The Vent

The Story of The Eviction

My childhood home I moved to when I was around 2 years old. It was in a very nice suburban area of the city and was in a great location. It was within a few minutes drive of everything you could want, including the 3 schools I'd be attending later on in my life. It was ideal, and perfect for the family of 4, that later became a family of 3.

After my parents split up, my mom took over the house while my dad moved out but she too became sick. From around age 6 or 7, her illnesses had caused her to take medical leave from work and eventually she had been placed on government aid to help her raise her two children and keep up with rent and bills. Shortly after my brother turning 16 (a year later,) he picked up a job to help mom keep the place up, and my mom's boyfriend at the time also helped contribute so my mom could get off of the government aid she had been receiving. When I was 15 my bother moved out, he was 24 and ready to move in which his girlfriend. This left the house to me and my mom.

I remember a couple of months after my bother had moved out I was at home for the weekend while my mother was at her boyfriend's and she called to say she was coming to pick me up because I was going to come back to her boyfriend's with her. I didn't want to. Her boyfriend lived in the next city over and there was nothing around him that I could do to pass the time. I had no friends there, no cool places to go, just nothing to do except sit in this house and watch tv for the weekend.
I argued with her that I wanted to stay at home for the weekend where I could go out and do things with friends. She had then told that she was behind on the electric bill and that the power was most likely going to be shutoff. So she had me back a bag so I could come with her to my stepdad's and not have to sit in the dark all weekend.

As much as I didn't want to go, I did as she asked and went with her. The weekend turned into a week, which turned into two weeks which turned into a month that then turned into the full summer. Finally we were heading into September and she was driving me a half hour away to my school to register for the coming school year. After having had enough of the excuses of why we hadn't gone home all summer I snapped and she finally told me.

As it turns out after my brother moved out, she could no longer keep the place up. Although her boyfriend was paying our rent and bills for several months, he had his own home and his own children to look after and he couldn't do it forever. We had been evicted, and because she didn't know how to tell me, she just didn't tell me. The consequence of her not telling me was that I lost literally everything. My computer, my video games, just anything material that I didn't pack into that bag was just gone. I wasn't upset that I lost trivial things like my computer but I was upset that I lost sentimental things that couldn't be replaced like the memory box I had started when I was 7, all my childhood photos, all the porcelain dolls my dad had given me over the years (and now that he's dead I wish I had those dolls more than ever,) everything was gone. We had to practically start all over again.

We didn't exactly have an option. We had no money and no home of our own . I knew I was lucky enough to even have a place I could go, not everyone is as fortunate. It wasn't my ideal situation but even if I didn't like having to stay at my mom's boyfriend's place, it was a roof over my head, a place to sleep. Of course I missed all the luxuries of home but at least we weren't in a hostel or worse, on the streets.

For the next two years my mom drove me every day to school and picked me up, which was about a half hour drive from her boyfriend's. The shitty thing about this was that it meant that since I had to rely on her for a ride, we had to go back when she was ready. That means I almost NEVER had any time to spend with my friends after school. It was the same pattern almost daily, wake up at 6am, leave by 7:00-7:15am, make it to school for 8:00am, and get picked up at 2:30pm once school was finished. The only opportunity I had to spend time with friends was at school.

Let's talk about my living situation now. My mom's boyfriend had a two bedroom apartment which now had 5 people living there: his twin daughters, my mom, me and himself. This posed a problem when it came to sleeping arrangements. My mom shared a bedroom with him, and his daughters shared a bedroom, so where did that leave me? Well, for the next two years, my bedroom was in the living room, and my bed was the couch. I hated that. Not that I was ungrateful, I was thankful to even have somewhere safe to rest my head at night but, it was really hard on me.

Basically living in the living room meant zero privacy and zero personal space. I had to deal with changing every day in the bathroom, I had to deal with his daughters coming home late and them making enough noise to wake me up. I had to deal with his daughters going out to the balcony in the middle of the night to have a cigarette which would also wake me up, and I had to deal with not exactly being able to go to sleep or wale up whenever I wanted because so long as people were awake, I couldn't fall sleep, and once they were up for the day, so was I.

After two years of living on the couch the glorious day came where both of his daughters had moved out and because they left everything behind, I got to take over their bedroom. I finally had my own space. I had my own bed, a closet for the clothing, and a door that gave me the privacy I didn't have for a very long time. It seems crazy that something as simple as having your own bedrooms means so much, but it does. I suppose I never appreciate it until I was forced into a situation in which I wasn't lucky enough to have one. However, this didn't last long.

A few short months after having taken over their bedroom, one of them moved back home and I was forced back to the living room. That wasn't fair and my mom knew that, but there wasn't much she could do. Even if I had taken over their room and even if they had moved out, this was still very much more their home than it was ours, and as shitty as it was, I had to deal with it. Eventually she moved back out again a couple months later and I got my room back, but if this wasn't bad enough not only did this happen once but this happened twice. Several months after taking over the room again the other twin moved back home, and I had to give up the room once again.

Thankfully she wasn't home very long. She had simply had a fight with her boyfriend and after a couple of weeks once they made up she moved back in with him and I had the bedroom back. Notice how I said 'the bedroom' instead of 'my bedroom,' well, that's because it's so hard to think of it as being mine if I could so easily be removed from it at a moment's notice. It wasn't truly mine, but yet 'a loaner,' which meant after this whole shitshow, it was hard to ever get too comfortable. Finally when I was 19, we moved. We remained in the same building we just switched floors but because of that move it allowed me to have something I hadn't had in a long time, a place I was truly able to call home.