You don’t hear about the panic that comes with graduation week, which should be a happy time. I was about to be the first person in my family to finish high school and the first person in my family to go to/finish college with a BFA. I got a full scholarship to NYU, and I was extremely lucky and grateful. I come from a family of 4 with an income that is about 10,000 dollars below poverty line. My dad’s been addicted to drugs since before I was born, and by the time I was a toddler my mom had been beyond fed up with his shit and she began physically, verbally, and emotionally abusing me while my dad was being neglectful to the point where I had to help wipe his bottom or help him get into his bed. They also physically, verbally, and emotionally abused each other.
This only got worse and then the summer after my freshman year I returned home to Philly and tried to put my dad in rehab when he was so fucked up he was stuffing his poop into the bathroom sink and trying to beat my mom up while hallucinating. His insurance couldn’t cover rehab, and our house became so infested with bedbugs at the time that all the furniture had to be taken away. I had no bed anymore. I tried sleeping on the floor, but the bedbugs were in the rug and bit me from my forehead to my toes.
I couldn’t be the kid that infested an NYU dorm of 200-1200 people with bedbugs, and the violence of my parents was so much to handle, I packed up and told them I officially couldn’t live there anymore. I’d gotten hit by a car that following summer, the second day into my summer job and I had broken bones and a broken bike, with all my stuff in storage. I was homeless in NYC with 7 cents to my name, and stuck limping around sleeping in buildings where I wouldn’t get caught or sleeping on a friend’s couch.
By senior year I had agreed to pay $200 a month to live with my best friend in his mom’s basement back in Philly once I graduated. He started being irresponsible in spring and his mom said she didn’t want to have another person in the house. He tried to persuade her and the week of graduation day, he finally said that she said yes again, but now I had to pay $400 a month. I was working multiple jobs each semester to pay my bursar and feed myself because meal plans were expensive, but I saved 200 dollars and made a collective 200 from family members upon graduating, so I would give her that while I looked for a job. Now my brother, who offered to take me home but couldn’t afford to rent a car and didn’t have one, couldn’t take me to Philly after graduating, so I had to scramble around looking for a ride back to Philadelphia. I rode the Chinatown bus home from college, and my boyfriend’s mom put my stuff in her truck with my boyfriend’s stuff. He rode the bus home with me.
The night before I was supposed to pack up and move my best friend told me there was no floor in the basement, so I couldn’t move in yet. Yes, the night before I was supposed to come live with him. Now I had nowhere to stay. I’ve moved several times, dragging my stuff with me, staying a few nights here, a couple weeks here, a month there, ever since graduating. I carry my diploma around with me in a tote and my clothes in bags. I literally have not been settled anywhere yet since graduating. I’ve done odd jobs like scenic carpentry for a month long theatre festival known as the Philly Fringe fest. Now I’ve finally started working at a place I love and looking for a second job, but it’s gong to take a while before I can actually afford my own place, and student loans are about to be due. So much more had gone wrong but this is the short version.
No one tells you about the PTSD or the inability to feel safe or stable anywhere after you almost get arrested for sleeping in a train station, you get sexually harassed at homeless shelters’ entrances by old men, or after you continuously have to leave a place and adjust to a completely new set of people and household rules.
You have to adjust to new spaces, new people, their hangups and demands for you, and their hygiene. One friend I stayed with never cleaned and had bugs and mice, and most of the time the mattress he had was flipped up on the wall in his music studio. The next family I’m with isn’t mine, and I only have a month to be here. It’s something but it hurts that I’m liking it here and I’m gonna have to leave yet again. It’s hard to plan for a budget for food or storage or work commute when you’re always changing spaces. My boyfriend and I have nowhere to be intimate or alone and we can’t afford to live together. He doesn’t know how to help so he says nothing, and I feel bad that nearly every time we talk I fill him in on where I’m staying and it stresses him out. My brother is states away and does what he can by paying me when I help him make music. We’re mixed race so any relatives around my area also happen to be classist and sexist and racist, so I wouldn’t be safe or allowed to stay with them. I’m constantly anxious and have trouble believing it when I’m not.
I feel so alone and like a complete failure because I graduated, but to what? All my problems came rushing back at me and now more than ever when I thought life would get easier, it feels harder than it’s ever been. It’s hard enough dealing with not being in school for the first time ever and not knowing what to look forward to, but it’s even harder when you don’t have a stable place to put your head at night, a closet to keep your clothes in, internet to reach people with, or any real consistent support system. I’m really hoping this diploma eventually starts being worth my while.