Reality

It is the ninth and the rent is due. I have no way of paying it.  I lie on my couch and stare at the walls.  Maybe I will be told I have been approved and the mail will confirm it.  I wait for the mail.  This is not my apartment, my mind tells me.  Apartments are for people who can pay.

There is nobody left to turn to. I have exhausted all avenues of help. I have not worked in a year.  I have used up my state disability payments.  I am going to lose my home.  It is not my home anymore, I remind myself. Apartments are for people who can pay.

Last month the church paid my rent.  It is the last time, they told me.  I said I understood.  I was sure that any day now I'd be approved for federal disability.  It never came.  Now the rent is past due and I have nothing to say to the landlord.

Months ago before the church helped I tried to sleep under a tree to see how it felt.  It wasn't that bad, I think.  Of course it hadn't rained.  I could stand to be homeless if it didn't rain.

I come to a decision.  I call my landlord.  "I have no money coming in and no source of income, I might as well come by Monday and surrender the keys," I say.  I have a plan.  I plan to be homeless.

I gather together three days of clothes in a trash bag.  I throw out all my toiletries in the bathroom and save one roll of toilet paper.  I abandon all my pins, all my ties, all my books.  The books get to me.  I leave them boxed.  I cannot throw out my books.  

For the rest, I reflect that soldiers live out of a duffel bag and think nothing much of it.  Man up, I think.  I put my electronics in a gym bag and give it to a friend with my birth certificate.  I call a friend from church.  He will help me cart my stuffs to Goodwill.

My suits, my tuxedo I put in a suitcase for donation.  The massive L desk I was given by  a boss, I leave.  It takes two truckloads by itself.  I throw away everything in the desk.   I throw away the harddrives I was saving from my old computers.  I have no way to safeguard them.

I start stacking stuff outside for my neighbors to keep.  My mountain bike that I kept since 1995 is snatched up.  Some things I thought had real value are left.  Nobody wants the executive wooden office chair my boss gave me with the desk.  I resign it to Goodwill.

My friend comes to help my pack my donations.  He is shocked to hear I have nowhere to go.  He takes me to lunch and begs me to call my folks.  I do not want to call them.  By now I want to be homeless, where I belong.

I call my parents.  They say they can take me for a week.  My friend buys me a bus ticket.  He is relieved I will not live on the street.  I say I am too.  But I am thinking it is just for a week.  I think I belong in the gutter.

That was two months ago.  My parents say I can be a help to them.  I try to keep a low profile in their complex, because it is technically age restricted.  The management says I can stay because I am disabled and helping my father.  But everyone I meet and talk to gets around to asking how long I'm going to be here.  They want it restricted.

I have no income and no car, and when I check online there are no affordable apartments in California anymore.  I have been back to follow up on my disability.  I told everyone I wanted to move back, and I did, but not at those prices.  There are very cheap trailers for rent out here within 3 miles, so maybe I'll end my days in a desert lot in a trailer.

I swim everyday at least once, and write online, and let myself forget that I don't fit in anywhere.  I guess that is coping.