Member-only story
POVERTY AND VIOLENCE
What is Home?
It’s hard to know when you live on the run
My childhood was spent living on the run. I was always being uprooted from everything and everyone. This was partly so that I was unable to make the meaningful connections a person needs to know that they are loved. Feeling like nobody cared about me was a feature, not a bug.
I couldn’t make myself comfortable by unpacking all my boxes and arranging my room, because I was worried I’d have to pack it all up again soon and cart it off to the next place.
Of course, every time we moved my mother wanted us to downsize and so I learned not to be overly attached to my stuff. I could lose things that were special to me in moving, sometimes because my mom decided I didn’t need it enough to justify packing it, and sometimes because it got lost.
I learned the art of letting go out of necessity, but it’s not a personal strength of mine, it’s an adaptive skill. Even though I have some nice things now, I keep wondering when I’m going to have to give them up, because that’s always been inevitable before.
People ask me why I continue to live here, seeing as it’s politically backwards and things are often frustrating and hard.
