Poverty Sucks

I'm in a new apartment now, but posting from the public library because my internet service isn't up yet.

On Thursday, April 7 I returned home from work to find the locks changed and a sheriff's notice on my apartment door.  My landlord let me back in long enough to capture my cat and grab a few other personal things.  I left that night with a change of clothes and some toiletries, some personal papers, my bicycle, and my cat in a front-loading baby-carrier-type pack.  I took a sleeping bag, too, in fear that I would end up sleeping in a park, but in the end I resorted to the conventional middle-American solution:  the magic of plastic.  I left my bike locked up outside the public swimming pool and walked a mile or so to a hotel.  (A good choice, too, because there was frost over night and when I returned for my bike the next morning, there was ice on the saddle.)

Now I'm a little disgusted with myself, feeling I've managed to trivialize homelessness.  I spent three weeks holed up in motels, running up an ugly tab on my REI VISA card (but earning rewards points and dividends).  After a few days, I began to feel the best answer to any problem was to go back to my room and hide under the bed covers with my cat.

I did develop more sympathy for the young women and men with small children I see at the transit center, trying to get around town on the bus, with babies and all their gear.  My cat was unhappy and traumatized, but at least I knew he was safe and comfortable, not starving and shivering in the woods.  I didn't have to carry him around with me all the time, in all weather, knowing it's a rotten kind of life for him, fearing I'm not competent to care for him or myself, trying not to take it out on him.

The worst part of the experience was the months of legal wrangling with my landlord.  Every time I found another note or legal paper taped on my door, or received another lawyer's letter in the mail, my stomach would begin to burn and knot up, and I could barely choke down food - I lost five pounds easily for every notice I received.  I dreaded opening my door in the morning, or returning home to find another paper on the door.  And once I was out of my apartment and lost access to my computer and most of my papers, my ability to defend myself and prepare a case fell apart.

It still seems so unbelievably stupid and unnecessary.  All along I've tried to second-guess my landlord's motives - maybe they thought I'm a lesbian, or a drug-dealing prostitute, or maybe they just thought I was getting too uppity and needed to be put in my place.  Or maybe they didn't want it to work out this way, either, they just weren't too smart.

I was balanced on the edge of real poverty and homelessness, walking around the real thing.  But I keep thinking of the lesson of the concentration camps - that the altruistic, compassionate, self-sacrificing people are not the survivors.  How can I live like a decent human being?