Many years ago, I hit a low point in my life. Jobless, homeless, broke, and broken hearted from a failed relationship with a bipolar man. Several of my family and friends were angry at me for choices I had made (mostly related to my relationship). I was at the lowest point I've ever been at. Most of my possessions were in storage at a friends house, the rest of the things I owned were in my car. I had less than $7 in my wallet.
One Saturday morning I woke up feeling the tension and stress that comes with caring about an unmedicated bipolar person. I knew the relationship was not healthy. I knew I couldn't fix him. But I saw what an amazing person he could be when he was not swinging from one extreme to the other and those glimpses of good were what kept me there. I had only been dating him a few months but had fallen head over heels for him. I had quit my job and left my roommate in a lurch to go travel and live with this man. That Saturday morning, I figured out pretty quick that he was in a mood. By the mid afternoon he was pacing and talking so fast I could hardly understand what he was saying, though I did gather from some of what he said that he was convinced I was trying to hurt him. I touched his arm to calm him down, and he hit my arm away and screamed for me to get out of the house. I tried to reason with him; to talk rationally and calmly. But the thing is, you can't reason with crazy. At that moment he was incapable of any kind of logical conversation. He opened the back door, went out to the garage, and returned to the house with a gun. He pointed it at me and told me to get out. I grabbed my wallet and keys and ran from the house shaking with fear. I drove away crying, trying to process what had just happened.
I drove to a park and sat in my car while I decided what to do next. I called my friend Sue and she was able to calm me down over the phone. She was out of town for the night so we made plans to meet at a coffee shop the following morning. I drove around a bit more. I went into a grocery store and wandered around. I sat in my car awhile longer, eventually falling asleep for a short nap. When I woke up it was dark, and I had nowhere to go. I drove around awhile longer and finally decided around 11 PM I should drive to my Grandmother's house a few miles away. I didn't want to wake her or have her see me in such emotional distress, so I parked my car off to the side of her long private driveway and curled up on the backseat to sleep; given my circumstances it seemed like the safest place I could sleep in my car. I awoke around 4:30 AM when the sun was coming up. I didn't want Grandma to know I had been there, so I drove away and headed towards the city.
It was 5 AM on a Sunday morning as I aimlessly drove up and down the empty downtown Seattle streets. It was almost like a scene from an apocalyptic movie as there were no people, no cars. I headed northeast and found myself at an outdoor shopping complex near the University. I made my way into the 24 hour grocery store and bought an apple and a bagel, bringing my $7 down to $4. I ate these in my car while I contemplated what to do for the next 5 hours before I would meet up with Sue. I walked around a bit, I sat in my car, I cried. I was so ashamed of the position I was now facing. I had a graduate degree, I was smart, yet I had made some stupid choices. I met up with Sue later that morning and literally cried on her shoulder for an hour. She gave me $20 for gas and ferry money so that I could get to my mom's house on an island 2 hours north.
I showed up at my mom's to ask for help. She let me sleep on her living room floor and she provided food and basics for me for 6 weeks until I got a job (it was not as glamorous as it sounds, she made sure it was hard enough that I was motivated to get a job as quickly as I could). At that point she loaned me money to find housing in Seattle near my new job, and it took me nearly a year to pay her back all of the money she had spent helping me during those weeks of unemployment. It took me months to pull out of my funk and begin enjoying life again. I did well at my job, I made new friends, moved to a cool house with nice roommates, and a year later I met my husband.
In reflecting on that awful day, the thing that stands out to me is the sense of time moving in slow motion. It's easy now to feel the busyness and lack of time for errands, appointments, household chores, but back on that day where I had no where to go and no home for a night, the time ticked at a painfully slow pace. I often think about it when I see homeless people or panhandlers; wondering if they feel that sense of isolation and slow down of time. It also makes me keenly aware of how close we all are to homelessness - it can take just a few choices or one bad situation to end up with no where to go.
Today my mom's group had a few guest speakers come talk to us from a shelter that provides services and help to homeless women and children. It truly breaks my heart to think of these women and how stressed they must be to go through what they do. I can't even imagine how hard it would be to be homeless long term, and with children. It humbles me to think about how minor my rock bottom was compared to some of these women, and how strong they have to be to overcome their situations. Tonight I'll be saying an extra long prayer for those women and for them to keep the faith as they move forward.
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