I spent my morning getting ready for the day just like so many other women. I fixed my hair into perfect soft curls. My lipstick was a happy, striking red. I had put on an adorably current striped jersey dress. I was ready for this new chapter of my life. This was an important day for me. I got in my little red car, opened the sunroof and made the hour long drive to my new home. I got out of the car, squared my shoulders and planted my feet on the front stoop - though I could feel my legs and ankles shaking over my strappy wedges. I pressed the buzzer next to the door. "Can I help you?" a voice asked through the small intercom box. "Yes...um...I'm (and then I gave my name). I called earlier." I fixed a polite smile on my face and waited for the door to open for me to the building -- a homeless shelter for battered women.
I had spent a couple days envisioning what it would be like at a shelter. I pictured things being very simple and there being an air of quietness and healing. Lots of pink and soft things -- reminders of what "home" is supposed to be. What I saw when the shelter worker opened the door was so very different. First of all, it was very dark. The furniture was all extremely old, and the people all looked incredibly sad. I felt every set of eyes on me. I suddenly felt very out of place "I'm not like THESE people......I don't look right....I shouldn't have dressed up." This monologue played through my brain as I was directed to the office to fill out my intake paperwork. I answered the appropriate questions and then was invited to follow the worker from the front door to see my room.
She was nice. This girl. She offered some small talk on the way to their supply closet. She told me a few of the rules and showed me through the kitchen and "family room". She continued this chatter as she gathered things from the shelves of the closet. "Uh," she paused. "I don't see a pillow here. There should be one on your bed, but here are your sheets." She loaded my arms with the things she'd collected -- a set of mismatched sheets and what looked like an old motel comforter. We reached my room, and she rattled off the protocol for entering and leaving my room and then showed me the bed I'd been assigned and the dressers where I was allowed to put my clothes. "This room is for four adults, so you are allowed to use three drawers -- .right over here," she gestured to the pieces of furniture against the wall. She kept talking while I tried to absorb my surroundings. I was sharing the room with two other women - one of whom had a baby. The room was already very full.
I laid the sheets on my twin sized top bunk and walked over to the dresser to see which drawers could be mine. Upon quick inspection, I noticed that two of the three available drawers had bottoms that were broken out. I let out a sigh and began making my bed. I spread the sheets and comforter across the mattress and then picked up the pillow case. I looked around the bed. There was no pillow -- anywhere. I closed my eyes and let out another sigh, and then it happened. I felt my throat catch. It hit me.
I was here.
The events of the preceding six weeks all caught up with me at once. I had no choice but to admit to myself that it had all been real, and I was now a person that had nowhere to go. To a lot of people, I was a throwaway. I had been thrown away. Life had happened, and I had to accept the fact that I was now homeless and living in a shelter.
I fought the tears for the time it took me to get my computer out and turn on a movie. I stuck in my earbuds and bent my arm to make up for the pillow that wasn't there. I laid down and let the tears stream down across my nose and down my cheek until I fell asleep still in my pretty dress, still with my soft curls, and still wearing the makeup I'd so carefully applied earlier that day. None of that mattered. None of that was real. This was real. I was here. This was my new real.
My first few days there were a bit of a blur that included a lot of sleeping and some talking on the phone to a friend who lived states away from me. I felt a bit numb, but one morning I finally felt like leaving my room and meeting people.
The other ladies were friendly. I was the newby that they initially had thought was a new employee of the shelter because of the way I was dressed on the day I showed up, but they were kind to me. I began to feel a little camaraderie with these other victims.
As I sat at the table, everyone began to story share. Some of the behaviors were more extreme and some surroundings for the stories were different, but that was all. The words our abusers used - even entire phrases - were identical. I began to feel something that I hadn't felt amongst my group of peers in my old social circle. Normal. I began to feel normal. I also felt something else. Acceptance. No one suspected me of lying or exaggerating. They ALL believed MY story, and then something changed in me. I listened to the woman tell about how her girlfriend had tried to kill her. The teller happened to be a drug user and sometimes trafficker. I listened to another woman tell about the physical damage her abuser inflicted on her while their unborn baby grew in her womb. She happened to be a call girl. I watched the schizophrenic that talked to herself most of the time pick up a crayon and draw on cast-off napkins some of the most beautiful artwork I'd ever seen. I listened to so many stories of women that were so very like me. The parts of our stories that included different details stopped mattering, and one singular fact shot to the front of my brain. We...were...all...people, and at one point or another, we had all been thrown away. Being thrown away had driven us to make certain decisions for our lives. Some of these decisions might have seemed foolish and some even viewed as criminal, but life had happened in a way that had driven each one of us to these decisions - things that were outside of our control. So we had all ended up in this house.
