That seems as likely a beginning as any I could compose. I’ve been wanting to tell my story and the story of other homeless women for a long time. I’m not homeless today. I was 19 years ago and again last year for almost a year. Proof positive it can happen to anyone. Last year was easier, I didn’t have my daughters with me, but it was in it’s way, just as scary. The nagging fear is present every night, that you won’t be home again.
Women who have been homeless are comfortable around me. I’m comfortable with them. More so than women of the other side. The other side is where you and I live. Funny, they talk about outsider’s art. Whose outside, whose on the other side? Guess it’s always relational. How I relate to my life now is, I feel guilt. Guilt that I have a warm airbed to sleep on. Guilt that most evenings I have eaten sometime during the day. It’s hard going in California for a disabled woman my age but I get by. A lot better than those women and children living in the creek beds of California’s Central Coast.
I was homeless by choice, like most women who are homeless with their children. Those that chose to live away from an abusive spouse or partner. I know there are those who lost work and are out there, but by in large it’s women who are running away from their own imminent death, like I did.
There are many women in the U.S. who are underground. I don’t know the numbers because they’re part of the victim’s witness protection program, slipped through the system—I guess to avert costing the taxpayers a lot of money to prosecute our spouse or partners for murder. Instead they can give us the extended vacation option, to change our identity and trade places with another woman with children. So, MANY women are given a one-way ticket and a pat on the back. I turned it down. My name is important to me. It’s my maiden name and it’s one of the things my abuser couldn’t take from me.
Last year I decided to come out, so to speak. I hadn’t been photographed for a story or anything dramatic like that in almost 20 years. Missed one opportunity to be in PEOPLE Magazine to tell my story. They passed when I told them I could tell my story but they couldn’t print my name or photograph me. That was a story killer. I thought and still think it’s pretty interesting that women in this new century, 2008 are underground, with the feds trading numbers from county to county, state to state and shipped even to Hawaii from New York to stay alive.
What’s the cost to American tax-payers instead of changing laws to protect women who are beaten, tortured and dragged by the hair by a family member, with fewer rights than if she was assaulted by an unknown assailant. Go figure. Someday that will change when enough women sit in positions of power and change the laws, at last.
Most people don’t know women and children are traded across the country. When I mention it to county workers, it’s common knowledge within social services. They shake their heads and admit it, albeit sadly.
This is my blog and I’m going to tell my story and other’s stories here, who can’t speak for themselves. It feels good. I’m feeling a little emotional right now about it, but it feels alright and safe. I wrote some stories on my about page, so, I”ll say goodnight now. Goodnight.
Filed under: green
