Where
is Home?
Walking
into the library today I was met with the vision of droves of dirty, poor,
ripped-clothing people piling into a just opened library double-door. I had
many mixed emotions that shocked me and stared me straight in the face. Fast
back to a time when I sat on my grade-school front lawn being homeless at 25 with
remembrances of creamy devil cakes in my lunch box and smiles on the playground
at lunch time. At that time most of my belongings were scattered, some in
friends’ basements - embarrassingly now somewhat unorganized to the previous
detail of a home in a sound mind; I found myself a woman of no profession or
skill to support myself. I had no home but was being offered a nestled bed in
return for breakfast in the morning by men. At 25 my dad, where his taxes had no need for
me to apply for financial aid now, now offered assistance for college. But
where my seven years from exhaustion trying to survive had run me out of any
strength I had and sound of mine what he said to me had no meaning to me at all.
I couldn’t think straight to make any rational decisions. My mind and body was
weary. My last night sleeping in a safe, solid foundation left me on a floor of
my ex-boyfriend’s (who threw me out for what expectations he thought we had and
what aspirations he felt I should have) wrapped in the drapes he left behind. My
head had been banged hard against his SUV (paid in cash) in our last argument.
We played a single game
of darts that seemed to be the only thing we had in common. I enjoyed it
because I remembered how gracefully my hand would flow growing up when I would
throw the dart. It brought back warm feelings of the heated cellar as I would
throw the darts to the overly brightened tiles that didn’t hold the end of the
point of the dart well because the depth of the dartboard was too thin. I rest
assured at those times though because I knew where my next meal was coming from
and could smell my mom’s clean, crisp sheets as I rolled in between them on a
summer’s night after she took them off the clothes line from hanging them the
morning before. The 45’s spinning while my brother and I go-goed on beds and
toy boxes using hair brushes and other articles for microphones singing backup
as my sister took the lead in our bedroom. I guess the homelessness in my mind was
the mixed emotions from my life.
by Lori Jean
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