Because the inclusion into the group felt like an evolution for me, I can't tell you at what specific place it began, but I found myself doing things for my sisters in the house and they for me. We began to feel comfortable with one another and establish friendships and to defend each other against the more nefarious ones that cycled in and out of "the house". I was careful to protect the privacy of my sisters. This was, after all a place of hiding for us, but I loved getting to tell a faraway friend about the new friends I found there.
There was something sad though. There were ladies that would come in covered in bruises and blood who would spend their first couple of days holed up in their rooms - just like I had. Then they would emerge like an animal finished with hibernation as it blinks in its first beams of spring sunlight, and they would tell their stories. We would spend hours talking about how we were DONE with the world of being mistreated and talk about how strong we were for having survived that world well enough to get out. We would rally around each other, and then we would watch some of them go right back to their abusers. This was the single most heartbreaking thing for me. "WHY??? WHY would she go back to her abuser? She KNOWS that she's just going to get hurt again!" Sometimes this would be another internal dialogue, and sometimes two or three of us would have a conversation together.
So I began to study why it was that a person would return to something that they could feel sure would just cause them more damage. In fact, why had I myself done that for years? Here's the answer: Hope.
Hope is a funny thing. The presence of it can be the most empowering thing in our human experience. The absence of it can lead us to completely fruitless situations or even criminal activity. "My therapist told me today that most abused women leave 9 times before they actually leave their abuser for good. Then the 9th time they stay gone," one of my sisters said as we all sat like captives of the motion sensor and multiple locks on the door of the humid back porch. "Well, THIS is your 9th time. We are strong. We can do this! We can move on!" So "the 9th time" became sort of a catch phrase for us. I myself had left 5. I knew what it meant to leave with every intention of scrapping together every resource and all your resolve to stay gone and rebuild a life only to lose all your strength or to be given enough rejection from a resource that you desperately needed and feel forced go right back. Sadly, even though this heart that spoke those words had actually walked away from her abuser 9 times, she went back to him. It wasn't her "9th time". She had gotten a job to provide for herself and her girls, and her boss turned out to be a man with intentions to cross lines with her that she didn't want to cross. He fired her. She lost her hope. "You tell us if you need anything, okay?" we each told her as we stared into her beautiful eyes through the tears in our own. "Okay. I will, but seriously guys. This time is different," she told us knowing full well we didn't believe her. She didn't even believe her, but she drove away.
I was different though. I was lucky, and I very quickly realized that I was an extreme exception. I was broke and jobless and abused just like every other woman in that house. I had gone from being a stay at home spouse to living in THIS house in 7 weeks time, but I had something different. For reasons that I do not know, I was given Hope. I had people that believed in me.
One of these benefactors of Hope was a friend of mine. We had lost touch for years and then found each other again just weeks before. Even though the amount of time we had spent reconnecting had been rather small, he had this unwavering belief in me. That belief in me sparked something in my soul that had been forced to lie dormant for nearly a decade - hope. He spent many hours reminding me of what I was actually worth and what I could actually do to impact my world. At first I didn't believe anything he was saying, but after a while, I couldn't help but see tiny pieces of what he was saying to be true.
After I had been living in the shelter for about 3 weeks of my allotted 8, I realized that I needed to become very proactive about finding a job. I had spent years being told that I was not hireable by anyone and that I didn't have a work ethic to work a job let alone keep one. Broaching the subject of getting a job was nothing short of terrifying to me. I had, however, developed a skill and love for makeup artistry. "Why don't you just SEE if there are any makeup artist jobs?" my friend asked me one day after having made the suggestion a number of times already. "NObody is going to hire me. I've only done a little bit of free lance stuff since school. I am NOT the type of person they're looking for". I threw the suggestion in the waste bin of my heart another time and began instead to explore the option of exotic dancing. It would be quick money, and I had made a connection in the house with a former dancer. My friend expressed worry about me entering this line of work. He told me about how dangerous it could be and how it could damage my ability to wage the legal wars that I was going through. I found ways to justify the choice of exploring dancing and hung up on him mid phone call.
