lately things from the past keep appearing in my thoughts. Although almost two years ago, I feel like my mind constantly drifts back to my homeless days. The days I have tried so hard to push into the deepest realms of my mind. It’s not something that can be easily forgotten, but at times I’ve done a fairly good job of blocking it out, and pretending like it never happened. But, it’s also hard to ever imagine my life before that…incident. Although the incident cleared up many of my before unanswered questions, and led what I would like to think; is a better life, I still feel like all of the scenerios before and after becoming homeless have become an intricate webbed mess. Symbolically, I feel like I’m not necessarily in this web, but more so like I’m standing and starring at this massive, tangled web of a spider. Both in awe, and disgust. Mostly in disgust. Being away at college puts me into a compelling position. I’m far away enough that I don’t really have to deal with anything I don’t want to deal with. However, distance has made me feel guilty. As if I choose to be this far away to not have to be apart of any of the problems at home. and maybe I did. maybe I did run away, because it was too much, and I was convinced the happenings in my life were a tragedy I could not escape from unless I left. Lately, the small details of the past have really been nagging at me. It bothers me, still, that senior year my date could not pick me up from my house..because I didn’t have a home. Oh, would you please pick me up at the hotel I’ve been living at? because I’m homeless. Other things that bother me, living out of a suitcase for nearly three months. Blowing up air mattress for our beds. Living a lie. Going to school was hard, because even though I knew it was okay for me to not share with the world that I was homeless, I still felt like I was living a lie. People would ask, “How are you,” and I’d think to myself, “I’m homeless.” That’s what I am, that’s how I am. I familiarized myself with the word homeless. I let that become my identity, and I know that it is this that ultimately led to my worst depression by far. I believed that because I was homeless, I was worthless. Even though I had plenty of people telling me that wasn’t true. I know that there was an awful lot of pressure on my parents to fix things, looking back I feel selfish for getting so frustrated with school, dance, work and friends, when my parents clearly had bigger problems. These days, I’ve been reminded of the thousands of dollars worth of stuff that was in storage that just got thrown out. Up till this point, we still had that taunting storage; locking up all of our stuff, to remind us of our old lives. Although with the passing of two years, most of that stuff is truely garbage, but it still makes me mad and really sad at the same time. Several of my childhood pictures got thrown out, my bike got stolen, a lot of my clothes and decorations all got thrown out. It’s not the actual thought of those things getting thrown out, but it reminds me of how things had to end. Why we had to pack up our entire house into boxes in the span of a week. It was all such a cruel and depressing moment of my life. and its so hard to let it all go. Regardless, I feel safe thinking and feeling all these things from a far distance. I’m scared to go home. Thanksgiving break is in 18 days. and lately, I’ve been getting more and more scared to go home.
brigittembenyei 