There for the Grace of G-d Go I

There for the Grace of G-d Go I

I was homeless.  For about five hours on a piercingly cold December day, I found myself wandering the NYC streets with my two babies, ages 6 months and two and a half, encased in their $2500 double stroller that was purchased at an over-priced and exceedingly haughty baby boutique on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  (the one where you place yourself on a waiting list for the “privilege” of them stealing your money.)  I had returned from our daily jaunt at Riverside Park to find a city marshal and a team of unsympathetic scavengers rifling through our belongings and packing them up. I was not allowed to enter the apartment and was escorted out of the building with my kids and I had no idea why.  Well, the deeply fermented knot in my stomach knew, but my rational brain wouldn’t accept it. For in my young life, all those sorts of roads lead to Larry.

You see, I wasn’t a victim, but I wasn’t a collaborator nor a condoner.  I was a believer.  I believed in the innate goodness of human beings.  I believed in forgiveness and tolerating imperfections and problems.   I married a larger-than-life brilliant and enthusiastic entrepreneur who promised a life of excitement and thrills. A glamorous escape hatch from my ordinary Chasidic life on Montgomery Street, in the form of a Jaguar-driving intellectual husband.   Be careful what you wish for because that’s how I found me, my kids, and our bulky stroller, trying to stay warm in an ATM machine cubicle until I could figure out what to do.  It was cold, I had no cash, no physical home to go to, and no place for my anger and pain to express themselves safely.  Miraculously, my fussy, rambunctious kids seemed to sense the gravity of the situation and were uncharacteristically quiet.  My heart hurt with the ache of knowing that their future would probably be very difficult and complicated.  I knew that they were losing their innocence before they even knew what it was.  I felt a tremendous amount of guilt and blamed myself for our situation.  It was my naivety and gullibility that brought me to be feeding my infant son his bottle in a glass refuge while pretending to wait for a savior that would never arrive.  Story of my life or as my shrink would say “The results of my repeated patterns of behavior, Cinderella Complex, Oedipus complex, and every other label in the DSMD book”.  In my particular case, the Prince turned into a frog and my castle turned into a swamp. Thus, began many years of slushing through it with my kids on my back.  I couldn’t have fabricated a more incongruous outcome and I was a pretty creative person.

 I tried to call my husband, the perpetrator of this situation, but I couldn’t reach him, and left a message on his voice mail.  I didn’t hear from him, so I called my younger brother, who was still in his teens, to pick me up and take me to my parents’ house.  He arrived almost two hours later and from that day on, he became my “emergency contact number”.  I was the eldest of five in our family.  The responsible and nurturing one who everyone could rely on, but now my brother had taken over.  I was, and am, the sort of person that doesn’t ask for anything and will always do for others.  My life has always been one of service and empathy, but I had feelings of low self-worth and even loathing, which have been a lifetime struggle.  I was embarrassed and ashamed of my choice of a spouse who was clearly troubled and repeatedly was tangled in the criminal and civil court system, unbeknownst to me. I admit that I was angry at my parents for not doing their due diligence when I decided to marry him, because of the pressure I was under in my community and culture.  In retrospect, I know that it was ridiculous and there was nothing wrong with me, but I told my mother that I was getting married, as soon as I could, in order to escape the pressure.  Instead of enrolling in college in the evening (I worked a full-time job right after high school), moving out, and pursuing a career, I got married. It was my choice.  Just a bit of research would have yielded a few red flags, but this was way before “google”.  I had been brainwashed that I would marry some rich guy who would take care of me, have a few kids and go shopping, and join a few charitable organizations and I was determined to be the good girl who would accomplish that.  To say that I lost my identity in the marriage would be incorrect, because I had no identity, to begin with.  I, later, learned that if you marry for money, you end up poor and I did.

I was lucky, that I was able to temporarily move in with my parents.  If not for them, I would have been on the streets.  I had no financial help with two small kids.  What followed were broken promises, numerous arrests, incarcerations, abuse, and finally divorce.  I walked out of the marriage with my children, moving many times with years of court and destitution.  What I had was faith.  I have learned not to judge people or their situations.  When I see homeless people, I always think, “There for the Grace of G-d go I”.