The truth was, I just felt like that all I was good enough to do was expose my already damaged self to people who weren't viewing it with any intention of investing anything in it. While I realize that is not the motivation of every woman entering that industry, I can't deny that it was mine. I tossed the idea around for another week, but my friend's gentle reminders of the skill that I knew I possessed eventually sent me to my computer to search for makeup artist jobs.
I found an opening. Hope.
I felt like this opportunity was a long shot, but something in me made my fingers press down the keys enough times to write a resume and then finish the application. Several days later, I got a call back for an interview. My lovely 14 year old Mazda had bit the dust during my stay at the shelter so, by the time I got the interview, I had no car. I appealed to friends on Facebook to see if someone local could give me a ride to the interview. There was a lady that I'd gone to church with in my "old life" that answered the request. She had only been a casual friend before, but she kept stepping to the front of the line every single time I asked for help. Hope.
During that interview, the cosmetic department manager told me "Well, we have a process for all this stuff, so I have to call our corporate HR and set up a phone interview with the company that we use, but if I could, I'd hire you right now." More Hope. I went through my phone interview 4 days later, and then I got another call with a job offer. I was the newest member of the Estee Lauder empire. I danced through the house and made phone calls to my small list of people who I thought cared and prepared myself for my first day of work.
This job was 12.5 miles away from the house, so I found out what I needed to do to ride the bus. I started on a Wednesday and had an amazing day. Thursday was my day off, and then Friday morning I got back on the bus. I overheard another passenger say something that made me feel completely frantic. I leaned forward to talk to the driver "Um, so the bus doesn't run on the weekends?" "No," he said as he cocked his head to the side to avoid the summer morning sun. "No. Doesn't run on the weekends." I was scheduled to work the following morning. My mind began to race. I spent that day's lunch break begging more people on Facebook to give me a ride to work the next day.
I secured a ride for the days for that weekend, but I knew I had to make a better plan for the next weekend that I was scheduled to work. I also learned that the last bus ran at 7:30 in the evening, so if I closed the store, I would be without a ride. My answer: I called my mom. We spent the next day and a half figuring out how she could order a bike for me and let me pick it up. This proved to be way more difficult than expected since she, the purchaser, wasn't the picker-upper. We ended up being able to order it from Wal-mart and my mom gifted me with the most adorable yellow bike with bright cartooney flowers on it. The flowers reminded me of the signature roses used for the logo for Betsey Johnson's wares, so I bestowed that name to my trusty steed. She was henceforth known to everyone as "Betsey".
My first ride on Betsey was a hot one. I sweated my entire way to work, but I figured it would be nothing to just grab a drink at Panera and then change in the bathroom. I wanted to be sure to actually buy something so I didn't reveal myself as the homeless person that I actually was. I took my place in line at the counter and ordered my drink with sweat dripping off my brow. I opened my wallet. "It's okay. I got this," the man behind the counter said. I stood there slack jawed. "Are you sure?" I asked. I felt like I'd just been given a million dollars. "Yeah," he said with a smile while he shooed me away. Guess what that cup of soda represented to me? Yep. Just a little cup of Hope.
I had told my coworkers that I had bought a bike to ride to work, but I had NOT told them how far the ride was. This person shared with that person enough details about things I'd said, though, so they figured me out. Not only was I riding my bike 12.5 miles in blazing sun or pouring rain when the bus wasn't running, I was also traversing the stretch of road nicknamed "bloody 98" because of all the biker and traffic fatalities there. My coworkers were horrified. They sat me down on the stool at the Clinique counter and told firmly but so lovingly that I was not allowed to EVER ride that bike to work again. Everyone in my department had agreed that they'd be taking care of my ride situation until I was able to get a car. More Hope. I didn't ask for it. I didn't actually do anything to deserve it, but people that decided to dare about me had given it to me.
Just a few weeks later, one of my chums from high school told me she was going to start helping me look for a car. She asked me how much I could spend. I told her the truth. I had nothing. What happened next was beyond my scope of understanding, but that same girl asked me if I would be able to get a ride or even a bus ticket to a town about an hour and half from mine. They had BOUGHT me a car. More hope. I felt like the QUEEN of the world. I cried the whole way back to the shelter. I gripped the steering wheel and scooted my booty around the seats just to make sure it was really real.
Just a few days later, I was hit with a giant blow. The director of the shelter knocked on my door just before my alarm was set to go off. She called my name and then entered the room.
"What are you going to do today?" she asked.
Very confused, I answered, "Um...I'm going to work. I have to be there at noon. Why?"
"Well, this is your last day," she explained.
"My last day for what?" I was even more confused.
"Your last day here!" she said, and then she giggled with a weird gratification in her laugh.
"I have to LEAVE? Can I get an extension?" I asked as I shot out of bed hoping that they'd bend the rules for me since I'd had the distraction of starting my new job. I had seen this exception made for others so her reply surprised me.
"No. It's too late for that. You should have done that last week." She pulled the door closed with that same gratified smirk on her face.
I sat back on my bed and held my head in my hands and cried, but then Hope took over. I was determined now. I had tasted enough success that I was going to find a way. I was getting out of that place and not by way of my stuff being thrown to the curb in black trash bags while I was at work (as I had seen done to others during my stay there).
I gathered my wits and briskly walked through the living room to sign my name to the clipboard outside the office door to be seen by the director. After a few minutes, she came out of the office and stood in front of me. "Is there nothing that can be done?" I asked through tears. "No," she said coldly and then held up a small scrap of paper. "Here," she said. "Call THESE people. Maybe one of THEM will listen to your sob story." She barely gave me enough time to grip the scrap before she let go of it.
I felt so hurt. My stay there had not been without problems. The kitchen was stocked on a regular basis, but there was a problem of women in the house hoarding food in their rooms. So by the time I got home, there was not much left but canned goods. I cannot count the number of days that I came home from work to my usual dinner of a can of corn and an uncooked package of Ramen noodles. The reason they were uncooked was because, while dishes would get washed, they weren't always washed well. There was also a pest problem. Also, because I was a single person in the house, I was very movable. On a number of occasions, I would come home from work to find that I'd been moved to a different room from the one I'd left. Sometimes they would move my belongings for me, and sometimes they'd just leave my things in the afore mentioned trash bags in the front room for me to move myself, but every time things got moved, something would be missing. I was also approached very aggressively by another woman in the house. She made a number of unwanted advances towards me. I never complained about any of these things, and I never upset any of the balance of the house, so the coldness to me by the director was startling and confusing and immensely hurtful. I also realized this meant that I might lose the job I'd worked so hard to get and keep.
I took the paper and walked to my room and immediately got on the phone to call into work. Through more tears, I explained to the manager of the store what had just happened . He assured me that they were going to help and to just calm down and that this did not jeopardize my job. A couple hours later, the director reentered my room and sort of sheepishly admitted to me that I didn't have to leave that day. I would be given the weekend, and then I would have to leave but I could stay until the weekend was over. Apparently she had received a few phone calls on my behalf.
One of my managers from work found several listings for small apartments that I could afford. She took her day off to drive me around town until we found the one that would work with my budget. She spent time in our conversation with my prospective landlords vouching for why I was a good candidate to rent from them. I was approved despite the fact that I had no credit and only half of the deposit. More Hope.
I sat in a booth at McDonalds with my new landlords and signed my lease paperwork. After we shook hands, they excused themselves and left. I sat in that booth and stared at the keys in my hand. Just two little hunks of metal, but, to me, they represented something so huge - something that had evaded most of my sisters in the house. Hope. They weren't just keys to my house, and they weren't just keys to my future. They were keys OUT of my past.
I walked up to the counter to order some food, and the tears started to well up again. Feeling the need to explain, I looked at the boy working behind the counter, and I asked, "Do you know what you just watched happen there?" and I pointed to the booth where I'd been sitting. He shook his head with a curious smile. "You just watched me become not homeless anymore." Our eyes locked, and then his welled up with tears too. Another worker slid the tray of my food onto the counter so I opened my wallet. "I got it," my listening boy said. I looked back up at him and could just mouth the words, "Thank you." He had no idea. He thought he was just comping my dinner. He thought he was just doing something really nice for someone, but no. He was doing more........he was giving me more of what I needed. He was giving me Hope.
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