Homeless and Happy
“If you don’t want to sleep in the same bed as me, you need to leave,” he spat, brimming with hatred.
“Wow. After 11 years together, I can’t even get a 30 day move out period? That’s fine. I’d rather sleep in my car than in bed with you.”
He didn’t even own the house. It was his grandfather’s. We moved in to take care of the old man after his wife died. He was still mobile, but acted like he was allergic to doing “women’s chores.” That must be where my husband got his sexism from.
“Katy, if you walk out that door, don’t expect me to take you back!”
I shook my head, smirked, and said, “K.”
“I’m the only one that loves you in the whole world. Your family doesn’t love you. All of your friends are fake.”
“Jesus,” I thought. “How did I never realize how manipulative and verbally abusive this guy has been for all these years?”
“K,” I said again.
His lip quivered as he began to cry. How in the hell could he have it in him to cry after the way he treated me? Now he’s sad?
Pathetic.
The car was uncomfortable, so I only slept in it for one night.
I didn’t have money saved up for a place of my own, because I had taken several months off of work to take care of my dying mom.
A cleaning company hired me and gave me the keys for several rent houses and apartments. They said to make my own schedule cleaning the units as long as I had them all done within 2 weeks.
So, I decided to illegally take up temporary residence. My martial arts mat wasn’t comfortable, but I was happier to sleep on that than in bed with him.
Don’t feel sorry for me. The freedom was electrifying. Adventure was omnipresent.
I had a self-proclaimed “man-slave” who actually couldn’t even perform sexually. But, he loved to massage my fatigued body in those vacant castles until I fell asleep. He lived to obey and actually enjoyed it, so there was no guilt in accepting his servitude. It was refreshing to have someone serve me the way I had served my husband for over a decade.
I met some of my “fake” friends on set for a TV show called The Librarians. We were supposed to be extras, but we ended up getting released early, probably for being obnoxious in the waiting area. They paid us anyway, so we didn’t care.
Being an extra is bullshit anyway.
“You ladies want to do something?” Jonas asked with a huge grin.
“Let’s find some weed downtown,” Chloe proposed.
“I have extra skateboards in my car. Wanna shred?”
The wind gently combed through my short, cherry-chocolate hair as we skated over the bridge that crossed the Willamette River. Chloe played sweet music on a random piano we found under an overpass. (Keep Portland weird.) Her elegant fingers danced across the keys with grace.
After getting busted for illegally sleeping in the apartments and rent houses, I camped for a few weeks in the breathtaking forests of Estacada, Oregon.
I was an actress in a low-budget horror movie, (that will never get finished), and the crew was invited to stay on several acres of private property to film. We filmed at nights, and slept all day. Most of the crew booked it back to their homes in Portland after shooting, but I slept on the ground, so in love with life.
I cooked on fire and bathed with buckets of water, in the golden sunlight, on the edge of a cliff, while overlooking endless miles of untouched wilderness. Osprey spied on me, and I on them.
It was the finest summer of my entire life. I was homeless and happy.
This story was originally published by Modern Women on Medium.com.