Technically the first time I moved houses was when I was less than a year old. This was due to the house I was born in burning down. After this it took a while for the new house to be built, forcing the entire family to stay in temporary housing on the farm premises.
After that the concept of 'moving houses' was very alien to me, however. Until 2003, that is, when my parents divorced and I found myself living in a small house in a nearby city together with my mother and younger brother. Half a year later we'd move again.
Then after a while I moved to Canada for a short while, returned to the Netherlands, stayed for a month in one place, three years in another, was forced to leave, found a new place, but tried to commit suicide before I could move into the run-down, super-expensive place I had found.
I stayed at my mother's place while I recovered from that ordeal, found a job, moved into an apartment which I shared with this other woman (see recent blog post), was forced to leave due to domestic violence, had all of my belongings stolen. I stayed first at my mother's place, then at my older brother's place, then briefly in Germany, then again at my mother's place for a while until I decided to move to Germany permanently.
There in Germany the first place I had rented was inhabitable, so I stayed at my employer's office, at a colleague's place, a student's place, another colleague's place, then ended up at my current apartment.
And now I'm being forced to leave this apartment.
The ironic thing I guess is that even though the owner of this apartment hates me and is fine with me drinking polluted water, shivering during winters from the poor insulation, suffer through noise pollution, I do not think that I can find anything better.
Back in 2012 when I sought a place to rent in the Netherlands I could still do this research myself. In 2013 I noticed that when I tried to find a place in Germany, I began to feel suicidally depressed when doing so. I still have this problem today.
What do I have to look forward to in trying to find a new place anyway? I won't find anything better. Nobody will just hand me that One Perfect Place. Shivering from cold, ignoring the noise while drinking polluted water and having people get upset at you for renting a place larger than one 'needs', this seems to be the best one can do.
This seems to be all that I am worth.
I do not want to search for a better place which likely doesn't exist. I don't want to start feeling suicidal again when I see how much I will have to compromise on again just to not be homeless. Being happy and feeling like one has a home aren't even considerations. This is all about raw survival, about not living on the streets, about not losing one's possessions again and to not want to just end this endless suffering called 'life'.
And that, in short, is why all I can do is hope and pray that a miracle happens in my current housing crisis. The only miracle which will come from my side is organising the moving company and packing up my belongings for yet another move. I wish, but do not believe, that a house exists in this area where I can actually feel safe and happy.
Depending on how things go, I may end up losing all hope and just wander into the streets one day, never to return to this life again. Just leave and walk. Until I die somewhere, alone and unloved, as a fitting conclusion to the utter pointlessness of my entire existence.
Maya
2 comments:
I am hoping for you too. I feel the same.
I wish I had a good answer for you, but I am yet to figure it out myself. I did try to find my place, I was in something like that when I interacted with you years ago. And I thought that I could do it, but as it turns out not only did I end up homeless, I also became stateless on the other side of the planet and I don't even have with me anything that at some point I considered my life, I just don't exist in any system anymore. I also became suicidal, the depression was heavy, and I shed lots of tears, and even blood a couple of times and I "lived" in places no human being should live, and the threats of imprisonment I had, well, they sounded glorious ^_^, but I guess people didn't want to deal with the mess and do the paperwork to deport me. Anyway, all of that is so I don't sound condescending when I tell you the rest, or sound like some sort of salesman telling you that everything is going to be perfect one day and that you will find that perfect place that you are longing for.
I just want to tell you that I send you a hug, as I did once; and I wanted to tell you that you are not fighting for something better alone, in fact if I had the place you would be absolutely welcome, no time-limit, no expectations of any kind, no hidden agenda. Unfortunately, not even I should be that low where it comes to "living".
But it is devastating, and it hits in the part where our feeling of self-worth is created I guess, and it hits hard, and it gets so bad that we begin feeling that we are not worth anything, that our life is worthless, that we have no place in the world in that we should not exist; that everybodies life would be better if we would just vanish.
But you know what, fuck that, we are alive, and we have the right to be alive too, and anyone who doesn't like it, fuck them. Fuck them because the reason we are in this shitty circumnstance is because some people with limited views and a lot of greed decided that they wanted to "own" everything, and the rest of the people were too stupid to do something about it.
And so we were born in this, and we were told that we have no right to own anything and we were made to believe that we are not worth a thing. But you are worthy, and the only home that we really ever have is inside, everything in the world is temporal.
Post a Comment