On Your Own In the USA

The first time my mother disowned me, I was still a teenager. It was a Sunday night, and I had taken the bus to see my boyfriend who was in the hospital recovering from a tonsillectomy. I'd been back only a couple of hours and was getting ready for bed when she came at me. I have no idea why.  My mother was near perfect in almost every way with impeccable values, so it made me wonder what was wrong with me.
        I grabbed what I could of some clothes, my writing and art. But she tore them from my arms, threw them down the clothes chute and screamed "you're dead". So I held onto what I could, darted for the door and started down the street. It was dark, almost 11pm. I was wearing shorts and sandals, no socks. It was a hot night and I was sweating, my short, curly hair frizzy. There were no cell phones in those days.
        I walked and walked over a mile and down a steep hill when a man about 40 years old started following me, asking what I was doing and where I was going. He kept trying to stop me when I found a phone booth and began trying to reach people. I tried Jack, my stepfather, who was no longer with my mother and unreachable. Then I tried my grandmother who didn't answer the phone. Meanwhile, the man outside the phone booth had some kind of very early cell and was making calling and threatening to take me away. By then, I reached my boyfriend who had just been discharged from the hospital only two hours before. He didn't live near me, but arrived in a flash. I ran from the phone booth past the strange man and hopped in the car. Then we drove around, trying to find someplace for me to stay.
        I didn't see or hear from my mother for many months, and in the years before she died when I was in my thirties, she cut me out of her life five times, once for five years. I never knew why except for whatever happened between her and the father I never met. I tell this now, which is really part of a long story I've been writing on for years because something just happened to me and has so many times, often leading to violence. A new apartment manager just put an eviction notice in my door. (It turned out to be a mistake. But it will take a long time to recover. And because this manager is new, I don't know what she'll do next or when.) There are things you may never recover from. Somehow it will stay with you all your life. Lately, I've wondered if all the people who have lost their jobs in the DOGE sweep have family to turn to, or will they be homeless and have to suddenly try to find a place to live, if they can. As I wrote on this blog several years ago, Over half of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck.