On our first big fight...and becoming a stripper

I'm sitting in my living room chair in 2016 thinking about why exactly I'm writing again about me in 2013, and I'm not entirely sure of my purpose.  I just know that, when I feel so compelled to write that the refusal to do it nauseates me, I open up my laptop and start hitting the keys.

I just finished reading a blog article of a "church lady" that went with several of her "church lady" friends...to a strip club.  Their mission was to restore the sense of humanity to these ladies.  They truly ministered to them in the truest sense of the concept - no judgments and no agenda except to make these dancers feel loved.  The church ladies were struck that, while they went in with no ill judgments, they did have some preconceived ideas about the character or at least personalities of these ladies - that they were all just really mostly similar except for their jobs.  They all ended up having a sort of unifying and transcendent and healing experience from it.  It was a nice story - so nice.  It caused a lump to form in my throat because it didn't just trigger emotions for me...

It triggered my memory.

In 2013 I found myself to be one of those "without a place to go".  I was homeless. Six weeks prior I had been an 8 year veteran of the SAHM world, but life played out as it always does and I ended up being a short term resident of a shelter for battered women. Go read my very first post to read about my first night there.

I decided very quickly that, because you are only allowed to stay for 8 weeks, I was going to do whatever it took to build a whole brand new life.  Let me tell you - 3 years post homelessness and I'm STILL trying to recover from what was only a 2 1/2 month stint as a person with no home.  I knew I wanted something good and solid, and I knew I needed something fast.  The problem was that I found myself having almost no work experience for the previous 8 years and I was living in a VERY political small town and was on the wrong end of the politics.  My options seemed REEEEAAAL limited.

One day in the office, I was talking with one of the girls about jobs.  Most of us were looking for one, and I purposed in my heart that I was going to be at the front of the line.  I'd spent a good week in bed crying and then I recovered myself to get to work.  This girl with whom I was sharing information mentioned dancing.  She told me about the club where she had worked and about the connections that she still had with that club and another one.  She proceeded to tell me that I could be a good candidate for getting a job and that she could help me...

to become a stripper.

So this all flew in the face of "before" me who, for all intents and purposes, was a virgin when I got married to my older kids' dad, but I'm going to tell you this: when you have nothing with a prospect of more nothing, you don't stay snobby.  You do what you gotta do.  You don't turn up your nose at something that you know could pay your bills because the electric company and water company don't take good morals for payment.  You don't get to leave the store with your groceries because you're "a really nice girl that just doesn't do those things".  You need money.  If you're stuck and you don't want to stay that way, you think "outside the box".

I played these justifications through my mind and decided to broach the idea (really just give notification) to my old boyfriend turned new boyfriend (again, you gotta read my old posts for THAT story).  I explained the whole story to my feministic, philosopher boyfriend wanting him to support me during this really desperate, unconventional period of my life and to protest because I was "his" all at the same time.  I didn't know what I wanted, but I knew what I needed.  I needed money.

I had three sets of eyes looking to me - COUNTING on me to rebuild my life.  This was an absolute necessity that I accomplish this, so I told Dan about my plan.

"I just don't think this is a good idea for you in any area." "I will support you as a person if you do this, but I do not support this idea." were the things he told me.  I became completely furious, and thus began our first fight. I felt like he was being snobby and elitest when all I wanted was a way out!!! He wouldn't seem to understand!

I was desperate. I could make 3 phone calls and have a couple of interviews and have a job in a town where I was an outcast.  I felt frantic and so, so frustrated.  This was something that I needed to do.  I didn't care how humiliated I felt sure I would feel.  I didn't care about other people's opinions of me.  I didn't care that I would work weird hours.  I didn't care about the ugly things people might say to me through the course of my shift or the dangers that could befall me after it was over.

I was just a mom whose life got ripped out of my hands who needed money to survive, and this was my ticket.

Are you my friend?

Have you been my friend for a long time?

Did you just become my friend?

Did you know this story?  (Actually I think even my mom didn't know this story...sorry, Mom!) Does your opinion of me change?  Does your opinion of "them" change?

I AM them.  They ARE me.

I never danced a single turn.  The stars aligned (it was God) and I got a job working as a makeup artist for Estee Lauder...while I was living at the shelter.  I was shocked that I got the job in the first place.  I used my ex sister in law's address (one of THE most tremendous women on the planet) on my employment paperwork so that no one would know that I was actually homeless. My car ended up getting totaled so there was a 12.5 mile gulf between work and my temporary residence, so I bought a bike.  Once my coworkers found out that I was riding that distance in the dark on a road peppered with monuments to cyclists who had been struck and killed by cars, they started giving me rides.

