Over the last couple of nights I've gone through my old filing cabinet and done a pretty thorough purge. It was a bit of a rollercoaster revisiting some of those periods in my life. I had one drawer for financial paperwork and the other was holding personal documents like letters. I'm having feelings so guess what. Here I am. 😂😂😂
Back in 2002 I was 19 and Shadow was 2. I had moved away from home and me and Shadow lived with my MaMaw (maternal grandmother). It worked out for a while; I wasn't getting along with my mom and my PaPaw had passed away. I always loved and got along great with my MaMaw; in fact, I see a lot of her in myself (my face / body, my mannerisms, etc). Looking back I owe her so much credit for helping me get on my feet at such a young age. I had a dead-end factory job and she co-signed with me on my first car (and proudly, I made every payment myself). She provided a roof for me and my son after I was laid off from that factory job and decided to attend Gadsden Business College full time. I remember sitting in her living room doing homework while Shadow played and she watched TV in the recliner. I remember putting together puzzles with her and working in her puzzle books in my free time (both things I still like to do now).
I found some paperwork from that period of my life. Since I never received child support I was on food stamps, of course, and I was receiving TANF while I attended school (they paid me gas money for driving to school). I was also cleaning a relatives house on the side for cash under the table. That is the best I could do to make myself less of a burden on MaMaw. Unfortunately, MaMaw began showing signs of Alzheimer's and dementia and at first it wasn't so bad. But over time things got really scary. She would creep into mine and Shadow's shared bedroom at night and wake me up, gun in hand, and ask me sweetly who we were. She started to have violent outbursts of yelling and sometimes wanted to physically fight me. I remember attending my college class and (being the only student left in the Accounting Specialist program at the time), my professor, David Smith (who I would love to be in contact with again if anyone knows him) would be able to tell when I'd had a rough night with her. He not only taught me accounting, but helped me through a very hard time in life, as well.
As if that stress wasn't enough it was around this time that someone really had it out for me. DHR was called on me with some ridiculous accusations that I fed my child dog food and let him play naked in the road. The DHR worker who visited me found no evidence of that and nothing came of it, but I was shook. Somehow I finished school (with honors!) and landed an office job not long after. It was at this point (2004-ish; I was 21 and Shadow was 4) that I was able to move out of my hometown. I hated to leave MaMaw because I knew that she needed help, but I had informed her kids of what was going on and had to think of the safety of my own child first.
Shadow and I ended up in a government housing apartment complex, but a nice one. My rent was based on my income which was extremely helpful. I was still on food stamps, as well. With this help I was able to pay all of my other bills with the money I made from my job. I. was. HAPPY. Oh my gosh - the freedom of not living under anyone else's roof was amazing. Shadow and I didn't have a lot, but we didn't need much. We stayed there for about 2 years and I built up some credit. As my income increased so did my rent. There came a point where I thought "I could probably be buying a house for this much money per month..." and so I looked into that.
After some research I found a bank that would offer me a loan. I needed a $2000 down payment, which I did not have, but my brother (who was in the Army at the time) was able to loan that to me. So the house search began. I had a very low limit but there were several livable houses in my price range. Depending on the area, you could get more house for less money. I chose kind of in the middle of both - decent area, decent house (rather than great area, shit house). As a young single parent I did something I never thought I'd be able to do: In 2006 at the age of 24 years old I closed on my house. I was still on food stamps, but I was happy with my accomplishment of getting out of government housing. Shadow was happy, too. He loved the house. And there we stayed for 14 years.
Whether that was the smartest move I ever made, I'll never know. Not long after I moved in a storm came through and downed some tree-sized limbs onto my roof. Then the railroad tracks behind my house were removed and the machinery used filled in the drainage ditch. The next big storm after that happened flooded a good portion of my house. I spent a couple of years battling my county to dig the ditch back out as well as tracking down the company to sue for the damage to my house all the while part of my house and my yard flooded when it rained too hard, and large limbs kept falling until I had saved enough money to have my trees trimmed. I loved my house but there were some hard times trying to keep it in good repair.
