My Life After Being Homeless

Words: 689
Pages: 3

As a little girl, I spent a lot of time wishing for things I didn’t have. I’d lay awake at night imagining my ideal life, one that always included a blue house with a big yard and a dog. Getting caught up in my fantasies was the best way to drown out my mother’s sobs. After my father left when I was six, my mother was never able to put her life back together. The palpable fear of poverty became my reality after we spent nearly six months in a homeless shelter. While she battled depression fueled by drugs and alcohol, I was often living in fear and praying for stability.
Everything changed in January of 2000, when three days after giving birth to my baby sister, my mother was incarcerated for the distribution of narcotics. She would spend the