Thanks, lis.

I've been through similar, in a dissimilar fashion, Lis. We all have our stories to tell and memories to sustain us even as they sometimes frighten us. So be it.

The more experience we gain the more we understand that wrong is simply wrong. And the louder our voices become when screaming the truth to all who refuse to listen.

This is a very touching blog, LisB. I think we all know you a bit better now. That makes you dearer.

So many people, right now, may be fearing they could end up in the same situation. And perhaps reading that you made it through that may help them. We never know who might be reading this.

Thank you for this blog.

A good story for times like these, Lis. How many people right now are one or two paychecks away?

An old friend wrote two days ago about having to "suspend operations indefinitely" at his business. He'll be OK, outside, anyway. He's pretty torn up about it. Don't know what will happen to the people who worked there.

Got no advice, no real comment, other than this: Stay strong. Offer your story as evidence that bad times pass.

And you're among friends here, of course, even with that blue-avatar-displaying troublemaker spewing upthread.

I'm glad you're not homeless anymore, LisB.

There but for the grace of God go I is a phrase to remember. It is easier to keep in mind how true it is if you have been in a situation where the grace of God did not keep you from there and how easy it is to end up in dire circumstances. Poverty is it's own hellish world and it isn't easy.

Aw, hey, I don't mind what the bad folks have to say.

I wrote this for the folks that feel it.

Thank you for your post. Many people are suffering as you did right now and your story inspires.

I appreciate the post very much. In my own worst days, I found the benefits of going to a bodega. One down the street from my barely livable apartment sold 'reyenos' for a dollar. It's potato stuffed with spices and meat. For weeks one a day had to carry me. The starch and protein gave you the illusion of being full.

Great post. For some among the upper crust, the rich really are different - but not in a good way. I know some "elite" deploy portions of their riches to benefit their fellow human beings, for society. But with too many, human misery is a non-starter for consideration, since, for them, the status assumed by their wealth requires an economic underclass as fearsome contrast. If everyone eats at Popham's - how will anyone tell the Beautiful People from the riff-raff? Their exclusive strata is so important, so central to their lives, their humanity is forfeit - willingly. In these cases, the rich are not merely different. They're mutant.

LisB,

Your posts are valued reality checks for all. Greatly appreciated and needed.

For some, the paths traveled and destinations reached never bring them 'home'. However, now you have two and we appreciate that you always have the welcome mat out at this one.

Beautiful, intelligent, AND a shadowy past.....

Hope you find the right guy, or no guy, but either way...I'm free this evening!

I see a lot of this at the soup kitchen. A couple trying to make it back home rolls into town and the tranny falls out of the Dodge. A cheap motel at $60/night, a few $20 meals at restaurants, a surprise $150 diagnostic cost from the repair shop and they are asking what to do. No car, no gas money, no home, no job. Throw in a few sick kids. Most eventually get it together and move on. Private charities are the ones providing food and shelter and bus tickets. Do folks come away as better after pulling themselves out of destitution? I think so. But it has to scar.
Bless you LisB.

LisB:

Thank you for your unfailing courage to tell it as it is, or has been.

I hear you. Because I know something of what you've been through.

Yes, I started with advantages. I was raised and educated in relative comfort, worked hard to develop a career of my own, and sequentially married two Ivy graduates -- one who became a Wall Street stockbroker, and the other, an international lawyer.

You'd think -- wouldn't you? -- that all these advantages would be a fail-safe hedge against homelessness.

But you would have to think again. Because I've finally accepted that, in my case at least, one also has to factor in: the cumulative impact of my own repeated demonstrations of faulty judgment and/or self-sabotage (god help me, please say it wasn't masochism); some unanticipated malfeasance encountered along the way that I should have anticipated; and, as a topper, a completely random act of God made worse by its timing during the Bush administration.

The result? When you talk about homelessness, I do actually know whereof you speak.

For example:
a) if the stockbroker develops a costly cocaine habit and it brings out the physical sadist, rather than the gregarious party animal in him, things can become precarious.
b) and if, because you are still young, comely and far too proud you not only divorce him but also refuse the court's award of alimony (and thereby set a no-fault precedent for him to refuse to pay child support); and,
c)if you quickly realize that your "successful" career as a freelancer/consultant really only means that your income is feast or famine; that in fact, your independence is actually only made possible by the timely small gifts of cash from ancient maiden great aunts, and later, by the untimely early deaths of your parents); and,
c) if it turns out that the brilliant international lawyer you married next really meant it when he said he had no interest in owning a house, but if you did, you could buy one. And if it turns out that he is much fonder of hanging out on his Eurotrash client's helicopter and yacht than than he is of you, and that he spends more and more time in the south of France, because he has become addicted to passing for respectable while actually being totally ammoral, addicted to the risk of working for and with real criminals; and
d)if you attempt to divorce him, but after two years you can't get it done, because -- what were you thinking? -- he is a lawyer, after all, who therefore loves nothing more than the game of jacking up your legal fees by filing for endless continuances while coming after the house you paid for as "marital property" from the jurisdictional safety of Europe; and,
e)if, to protect your investment in the house, you transfer its title to your son and he, in a moment of temptation/irrational exuberance, uses its value to collateralize his purchase of two small beach condos; and,
f) if that house and both those condos are completely trashed, overnight, by a hurricane, but the mortages and taxes are owed anyway.....

Well, then:
g) after camping out in the ruins for months waiting for FEMA and your insurance adjustor; and, therafter,
h) refusing to mooch on family or friends....then

you, too, may end up living out of your car, and/or in short term rentals for a year -- having become a "high class" bag lady who not only drives but occasionally sleeps in her Mercedes.... before trading it in for a Honda.

Unlike your story, LisB, in which you made your decisions based on the priority of love, there's little excuse for me. Unless it was to end up here, with all of you, sheepishly acknowledging my own fault, as well the essential ironic humor, in my saga.

Quinn: Are you inviting me to practice so that I may enter the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for completing the opening phrase: "It was a dark and stormy night..."?
If so, we should all try it; the results are always hilarious.

About the phrase and the annual contest, from Wikipedia:

"The phrase "It was a dark and stormy night", made famous by comic strip artist Charles M. Schulz, was originally penned by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton as the beginning of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford.

The phrase itself is now understood as a signifier of a certain broad style of writing, characterized by a self-serious attempt at dramatic flair, the imitation of formulaic styles, an extravagantly florid style, redundancies, and run-on sentences.

Bulwer-Lytton's original opening sentence serves as an example:

'It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.'

The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed to "celebrate" the worst extremes in this style. The contest is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing."