What is it like to be homeless?
I am soon to find out.
A home: it's a warm, welcoming, familiar place. Memories that have ties to kindergarten years, a room will worn by the aging of a growing child, a food-filled fridge, clothes neatly washed and folded, shoulders to cry on, pockets to take loans from, and brothers to nag on.
This is a home; my home.
I depart from this home and move into an apartment. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and six girls. I buy the food that goes in the fridge, I wash the clothes that take home in the basket, the shoulders are dry and the pockets empty. What's more, I know I will move on. This is no home. It is a shelter. I live here to learn.
And so I'll move on. New apartment next semester. New girls, new foodless cupboards, new empty memories. This is no home. The stains are unnamed, the sounds unfamiliar, the smells, hopefully unheard of.
And now it is time to return. This year is over.
So I return to the place that once was home. In a way it still is. The food will be plentiful and the brothers still irritable; but it won't be the same. My memories have taken root in different soil. This isn't my home. However familiar and warm, it's not where I live. This isn't where I will stay.
I'm not the kind of girl you normally find afraid. In fact, I take pride in my fearlessness. Spiders are revolting, but it's nothing a piece of paper and a Dixie-cup can't handle. Put me on the edge of a cliff and I'll laugh at the flip-flop my stomach makes. At age four my favorite movie was "Jurassic Park." The scene where the T-Rex eats the guy off the toilet sent me into hysterics.
Today I am scared. Scared doesn't do this feeling justice; I am terrified. I am walking away from this sensation, this feeling of home that has gotten me through 18 years of life, and I'm stepping into a lifestyle completely void of it.
I feel lost in this sea of people, with no connections and no bow to grasp onto. Somehow I'm expected to embrace this, to dive headfirst with my hands in the air and a smile on my face.
I am not destitute. I am not alone. I am not an unbathed beggar living beneath the bridge; but I am homeless. And that scares me.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Won't You Join Me?
I carry a heavy weight.
I shoulder the stress and pressure of school. I take on the burden of work and finances. I bear the expectations of parents, teachers, and church leaders. I struggle in the social calls of friends and school events; and finally, I collapse at the expectancy of another sleepless night.
I used to dream. I dreamt of endless time and space, where limits did not exist. Now when I dream, I dream of nothing. My body and mind fall into a coma of fatigue. That's what comes with growing up though, isn't it? It is part of becoming responsible, part of becoming an adult.
If this statement is correct, I have come to a conclusion: I do not want to grow up. Take me to Neverland. Eighteen years has not been enough time; I have grown up too fast. I have taken the moment I have and filled it with tasks I deem beneficial, events I feel important.
My days and weeks are composed in calendar-specific, planner-organized complexity. For what reason? To seem mature, to feel fulfilled?
I work with the children aged one-and-a-half to three years old at church. It is my one time a week to play. I pull out the trains and tot "choo choo" for hours. I sing songs, I dress up dolls, I build extravagant kingdoms of red, yellow, green and blue Duplo blocks.
I miss the simplicity of playing dress-up and house, of making mud pies and taking naps. There was a time when my backyard was home to a major plane crash, residence to a society of native Indians, a place where goblins and fairies hid behind every towering tree and every obscure bush.
Now it is only a lawn; dominion to nothing but a few trivial trees and patches of barkdust. Don't you remember?
Tell me when; when was the switch made?
I was once a girl, just a little girl. I ran through the neighborhood wearing nothing but a swimming suit, singing "Mr. Sun" at the top of my lungs, catching bees from the honeysuckle, searching through the weeds to find the clover with four leaves.
I want to go back, but I can't. If only turning around and walking through the motions could return to me those years of unnecessary stress, f pointless heartache, of concern for matters that would make no difference in my future.
Today, I'll let go of growing up. I've realized I will spend most of my life there. For now, I think I'll lay back and watch the clouds take shape.
Won't you join me?
I shoulder the stress and pressure of school. I take on the burden of work and finances. I bear the expectations of parents, teachers, and church leaders. I struggle in the social calls of friends and school events; and finally, I collapse at the expectancy of another sleepless night.
I used to dream. I dreamt of endless time and space, where limits did not exist. Now when I dream, I dream of nothing. My body and mind fall into a coma of fatigue. That's what comes with growing up though, isn't it? It is part of becoming responsible, part of becoming an adult.
If this statement is correct, I have come to a conclusion: I do not want to grow up. Take me to Neverland. Eighteen years has not been enough time; I have grown up too fast. I have taken the moment I have and filled it with tasks I deem beneficial, events I feel important.
My days and weeks are composed in calendar-specific, planner-organized complexity. For what reason? To seem mature, to feel fulfilled?
I work with the children aged one-and-a-half to three years old at church. It is my one time a week to play. I pull out the trains and tot "choo choo" for hours. I sing songs, I dress up dolls, I build extravagant kingdoms of red, yellow, green and blue Duplo blocks.
I miss the simplicity of playing dress-up and house, of making mud pies and taking naps. There was a time when my backyard was home to a major plane crash, residence to a society of native Indians, a place where goblins and fairies hid behind every towering tree and every obscure bush.
Now it is only a lawn; dominion to nothing but a few trivial trees and patches of barkdust. Don't you remember?
Tell me when; when was the switch made?
I was once a girl, just a little girl. I ran through the neighborhood wearing nothing but a swimming suit, singing "Mr. Sun" at the top of my lungs, catching bees from the honeysuckle, searching through the weeds to find the clover with four leaves.
I want to go back, but I can't. If only turning around and walking through the motions could return to me those years of unnecessary stress, f pointless heartache, of concern for matters that would make no difference in my future.
Today, I'll let go of growing up. I've realized I will spend most of my life there. For now, I think I'll lay back and watch the clouds take shape.
Won't you join me?
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