Regardless, I was in general very happy having a house and a yard of our own. I did eventually get the ditch dug back out and a measly $3000 check for the damage to my house (honestly in Anniston, AL, no one gives a shit about you if you aren't a rich white man), so I took my crumbs of placation and moved forward the best I could. The room that had received the most flood damage turned out to have a concrete floor and I'd installed a doggie door leading to our fenced yard for our pets, so when I decided to explore other career paths by volunteering with the local shelters I figured it was no big deal to sacrifice that room to fostering dogs.
Shit in the floor? Easy to clean. Scratch up the walls? Who cares? I need to replace that paneling eventually, anyway. Make the odd choice to install a raised bathtub in that room so I can keep the dogs clean? Sure, why not. Turns out that I did not want to become a vet tech or veterinarian when I grew up, but I did really enjoy helping animals on my own terms and I did that from 2007 until 2015 when I started college. That was a very happy time in my life. My pack of dogs was so gracious to the newcomers and taught them how to be great housedogs. My pack showed them how to use the doggie door and that some people are good and that it's better if you poop outside. My gosh my dogs were wonderful and they deserved as much credit as I do, if not more, for all of the fosters who found homes through our house.
Eventually, the neighborhood started declining and the repairs on the house were adding up. At some point around 2013-2014, I began to realize (with Shaun's help) that my house might no longer be worth the effort. That hurt, but it was the truth. The nice house across the street was irreparably damaged. Sketchy people were starting to hang around it. People were starting to squat in the two other houses across the street. The neighbors right next to me were horrible. My absolute "I have to get us the fuck outta here" moment happened in 2017 when that neighbor next to me was revealed to be stealing my power and water and making / selling drugs. I was officially done.
Thankfully by then, I was two years into college and had the love and support of Shaun. There were a lot of changes in 2017. We got engaged. I graduated from Gadsden State. I left my job to attend JSU full-time per the terms of my scholarship. We got Kira. Since I was no longer working we no longer received food stamps. I used whatever leftover financial aid I had from school to pay for bills, taking odd jobs here and there to help depending on my class load, and Shaun paid for what I couldn't cover. He was invested in me in more ways than one and his belief that I could finish school and start a career fueled me to keep pushing even when I wanted to give up.
At the end of 2019 after much, MUCH consideration I decided to file bankruptcy to get out from under my house. I knew there was no way I could sell it for what I still owed on it and I damn sure didn't want to owe money on a place that I couldn't even live in. Since Shaun and I never combined finances it was a pretty straightforward process. I filed in November 2019 and stopped paying my mortgage, we moved the kids into an apartment in January 2020, and by March it was over with. No house, no debt (aside from a few student loans, of course).
Now here we are moving the kids into Shaun's house while Shaun and I move to his dads house. Though 2020 was its whole own thing, we (me, Shaun, and the kids) all hunkered down and tried our best. We lost Shaun's dad, but otherwise we stayed to ourselves and stayed safe, I finished school, we really didn't have a lot of fun and missed the hell out of a lot of people, but we're here in 2021 doing better than I ever thought possible and with the future looking bright.
I don't know. I have no idea how this post comes off, but after being reminded of how I started out and the comparison to how things are now I feel proud. And I feel relieved because I worked so hard for so long and after 20 years it feels like it's finally going to pay off. Whether buying my house was a good idea or not I'll never know. Had I stayed in the government-funded apartment my rent would have increased every time my pay did, AND I wouldn't have been able to have my pets or foster animals. I ended up feeling trapped in the house towards the end and had to take a drastic measure to get un-stuck, but it turned out that didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. In any case my house taught me a lot and allowed me to live a life I loved - for a while, at least. I don't consider it a mistake. I do feel that it was time to move on, though, and that now is the time to build something new with my partner / best friend / HUSBANG, and I think that whatever comes next is going to be great.
