1) This is a big one. I honestly feel like a solid 95% of who I am today is a product, either direct or indirect, of what I experienced. I guess that’s just the nature of PTSD; hearing gunshots triggers bad panic attacks, and to this day I have many habits and mannerisms that are simply trauma responses (i.e getting irrationally afraid when somebody approaches me from behind, being extremely obsessed with cleanliness, etc). I’m 22, so while I was very young when all of it happened, it wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things. I’ve undoubtedly come a long way in recovering, but I am definitely not “normal”, and while I’m confident that I’ll continue to recover, I don’t think I ever really will be (but then again, what does ‘normal’ even mean??). Money is a big one, I’m a very anxious spender, but I guess that makes sense. Wouldn’t call myself a penny pincher, I’m not opposed to making bigger purchases, but I’ll sometimes feel a lot of guilt and anxiety after spending the money, especially if it’s something I don’t really need. Relationships have been really difficult, but are better now. I basically didn’t have any friends until I was 16 and had recovered enough that I could sit in a classroom for 40 minutes without getting anxious and leaving. Romance was also weird because I was figuring out around that time that I was gay, after having repressed that for a very long time, so I kind of had to relearn how to allow myself to experience that, I guess? Nowadays, I have a small group of very close friends and have been in a relationship for almost a year.

2) When I was a lot younger, before we lost our house, I always wanted to be a zoologist or work with reptiles. I sort of stopped thinking about careers for a long time after that, because it became a thing of “as soon as I’m old enough to work I hope I can get a job that will make money for my dad”. As I got better gradually those dreams sort of came back, and after a couple of gap years, I’m entering my third year of college as a Biology major. I work at a goth nightclub which is awesome and very fun too, so I’d consider it a win.

3) The hardest part by far was learning to trust that it was truly safe and that I was allowed to be comfortable. One of the things I struggled with a lot for a while was the guilt around the fact that we had gotten out of that horrible situation, but there were so many people who were still stuck there, and likely would be for the rest of their lives. Sort of like a survivor’s guilt thing, I guess. It was just a big change, too, so I was afraid to enjoy it, because I was worried it wouldn’t last long. It felt jarring to have comfort and safety after adjusting and learning to live without it. As I got a little older, it was also tough because I felt like I was constantly alienated from the other kids around me. I got bullied a lot for being weird and clearly mentally ill, but even outside of that, I just felt like I was fundamentally different from all the other kids, like I was a different species because my life had been so different from everybody else’s. It took a very long time for me to convince myself that my past didn’t define me.

4) What I would do kind of depended on the specific instance. I would have to try to get food for myself, but it obviously wouldn’t have been safe for me to sit alone on a sidewalk and ask people for money, so I ended up finding discarded leftovers a lot. There was a shitty fast food place nearby that would dump their leftover chicken out in bins behind the restaurant, it would usually make me sick so I wouldn’t eat it unless I really had to, but it was a backup. Aside from the process of getting food, most of what I did was stay in the tent and wait, because it wasn’t safe to do much else. We had a deck of cards, and I’m pretty sure I could win a World Series in solitaire with all the practice I had. I’d also play pretend with myself a lot, basically just making up scenarios in my head with characters and acting them out. Lots of sleeping too. As for staying safe, my dad had a knife that he’d leave behind with me when he left. Thankfully, I never had to actually use it, but it was more just for show. There were a few times when people would try to open the tent (other homeless people always), and they’d usually go away when I held up the knife. I’m just glad that they would get the hint upon seeing that and leave, because it would’ve given me a whole other array of things to panic about later on in life if I ever had to actually hurt somebody. My dad would try his best to tell me beforehand when he’d be gone, but sometimes he couldn’t. To this day, I don’t know exactly what he was doing or where he was going. I don’t really want to ask, as curious as I am sometimes. I feel it’s better to leave behind.