Resolution to Homelessness

 There were several points during my stint at homelessness that the universe sent me people to help me. My shame kept me from accepting their help. I couldn't admit to my situation.

At one point a beautiful man brought me a mattress to sleep on, where I had been on the back porch of a music school.

 I felt it meant that I would be more visible and more vulnerable to eviction. Also, at the time, there was a Christmas celebration and event happening in that courtyard. The police were sent to tell me to leave.

I felt I had no choice but to ask for help.

I texted a beloved teacher from my language school who immediately set me up with a free apartment for a week, plus a supply of food.

I did the thing I didn't want to do, which was to ask a friend for a plane ticket. He immediately complied. (Thank you, Jeff)

I got in touch with my ex, who told me he would 'arrange for me to be picked up' at the airport in Arizona, presumably by my kids.

In the meantime there was a discussion with him about staying in his parents' house nearby. They subsequently declined my access to the house because he had previously told them I was a drug addict (as I had participated in the cocaine he had bought for both of us). He was the addict.

Upon my arrival in Tucson at 11pm, there was no one there to pick me up.

I got a taxi to his house (the house I bought), found it locked. I broke in the window I knew was always unlocked, found my ex's wallet that he kept in the same place, and paid the taxi driver.

I woke my youngest, age 18, (whom I hadn't seen for over 2 years) to ask if I could share his king-sized bed and he agreed.

I cried while telling him I wished I could have been back sooner. He said, "You're here now."

The next day my ex called the police to evict me from the house. In the midst of the discussion with the hostile policeman, I asked to speak to my ex outside.

I told him I had been sleeping on the street for 5.5 months and I needed a bed and to see my kids. I never explained that I wasn't trying to move in, but that I needed a place to stay and that he had alienated me from his parents and the most logical place to stay.(I was too unwilling to hold him accountable for falsifying the divorce and promising to pick me up and for throwing me under the bus with his parents and for fear of embarrassing him... Putting other's needs ahead of my own)

He then arranged with my father for me to stay with him, with whom I had not spent more than 5 minutes alone, on the couch in his retirement home.

It was an enlightening stay with my father, who died shortly thereafter, so now I see that it was a necessary step in my journey.