One day, a sassy, stylish lady of privilege sat down in my chair for me to do her makeup.  We chatted about her coloring and the products she had used from our line, and then we made small talk about her life. "I like to get the gift (with purchase) and if it's not something I'll use, I like to donate it to (insert name of shelter that I'm not legally allowed to type because I signed a waiver) so that the ladies there can have something nice".  The blood drained from my hands midway through applying her blush.

Another memory:

Two weeks prior the administrator (I don't remember her actual title, but she ran the place for the owner) came into the common room and tossed a shoe box onto the oversized 1970's dining room table. The contents popped out of the box and down again after her tossing it our direction.  It drew us like bugs to a porch light - it was makeup!  The other girls sifted through it, but, because they had all seen the makeup that I'd managed to keep safe through all of my logistical loss and because a couple of them had even found their way to the right end of my shears and makeup brushes, they started picking things out for me.  "Ooh! Sarah, look at this! Is this a nice one?" "THIS is a pretty color!" "Do you have anything like this already?"  My heart wanted to hoard ALL of it on this day that felt like Christmas, but I decided on just a few thing - one of them being a lipstick in a dark blue tube from non other than...Estee Lauder.

That tube of lipstick was actually in my makeup bag behind the counter as I spoke to the client who very likely could have donated it. "I just feel like everybody deserves to have something nice, and if I'm not going to use it, I want someone to enjoy it.  I've never gotten to meet any of those ladies...(her voice trailed off a little bit as I turned her face different angles to finish her service)...but I wish I could. I just hope that little things like that help."

"I HAVE TO TELL HER I HAVE TO TELL HER!!!...but I can't. That's not professional...I can't tell her that is the exact place where I'm actually currently living...but I have to tell her that she DID make a difference!" Despite the disorganization of the shelter employees and the fact that a LOT of the nice things people donate never even make it to the people in need, I knew I had to say something.

We finished her appointment.  She picked out almost $100 worth of merchandise and did indeed get the gift with purchase for the promotion we were running.  I saw my chance.  I bagged up her things and walked out from behind the counter and said "I have something to tell you...(she looked up at me with furrowed, confused brows) you HAVE met one of the ladies."  The eyes of this "fancy" lady welled up with tears "You?" she mouthed while she choked away the brokenness in her voice.  I nodded and smiled. "Oh I'm so GLAD that place helped you and you have a life now and this wonderful job!" We hugged. I'd been working there for like a week.  I didn't even know if I was allowed to hug customers or if I was going to lose my job for telling her what I did.  What she also didn't know is, when I left my "wonderful job" (and it really was) for the day, I was going home to the shelter to eat a can of corn and a package of uncooked ramen noodles so I could get back on the bus or in someone else's car or on my bike to come to work the next day.  I didn't tell her.  She really had made an impact of giving humanity back to me during a time when I felt pretty stripped of dignity. That's all I wanted her to know.  I didn't need for her to know about how during my days pre-job, I walked around town with vouchers begging people for things their businesses claimed to give people in need.  I didn't need for her to know about the corn or the ramen or that I didn't get to see my kids overnight for those months because they wouldn't have been allowed a place to sleep. I didn't want her to know that I would ride to work on my bike for more than 12 miles and go into Panera Bread soaking with sweat and then redress myself and dry my hair and put on that lipstick in the blue tube.  I just wanted her to know about the lipstick - and that it had made a difference.

Weeks passed and I saved up enough money to get myself an apartment.  A friend actually bought me a car.  A new friend from work organized a pounding for me and a drive for household items.  I will never forget my first night in my apartment sleeping on an air mattress I'd retrieved from the house I shared with my ex husband. Other than a little wicker bench, that was all my furniture. I felt like a queen.

Today I'm sitting on a comfy oversized chair with my feet on a cushy ottoman.  My 4 month old baby is laying beside me in a state of satisfied milk drunkenness.  I just got off the phone with my friend, and I'm waiting for my husband to get home from work.  I ate a full meal earlier and put gas in my car, and I have enough money to buy the diapers my baby needs and even food for my daughter's chubby guinea pig.

I look like one of "you" and all of you.  I'm just a mom of four kids who writes a blog sometimes and has an all but unwatched Youtube channel.  I drive around town. I go to church. I throw back my head and laugh when I think something is funny.  My life, though as I said is still very challenging, looks completely normal and this story is something about which most of you only know the ending.  I'm just "that girl Sarah", "Dan's wife", "the Stevens kids' mom"....I'm just a mom.

....but I was almost a stripper.