A Broken House for Kids From Broken Homes

When I lived on my own, I took in troubled kids who I thought I could save, but it turns out that no matter how bad I want to be everyone’s knight in shining armor, it’s not realistic. I was only 17, so the situation was a bit skewed, and I wasn’t technically supposed to live there on my own without an adult, but that’s just how things were.

I took in a 16-year-old girl, named Megan, who I had known from school. We had mutual friends, and I had gone to parties with her a few times when I lived in the neighborhood. She was also a drop out and had run in with the wrong crowd after leaving her abusive parent’s home. Surprisingly enough, in a neighborhood as ritzy and stuck up as it was, the drug problem was incredible. The neighborhood where we went to high school was a newer subdivision, full of upper middleclass military families. They always said that strict military parents make bad kids. When I told Megan she could move in with me, I really just wanted to make sure she was sober and safe. We ended up becoming best friends for awhile, and she lived with me up until I had to move to Maine, but the drug problem was still there and I had come home, on more than one occasion, to her incoherent on the couch, and it scared me. I was always worried about her when I was at work. Worried that she’d get into trouble while she was alone. I remember getting yelled at by my boss on more than one occasion to stay off my phone. I got Megan to sober up for about 3 months. She never paid me anything for rent or food. She hardly cleaned up after herself, and she never got a job. I was basically her guardian. I love her as a person, but she was a crappy roommate. After moving, I guess she moved back in with one of her parents and started using again. We don’t talk much anymore. It really is a shame that I wasn’t able to make a life long impact on her, but I did learn that I care a lot more about people than I initially thought.

I took in a gay transgender man named Jacobi, who I became really great friends with, but all he ever talked about was his transition and he complained about paying rent and having to pay for his surgeries and doctor’s appointments. I never realized the kinds of struggles transgenders have to go through during their day to day lives. I only made him pay rent for one month, even though he left all his belongings there for about three months. He stayed the night at the house maybe a week, and then would stay with his boyfriend. He wasn’t there to make a mess, but when he did come over, he’d make food and ask me to do his dishes as he was “rushing and very busy”. We got along because we enjoyed the same music, and he was very easy to talk about my own struggles with. I enjoyed his company but I felt like he just needed me to store his furniture for him while he made plans to move in with his boyfriend. As far as I know, he is moving to Portland, Oregon with his boyfriend within the next year or so. He also was able to save up enough money to get the surgery to remove his breasts. It was a learning experience for me and I am so grateful that I was able to learn about people like that. I am definitely more accepting now because of Jacobi.

During this time, I took in two brothers who were incredibly energetic and would deep clean the house whenever they got the chance to. They only stayed for about two weeks because I later discovered their energy was from smoking meth in the back bedroom that they shared. I felt like an idiot for letting some random guys that I’d met at a metalhead party move in with me. Not that metalheads are bad, but the amount of people in the Jacksonville metal scene that were on some sort of drug was pretty high. They never did anything illegal except do meth in my house, but I wasn’t even legally allowed to invite people to stay in my house because it wasn’t legally in my name since I was only 17.

I took in a couple, Belladonna and Vince, who I eventually formed a band with that we called Neural Firing. We took trips to the bars in Riverside and danced with drunk 30 year old women. I can’t remember being happier than I was then. We all complained about society together and began planning to buy a van, ditch town, and become a band in a van and make money doing odd jobs. Our band totally sucked but we liked that we sucked. Vince wasn’t able to get his Adderall prescription filled one month and started to withdraw. He was angry and violent and tried to self-medicate with alcohol. We got into a fight one night because he had driven drunk with Belladonna and Megan in the car. I was so angry because these were the only people who mattered to me at that point in my life. He had passed out drunk and was gone by the morning. He came back and was in a far better mood. We found out later that he had gone to pick up meth. He always went on about how Adderall and meth were cousins. The band soon broke up after that.

I shouldn’t have trusted these people so easily and let them move in without knowing if they were going to pay rent or not. I also should have been more aware of the drug problem in that part of town. It’s like I went from the nice suburbs full of drugs, to the outskirts of a dirty city, also full of drugs. My job in life isn’t to house and rehabilitate troubled kids just because I was once a troubled kid. While I care for each and every one of these people, their decisions are totally going to impact them negatively in the near future. After experiencing this over the span of about eight months, I decided that I’m going to be more cautious with who I hang around.

Photo by Russ Allison Loar on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND