The Lasting Trauma of Homelessness
When I started putting my life together after getting sober a few years ago, I rarely thought much about my time homeless. In the years 2016 to 2018, I spent my time on couches, in hotels and cars and eventually a shelter or two before being brought so low that the only choice was to walk back in Alcoholics Anonymous or die at a bus stop in the rain from my disease; a fate the fell a transient woman I knew on the Central Coast early last year. A woman not much older than me. I had been homeless before then, but always sheltered. My mother would let me stay with her, no questions asked, till her death in 2011. I had adult kids and I knew how to manipulate people when I drank. While I was successful with some sobriety in the time since my mother’s death, I faced a relapse in 2014 that took me down and can be described no other way but as if I were slowly crawling through hell; a hell I chose and that is the thing that made the suffering much worse than if it was a disaster that was out of my hands. After struggling but maintaining for a few years, everyone around me had had enough and I was evicted from my place and I found my car a cozy and acceptable form of housing for the moment. I didn’t know how incredibly strong that bottle was when I made that choice. I suppose I rarely think about it because I know I was the one that put me in that position and no one else and that is hard pill to swallow of even the most confident of men I believe. It’s a pill I am being presented with again and it doesn’t get any easier to swallow, no matter how humble you get.
And while I am sober today, just a little over two years, the fear of being homeless again has never left and the least little thing can trigger it if the trauma of uncertainty and having survived in unsafe and precarious conditions has never been worked through and healed. The moment that my housing or financial situation becomes tenuous, I completely melt down and any rational thought leaves my purview. Where will I sleep? Will they work with me if my money situation becomes unstable? Wondering if the room I’m renting will be available or will I have to move my stuff again. Is it safe in the bathrooms? Can I trust the person I am renting the room from? While the length of time and intensity of freak-out has diminished significantly, mostly thanks to AA and my friend Wendy, who knows how to break down stressful moments into sizeable chunks, it still rears it’s ugly head the moment I feel I might have to live on the streets. Especially when those streets are in Los Angeles, California, home to the largest homeless population in America. The trauma of being homeless lasts long after you stop calling the streets your home and it can swallow dreams if even the hint of that is part of the sacrifice to attain them. That is the choice I am facing right now.
I arrived in Los Angeles a few days ago with intent on moving here. This is the place I have wanted to live since forever and while I didn’t plan a whole lot before moving here, I did set up the basics and rented out an Airbnb before I left the Central Coast. I had spare money in case I ran into some trouble and I had no worries. Or so I thought. My booking fell through and it has been nothing but dead end after dead end since. I have learned a lot about myself in these last few days and I am learning new things every minute. I learned that I NEED Alcoholics Anonymous if I am to stay sober and have any support. I cannot do this alone. Hooking up with them finally has made a little bit of a difference and it has helped get me out of my head. I learned I am an extremely poor planner, something I need to work on if I am to be successful in this world. Mostly though, I have learned that I was far more traumatized in those years that I was homeless than I realized. It brings me to want to help others just like me who’ve suffered that same trauma. It is a unique trauma. All trauma has it’s own markings and signature, but its been my experience that that much uncertainty can follow like a lurking shadow the rest of my life, no matter how stable my situation may seem.
As we live now in severely unstable times, the threat of homelessness lurks over the heads of nearly forty million people in the United States as of August 2020. I am one of the lucky ones, in that I know enough to survive through temporary displacement and I’m quickly adaptable to almost anything I am exposed to. There are many individuals and families that have never called the streets their home. Children that will now have to experience sleeplessness because of the scary adults that roam the shelters. Others will learn the difficulty of finding or keeping a job without an address. It will be the first time they will face the conditions that defined my life significantly as, to some degree, still does. I hope that the lessons I learn from this experience are vast and sharable. As I decide whether to stay and duke it out with the city or go back, saying I tried and knowing in my heart I chickened out before I even gave myself a chance, I am working overtime to plug into a God of my understanding to get me through this little hiccup that makes absolutely no sense but is teaching me so much.
