A Roof Over Our Heads

I've been thinking a lot on how to write this post, what I would say, what to include, what to leave out, what I want to remember 10 years from now and what I'd like to forget. Writing things down helps me work through the things in my head, but my head has been such a messy place since we found out we would have to move. 

There has been so much panic- panic about how to pack when your infant cries every time you put her down. Panic about making big decisions on a tight timeline- and if you remember me talking about my postpartum depression, I talked about how painful decision making has been for me recently. Panic about money, about everything. Panic is overwhelming, it makes me stay up at night and it has made me wake up in the middle of the night feeling as if my heart is being squeezed and crushed by the hand of some unseen and uncaring monster.   

 On top of the panic there has been hurt- how does "family" just spring this on you? Why are people so uncaring? Hurt is often followed by anger, and in my case anger is always followed by depression- but I am getting ahead of myself. 

   

Without much time to plan our move it has seemed like every day we contemplated different options on how we should go forward. What town should we live in? Can we find something that we could actually buy? Should we even buy now? Do we have enough time? This process has been very hard on Cordelia- we wanted to tell her we had a plan, but we didn't, she wanted to know what life was going to look like and exactly when it was going to change, and we couldn't tell her that, we didn't have answers. 

 During this time I discovered that with some help we could buy- but we didn't have enough time, and we couldn't afford what we really wanted, and regrettably most apartments required you to make a lot more money to rent them than we do (even though we could budget the money and actually can pay the rent). This realization kind of crushed us a little bit- if we could buy a house we could make something permanent and safe, we could begin to build dreams again, and then not having that and then learning we couldn't rent was so hard- not only did we not have answers for Cordelia but we didn't even have answers for our situation. So we applied to a low income housing program- and with the assurance of the apartment leasing office that we had plenty of time to get the process competed,  we only applied to the one program. This was a mistake.

And regrettably we were mislead and paperwork issues have led to our move in date being pushed back four times- all the way up to past when we were told we needed to leave our rental. Which leaves us currently homeless. 

Yep you read that correctly, we are homeless, in fact we have been homeless for 10 days now. Months of hustling, looking at tons of places, running back and forth from the apartment giving them every piece of information they needed, we were evicted from my husband's grandmother's house with no place to live, all of our earthly possessions are in boxes in storage minus two suitcases, and a bunch of reusable tote bags...and my sewing machine because sanity has to come from somewhere.  

Being homeless is terrifying, but you know what? Being homeless has taught me a lot about people. Sure some people suck. Some people evict part of their own family- including two young children with no place to go and don't care- but there are more people who are kind, and generous, and good than there will ever be people who suck. 

As soon as we were really between a rock and a hard place people came from everywhere to offer us help- all kinds of help- help that has enabled us to have beds to sleep in and a roof over our heads while we work to figure this whole mess out. 

During this process I was struggling with how to keep parenting my children to trust the good in people when we were witnessing so much ugliness in a place I least expected it- inside of a family I thought so highly of.  But now I think I am starting to see the light, as I just said there may be disappointing people in life, but there are soo many more good people and knowing that I can focus on teaching Cordelia and Adeline to be good people, following the examples of all of this kindness that has touched us is empowering in a way. I don't think I will ever have words for how grateful I am right now, not only for the help we have been offered but for the way the people offering to help us has enabled me to regain my faith in goodness. 

I'm not sure I have said this recently, but thanks for reading along and being interested in our little family, all of your kind comments and "likes" mean a lot. And I'll keep you all updated on where we end up next.