friend - who had a friend who needed somebody to talk to, and that is what I do best, listen. My friend and I went to a cowboy place to dance and her friend met us there. He was pleasant enough, very attractive and ignored me completely. I fell in love. Every other man had been too friendly, made passes and made me feel like a top-end New York steak.

He called me the next and we talked for hours. Or, he talked and I listened. His present girlfriend had caused them to be evicted, he said, and so he was staying with friends. As a "motherly" person I ached to help him. Soon I became convinced that all he needed was someone to lift him up out of the morass of his life.

I struggled to help him, we got married and I found out he had been a drug-user. Very ignorant about drugs, I wasn't sure what to do. He was clean then, so he said, and that was acceptable. Two years of marriage and he met some guy who gave him dope, and he slide off the edge of the world... taking me with him.

He began beating me mercilessly. The neighbors in the small duplex complex where we lived got tired of hearing the commotion and seeing me bruised and bloody. Then he used the rent money for dope and called the landlady a "sweat hog".

That first night homeless was surreal. My mind could not comprehend the reality of parking in a park to sleep. I cried for hours, which got me beaten up again. There is nothing more sickening than that feeling of being without a place to belong. Really and truly no place to sleep, or eat, or use the restroom.

That was the beginning of my fall into insanity. My husband used my prescription medication to trade for illicit drugs. I was forty-five years old and needed several medications. I had lost my job because I got too weak to work, so my medication eventually ended. I sank deeper into darkness.

When you are homeless you are the mercy of the world. There was no place to go to be alone. I don't mean for us as a couple. No place for me to be alone. I am a loner and here I was at the middle of the spotlight. I didn't do drugs, was half-dead from abuse and lack of medical care.

He dragged me from one dope house to the next, where I took care of the house and any children, since I was the only with at least two brain cells active. Why didn't I leave? Well, here is the reality of these kinds of situations. An abusive partner beats you down slowly, estranges you from your friends and family. Eventually he is all you have and to think of being without him is horror. I was half-dead and barely able to function, so I stayed.

When he went to jail I was on my own, crazed. I would hide anywhere I could find and wait. I wasn't a junkie or a bad person. A totally unexpected series of events changed my life and drove me insane. Many of the homeless on the streets have similar stories to tell. It is true that some are drug-addicted, insane or can't fit within the walls of society, but to be vulnerable and without housing is a grinding nightmare of struggle.

When I left him for good, my new life started. It has been an uphill struggle that never ends. However, I worked hard and now have my disability money, a nice studio in a public housing building and have been writing again.

There are residuals from that period of my life. I lock my door compulsively. It is torture for me when maintenance has to come in my room. The other tenants find me strange and anti-social. I get panic attacks if I go far beyond the 10 block radius of my home. Often I stay in my room for the majority of the month.

This is the side of homelessness that people don't see. The 'why' of the situation. Whatever reason causes homelessness, a person's life is never the same again. The most precious possession I have, cherished more than gold or jewels, is the key to my room.